In terms of the playoffs or even meaningful late-season games, 2023-24 was always going to be a lost season for the San Jose Sharks. But they still had hope for positive takeaways, particularly if they showed progress over the course of it. And while they have had stretches of improvement, their recent slide has taken the team in the wrong direction. They have lost 17 of their last 18 games, including just three non-regulation losses. They’re not quite at the same level of incompetence as their embarrassing 11-game losing streak to open the season, but they’re not far off from it — and the two skids, unfortunately, have a number of elements in common. As a team, they’re currently displaying some of their worst habits, and that’s not a good sign for what comes next.
Sharks Letting One Mistake Turn Into More
A number of Sharks losses during the streak have a common thread: they’ll make one slip-up and not only fail to recover from it but follow it with several additional errors that eliminate any chance they might have of winning. They had this issue early in the season, and while it never disappeared altogether, it has returned in a more obvious way in recent weeks.
Take their March 17 game against the Chicago Blackhawks, in which they allowed three goals in 1:23 of game time, turning a 2-1 lead into a 4-2 deficit. There wasn’t much goalie Devin Cooley could do to handle the onslaught. After conceding the first goal, a clear loss of concentration — primarily from the skaters — led to the next two, and the game felt over.
The game against Chicago may have been the best example during the current slide, but it was far from the only one. The Sharks allowed four goals in roughly five minutes in a loss to the New York Islanders on March 7, then did the same thing against the Nashville Predators 12 days later. A loss to the New Jersey Devils on Feb. 27 featured two separate instances of the Sharks allowing goals a minute or less apart.
The Sharks have struggled with allowing multiple goals in short timespans all season. But it’s been at its worst during two points — the very beginning of the season and right now. Unsurprisingly, the results in the loss column during those two stretches have been very similar as well.
Sharks Coming Undone By Losses of Focus
While the Sharks’ mistakes often pile on themselves, they also suffer from a more general issue of losing focus. This is a similar but ultimately separate issue, as it often rears its head when the Sharks have the lead, and sometimes is even a reflection of a single moment rather than several shifts.
Related: 3 Sharks Who Would Benefit From a Strong End to the Season
In the case of the former, we can look at another matchup with the Blackhawks, this time on March 23. San Jose jumped out to a 4-0 lead, and looked ready to cruise to a win over the one team in the league doing almost as badly as them this season. But they took their foot off the gas and collapsed, allowing two goals each in the second and third periods before losing 5-4 in overtime. It was a historic failure by the standards of the franchise, and it came about because they let their guard down, something they can’t ever afford to do this season given their lack of talent.
The latter issue happens frequently, as their league-worst goal differential suggests, but one good example occurred on Tuesday (March 26) in a loss to the Dallas Stars. In the first period of a scoreless game, the Sharks were on the power play, but a brief moment in which they didn’t play their best allowed Wyatt Johnston to break away for a shorthanded goal, giving the Stars a lead they never relinquished.
As the Sharks discovered within their first few games this season, they can’t afford to make many flubs, or deficits will quickly become insurmountable. In a number of their early-season games, they trailed by multiple goals quickly as a result of not being fully locked in from the opening puck drop. The players and coaches surely understand that they’ve fallen back into those habits, but it isn’t translating into positive results.
Sharks Ending Season on Wrong Note
When the Sharks began this season, one of the hopes was that they would improve — however incrementally — throughout the year and finish the campaign in a way that provided some optimism for the direction of their rebuild. If anything, the opposite is happening right now. They’re regressing to some of their worst tendencies, and it could indicate the coaching staff isn’t properly guiding the team through a difficult season. Furthermore, the worse the end of this season gets, the more difficult it will likely be to begin the next one on a positive note. Yes, the constant losing increases the team’s chances of landing the top draft pick and the chance to draft Macklin Celebrini. But even for a team that expected to lose a lot, this isn’t how to conclude a season in a way that sets up for the future.
