The San Jose Sharks are running out of patience in their quest to win their first game of the season.
Their next attempt comes Thursday night against the Los Angeles Kings in the second game of a four-game trip.
The Sharks have opened the season at 0-5-2, most recently losing for the second time this season to the Anaheim Ducks on Tuesday night, 3-1, in a game of inches.
While the game was still scoreless in the first period, San Jose’s Danil Gushchin took a shot off the rush that hit the arm of goalie Lukas Dostal, deflected into the crossbar, came down on the goal line and then slid off the post before an Anaheim defender cleared the puck from of the crease.
With the Ducks leading 1-0 in the final minute of the second period, the Sharks’ Barclay Goodrow deflected a shot off the post.
“That’s sports. Sometimes it goes in,” San Jose first-year coach Ryan Warsofsky said. “It’s a game of inches, and sometimes they don’t.”
San Jose rallied to tie the score in the third period, but the Ducks quickly retook the lead with their second power-play goal of the game (and season), and sealed the win with an empty-net goal.
“We have practice (Wednesday) and we get back to work,” said San Jose forward Mikael Granlund, who scored the lone goal on Tuesday. “That’s all you can do, go day-by-day. It’s not easy to lose, we all know that. But at the same time, we’re only seven games in, six games in, so let’s just keep going and show up to practice.”
A good start for the Sharks would be cutting down on their penalties. They have 38 penalties on the season, third in the NHL. That has led to nine power-play goals against, second most in the league.
“Penalties hurt,” Granlund said. “It’s been a story, and we’ve just got to find a way to get on the other side of these games and get the win.”
The Kings are finally getting around to playing their home opener after going 3-2-2 on a seven-game road trip.
“Obviously, everyone loves being at home,” Kings defenseman Mikey Anderson said. “You get the fans, you get last change, a lot of benefits you can get from it.”
The Kings beat the Ducks 4-1 on Sunday, but then had a rough outing on Tuesday against the Vegas Golden Knights, losing 6-1 in the finale of the trip.
“There was a lot of positive stuff,” Los Angeles coach Jim Hiller said of the road trip. “We’ve seen that we have to do better. If you don’t do it better, you lose on the road. All-in-all, we’ll accept it and move forward.”
A bright spot has been the third line of Warren Foegele, Alex Turcotte and Alex Laferriere.
Turcotte has four points (one goal, three assists) in the past five games; Laferriere has goals in two of the past three games and four overall; and Foegele scored his first goal of the season on Tuesday to account for the lone goal against Vegas.
“That line, they continue to play pretty well, all three of them together,” Hiller said. “They’re dangerous, hungry, tenacious, and I think there’s probably some guys on our team that could probably, as they’re sitting on the bench watching, take a page out of their notebook, because I think we’re lacking that with some of our players.”
The Kings did not practice on Wednesday.
–Field Level Media