There’s no way to sugarcoat it. The Sharks aren’t playing good hockey right now. And nobody knows that more than the players.
Even captain Joe Pavelski, who’s always good at pointing out positives even when they lose, expressed there was concern now that the team has dropped four straight games.
[RELATED: Sharks fall to Senators, 6-2]
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SIGN UP HERE “It’s been tough to stop it," Pavelski said to the media after Saturday’s 6-2 loss to the Ottawa Senators. "We find ways to lose."
Through their current road trip, which concludes Sunday in Montreal, they haven't won a game -- the team hasen't even held a lead.
They’ve given up three or more goals in all but seven games so far this season and aren’t finding the back of the net enough to counteract that. Their play has been frustrating, and the losses have no doubt been a bit of a confidence killer. That’s where San Jose has to buckle down and turn that frustration into a winning formula.
“We’ve just got to stop the bleeding,” Pavelski continued. “We’ve just got to put an end to this, figure it out a little bit, find a way to win.”
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Finding ways to, as Erik Karlsson put it, “sort this mess out” isn’t going to be easy. There’s a list of things San Jose has to clean up. From cutting down on allowing odd-man rushes to getting on the scoreboard first to playing a consistent 60 minutes. Putting it all together doesn’t start and end with what the Sharks do on the ice – it has to take place in the dressing room as well.
“At the end of the day it’s up to us in that room to figure that out,” Karlsson summarized. “As of right now it’s going to be tough to do that but we’re going to do everything we can to figure that out.”
Head coach Peter DeBoer added things have to change on his end as well. “We need to figure things out and that starts in my room,” the Sharks’ bench boss said. “We need to find a way to get that swagger back.”
Getting a win against the Canadiens on Sunday would surely be great medicine for a team desperate to regain that swagger. Any way of snapping the losing skid will be a positive one.
“You’re going to go through periods of this throughout the year,” Karlsson said. “We’re going through it right now and we’re going to have to sort a lot of things out in order to play better hockey. We’re a better team than we’ve shown in the past four or five games here. We know that.”