The San Jose Sharks fell to the Colorado Avalanche 4-1 on Sunday, making it six straight losses to start the season.
The San Jose Sharks fell to the Colorado Avalanche 4-1 on Sunday, making it six straight losses to start the season.
1. Stop taking penalties
For the third straight game, the Sharks faced a five-on-three penalty kill. For the second straight game, they were called for too many men. After going the first three games of the season with a perfect PK, the Sharks have given up a powerplay goal in three straight games.
"We just can't keep putting ourselves in three-on-five situations," Sharks coach Ryan Warsofsky said postgame. "It just needs to stop. I thought we played more physical tonight, so we eliminated some of those penalties, but still not good."
2. The offense is drying up
William Eklund scored his first goal of the season tonight on the powerplay, which is encouraging, but the rest of the offense has disappeared. The Sharks haven't scored four goals in a single game since opening night.
San Jose has scored eight goals in its last five games.
"I think we created more chances tonight than we have in [recent] games. The shot quantity was up more. We need more quality chances [on the] inside of the ice," Warsofsky said. "There's opportunities for us to probably [shoot] some more. We're just going to continue to work on that aspect of our game."
3. The Sharks pushed back
Unlike the previous two games, the Sharks pushed back after a slow start. The Avalanche started strong, but San Jose gained momentum and outshot the Avs 13-6 in the second period.
Henry Thrun got into his first career fight, and the team was overall more physical than they had been.
Honorable mentions:
It was a weird start to the game, with a group of fans dressed as Super Mario.
Then, right after the national anthem played, the Zamboni returned to the ice due to a problem in front of the Avalanche bench.
Who can forget that Vitek Vanecek's name was spelled wrong on his jersey?
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