OTTAWA — Here’s another area where the San Jose Sharks missed Alex Wennberg.

“You make a mistake, you try to correct it immediately, and then, you just compound it,” Collin Graf said, after the Sharks lost 7-4 at the Ottawa Senators.

Graf (51) was referring to this Tyler Kleven (43) goal, which gave the Senators a 4-3 lead.

The initial mistake was Graf’s turnover, forced by Warren Foegele (37). The compounding mistake was the defensive coverage, in a 3-on-3: In the end, Vincent Desharnais (5) and Shakir Mukhamadullin (85) covered Foegele, Graf was closing on Fabian Zetterlund (20), and nobody had Kleven. Desharnais had signaled Graf to cover the backdoor.

Tyler Kleven gives Ottawa the lead moments after Zetterlund tied it!! #GoSensGo

Zetterlund with the slick feed as he and Foegele have two points each. https://t.co/0ygPp1B9gi pic.twitter.com/uZYmGtFL8C

— Everyday Sens (@EverydaySens) March 15, 2026

The San Jose Sharks — all NHL players, really — know this simple concept for winning hockey games. But the young Sharks are still working on their execution, at a high pace, of this concept. That’s what the better teams do more consistently than San Jose.

Wennberg, of course, wouldn’t have necessarily stopped this Kleven goal by himself. But the 31-year-old veteran — a surprise first scratch of the season on Sunday, after suffering an upper-body injury at the Montreal Canadiens yesterday — plays perhaps the most patient and calmest game on the Sharks. He’s someone that head coach Ryan Warsofsky has called “an eraser” defensively.

Hockey, the cliché goes, is a game of mistakes. It’s how you react to those mistakes, that often determines if you win or lose.

This is where the veteran Wennberg excels.

This isn’t pinning tonight’s loss on Graf, by the way. There’s plenty of blame to go around when you surrender seven goals. And this isn’t to say that San Jose would’ve won tonight with Wennberg.

But a Wennberg-like poise, on both sides of the puck, was clearly missing for the Sharks in a sloppy defeat.

Collin Graf

Laurent Brossoit

Brossoit, on his first NHL game since 2024:

Bittersweet, but during it, it was pretty surreal, it’s been a long time coming, and more grateful and appreciate being out there than I ever have.

Ryan Warsofsky

Warsofsky, on the absence of Wennberg:

I thought [Philipp Kurashev] did a good job stepping in there, but let’s be honest, Wenny is one of our best players. So anytime you lose one of your best players, you suffer a little bit.

Warsofsky, on what the San Jose Sharks can be better at against the Oilers on Tuedsay:

Breaking out pucks.