San Jose Sharks general manager Mike Grier still has a huge task ahead of him.
Maybe that was going to be the case all along. But it seems especially true now after the Sharks arrived home early Wednesday morning, following their biggest collapse this season, as the NHL’s last-place team.
Seemingly on their way to a rare comfortable victory and a feel-good ending to a five-game road trip, the Sharks, up by four midway through the second period, instead lifted their foot off the gas and allowed the Nashville Predators to take control.
By the end of the second period, the Sharks’ lead was down to two. Just over five minutes into the third period, it was gone altogether. And by the time the chorus of Tim McGraw’s “I Like It, I Love It” kicked in for the final time inside Bridgestone Arena, the Sharks — with their fragility on full display — were down two goals and left to wonder how it all went so wrong. Again.
“We played a pretty good first half of the game, and after that, they started playing better, and we just couldn’t answer for that,” center Mikael Granlund said after the Sharks’ 7-5 loss. “So that’s (a) pretty embarrassing end.”
In losing for the 18th time in 22 games, the Sharks remained in 32nd and last place in the NHL standings with a 14-30-6 record, 34 points, and a .340 points percentage.
For all the talk of the Sharks’ progress this season — and there has been some — they have the same amount of wins and just two more points than last season’s team after 50 games.
“There’s a lot to learn. We’ve got to keep playing,” Sharks coach Ryan Warsofsky said. “Puck play got soft, got cute. The veteran team paid for it.”
The Sharks should have better days ahead, although a playoff appearance feels several years after Tuesday. In the meantime, one has to wonder what kind of effect all of this losing has on the players who are experiencing it for the first time at the NHL level.
The Sharks’ coaching staff’s biggest job this season is developing rookies Macklin Celebrini and Will Smith. Celebrini had two points Tuesday to give him 34 for the season, moving him past Patrick Marleau for most points in a year by a Sharks’ 18-year-old, and Smith had an assist to give him 18 points, seventh-most among all rookies.
Still, for those players, helping the Sharks return to respectability has to feel like a huge mountain to climb.
That’s why this next trade deadline and offseason might be Grier’s most important to date.
Over the last two-and-a-half years, Grier and the Sharks’ front office have done an admirable job of bolstering the team’s scouting and development staffs, clearing out lengthy, expensive contracts, creating valuable cap space, and building the team’s prospect pool into one of the NHL’s best. They also brought in some respected veterans last offseason.
Looking back, that might have been the easy part, as the next step in the Sharks’ rebuild is the most critical.
Not only do the Sharks need to take steps to avoid being a last-place team again to continue supporting Celebrini and Smith, but they also need to avoid the mistakes made by other rebuilding teams, such as getting impatient and spending money on the wrong players.
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Grier and the Sharks need to use some of that cap space to bolster a struggling defense corps and, without being reckless, spend or use assets to acquire another legitimate scoring threat or forwards with hard skill.
The Sharks have lost eight games this season in which they’ve owned a third-period lead. That’s only happened to nine other NHL teams in the last 45 years. It speaks to a lack of confidence, not having the right personnel, or the adjustments the players and coaches still need to make.
Despite the five goals Tuesday, the Sharks are also tied for 29th in the NHL in goals scored per game (2.60).
“We just couldn’t get out of our d-zone,” said Granlund, a pending unrestricted free agent. “In the third period, we got stuck there. When we can’t break out pucks, when we can’t stop the puck in the d-zone, we get under so much pressure, and if you let seven goals against, that’s not a recipe for winning hockey games.”
Sharks goalie Alexandar Georgiev, another pending UFA, allowed six goals on 40 shots and was fuming after the game. He wasn’t alone.
“We had a good start. We did things we wanted to do and got immature with our game again,” Warsofsky said. “Got soft with puck plays especially, and some bad reads start in the offensive zone trying to make a cross-ice pass when the puck should be delivered to the net.
“We don’t put enough pucks to the net to create some chaos offensively, and then it ends up back in our own net. Then we get soft with the puck play again, they get a power-play goal, and the whole game just shifted.”
The Sharks have a chance to get this bad taste out of their mouths right away as they play the surging Predators again in San Jose on Thursday night. After that, five of their next six games are at home, giving Warsofsky the last change and his team a chance to re-establish some good habits before the NHL breaks for the 4 Nations Face-Off in early February.
Grier and his lieutenants might soon meet to discuss the organization’s immediate future, particularly with the trade deadline just over six weeks away.
If anything, this stretch — and perhaps Tuesday’s result — has likely answered some questions and made it clear to Grier and his staff how they need to proceed.