The San Jose Sharks will have extra motivation when they face the Calgary Flames on Saturday night.
Trying to avoid finishing last in the league, the Sharks lost their sixth straight game with a 6-3 defeat to the Vegas Golden Knights on Friday, kicking off a six-game homestand.
San Jose led 3-2 through two periods but gave up two short-handed goals in the first 86 seconds of the third period.
“We stopped skating. We stopped hunting the puck, and it ended up in the back of our net,” Sharks coach Ryan Warsofsky said. “We’ve got to learn from this. It’s got to come from within the room. We have to understand and learn what it takes to win in this league, and we don’t know what it takes to win in this league.”
The Sharks have not finished higher than sixth in the Pacific Division over the past six seasons, and while the team knows it will take time to contend for a Stanley Cup, the immediate goal is to build winning habits.
“It needs to start now. It can’t start in two, three years,” Warsofsky said. “The winning foundational habits you need to win, it’s pretty simple and pretty direct. If we don’t do that, this is going to be a long process and we don’t want it to be a long process.”
The good news from Friday’s loss was that 2020 first-round draft pick Shakir Mukhamadullin scored his first NHL goal in just his ninth game.
“I’m trying to not think about the points, but sometimes it stays in your head,” said the big defenseman. “I feel I play with more confidence, but feel I have things to do to play better.”
The Flames are returning to action after a 6-4 win over the Chicago Blackhawks last Saturday. Calgary, which has earned points in four straight games (2-0-2), is just two points outside a playoff spot as the season resumes after the holiday break.
Between now and the 4 Nations Face-Off tournament in February, the Flames will play 22 games in 43 days.
“It’s important for the players to recognize what they’re going to see here over the next little while,” coach Ryan Huska said. “We have 11 on the road, 11 at home, so it’s split pretty nicely for us. We have five back-to-back games.
So there’s a lot of hockey that’s going to be played by our team. It’s important to recognize that we’re going to need everybody to be at their best during this stretch.”
As the Flames prepare for back-to-back games against the Sharks and Golden Knights, they know they must improve their weak 4-7-4 road record.
“Always around that New Year’s time, teams are 35, 40 games into the season, playoff picture’s kind of starting to form,” forward Nazem Kadri said. “I think those points, obviously down the stretch, are huge, of course it intensifies, but that’s kind of as expected, nothing out of the norm.
We’ve really liked some of the things we were doing before the break, so it’s just a matter of continuing to do those.”
