After a few days to sit on the team’s excellent win against the St. Louis Blues, the San Jose Sharks took to British Columbia to face the Vancouver Canucks. Prince Harry performed a surprise ceremonial puck drop on Monday Night at Rogers Arena, marking the second time the British royal family has attended a Sharks game.
The Sharks began tonight's game with a royal puck-drop 👑 pic.twitter.com/ygJtOkAfsc
— Sharks on NBCS (@NBCSSharks) November 21, 2023
The contest featured everything that the Sharks are, and could be, in one. We knew that the Sharks would want to make up for the team’s forgettable game against the Canucks earlier this month, and the players indeed brought a much better effort. The first frame had considerable physicality and high pace, and although they were outshot, the team was unscathed.
The turning point came in the final fractions of a second of the second period. The Sharks, on the power play, had the chance to tie the game at 1-1 before entering the third period. Instead, Sam Lafferty found himself with enough room to fit a royal palace right in front of the net and scored to make it 2-0 Vancouver. The Sharks fought back with an eventual goal from Tomáš Hertl bringing the team within one, but the Canucks showed that they know how to win and pulled ahead in the third.
Still mostly defending, but doing better
As expected, the Sharks spent most of their time in the defensive zone trying to keep pace with Vancouver’s excellent skaters. It’s hard to defend against players like Elias Pettersson and Quinn Hughes, or even someone as tenacious in front of the net as Dakota Joshua. From top to bottom, the Canucks outmatch the Sharks with their offensive caliber.
Per Natural Stat Trick, you can see that the Canucks controlled nearly the entire game. For the first two periods, the Sharks did a relatively good job in keeping it competitive. Both teams traded golden opportunities, but the high-quality chances were definitely in Vancouver’s favor as well. Take a look at the heat map:
Vancouver is red hot right at Mackenzie Blackwood’s doorstep, and there’s a second high-danger red zone up in the slot as well. There is certainly a lot to clean up. San Jose’s losses have been built on the accumulation of small mistakes throughout the game.
Blackwood stellar again
As you would have guessed, this game could have been a lot uglier if not for another stellar night by Mackenzie Blackwood in the Sharks’ goal. Blackwood bailed out his teammates on several high-danger slot shots until the very last minute. The statistics overall are still going to have blemishes. On the season, Blackwood is 2-9-1 with a 3.94 GAA and a .900%. But check out his save percentage in his last five starts: .974, .951, .909, .867, .919. He is holding up his end of the bargain, if not more, on a team that consistently gives up quality scoring chances.
If the Sharks were offered a high draft pick or good prospect for Blackwood, would you take it? It has been so difficult for the Sharks to find answers in goal basically ever since Martin Jones led the team to the Stanley Cup finals in 2015-16. The team’s organizational depth in net is still defined more by uncertainty. Mack Black is only turning 27 this December, is on an affordable contract, and keeps this team watchable. Nobody would stay tuned if the Sharks went down 0-1, 0-2, 0-3, as soon as the puck was dropped. Offensively gifted players like William Eklund need to feel free to experiment in making plays without fear of getting an instant goal against after a turnover. Perhaps it would be prudent to hold on to Blackwood beyond this season and finally have that position taken care of for the longer term.
Eklund’s poor luck
Eklund could have easily had two goals in this game. In the first period, Eklund started a play with strong defense deep in the Sharks’ own end. He stole the puck from a Canuck, fed Hertl up for a rush, joined in with Hertl and just missed when he got the puck back and made a beautiful move to beat Demko. That goal would have put the Sharks up 1-0 in the first period.
Then, to start the second, Eklund drives a well-done zone entry before passing it off to his linemate Fabian Zetterlund and following up with an actual goal on the rebound. This time, however, the goal was ultimately disallowed because of goaltender interference. The game started to turn after this moment, but it’s important to focus on the positive effort of Eklund. He wasn’t rewarded last night, but he eventually will be.
William Eklund's goal is called back for goalie interference. pic.twitter.com/Oeef3iUeZZ
— CanucksArmy (@CanucksArmy) November 21, 2023
It is easy to become frustrated by these missed opportunities, but these are also opportunities for the young and creative forward to learn. On that first missed opportunity, Eklund was 99% of the way to completing the perfect play. His habits are correct; he starts everything with a responsible effort to protect his net. He scans for players that move with speed and finds them. Despite these misplays, it’s hard to not be excited about what Eklund is doing already, and will do in the near future.
Highlight
Here’s the only goal of the night that counted. Calen Addison earned his first point as a Shark with the assist from his point shot. The Sharks’ power play has been looking more competent and dangerous as of late, and it is clearly helpful to have a puck-moving defenseman at the top of the umbrella.
Next up, San Jose continues its trip in the Pacific Northwest, playing the Seattle Kraken at Climate Pledge Arena. The game is on Wednesday, Nov. 22 at 7:00 PM PST.
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