Saturday’s game against the Ottawa Senators was indicative of how the team’s entire season has gone to date. The Sharks chased the puck all day long and, ultimately, chased away the possibility of a victory. Vladimir Tarasenko scored the game-winning goal with 4.1 seconds left, and the Sens beat the Sharks 5-4 in regulation.
In the postgame show, former Shark Jason Demers was quick to say that San Jose failed to take advantage of a frail Senators team. It’s true. The Senators had lost five games in a row and were desperate for a win. If the Sharks had jumped on Ottawa early, the game might have had a much different tenor. But that was not the case. Instead, the Senators scored two goals in the first ten minutes of the game and then, building on that confidence, skated all over the Sharks for the rest of the day.
Natural Stat Trick’s gameflow chart shows an all too familiar story.
The ice tilted in the opposition’s direction, and then momentum for the Senators built from there. You could almost feel that final goal coming in the last minute to 90 seconds of the third period. The Senators fired puck after puck at Mackenzie Blackwood, and try as they might, the Sharks could not muscle the puck away from the Senators.
After the game, Head Coach David Quinn said the Sharks weren’t physical enough and they lacked compete. It showed on that last goal. Justin Bailey was muscled hard by Tarasenko in front of the net. Bailey lost his balance and collided with Blackwood. It took Blackwood out of the play and made for an easy tap-in goal for Tarasenko. If Bailey had been stronger, Blackwood may have been in position to at least get a piece of the puck.
A cringe-worthy second period
The second period was a microcosm of the game as a whole. The Senators outshot the Sharks 22-4 in that second period and had a 76.92% Corsi. The scoring chances were few and far between for the Sharks. The fact that the period ended even in scoring — the Sharks had two and the Senators had two — is amazing and really a testament to Blackwood’s play and Joonas Korpisalo’s trouble in net on the other side of the ice. In that 20 minutes of play, Blackwood’s save percentage was a .909, while Korpisalo’s was .500.
Vlasic has another strong game
Give credit to Marc-Edouard Vlasic, who had another strong game, building upon what he did in Montreal a few nights ago. We’re not kidding ourselves here, no one on the Sharks was exceptionally good today. That said, Vlasic was far from the worst player on the ice, as he has been in previous games this season.
Vlasic was paired with Mario Ferraro on to the top pairing. He played just over 21 minutes and was tasked with shutting down the Senators’ top lines. Vlasic and Ferraro had a healthy helping of Brady Tkachuk, Claude Giroux and Ridly Greig.
Despite going against Ottawa’s best, Vlasic found a way to make it onto the scoreboard. He scored the team’s second goal of the time, tying the score briefly in the second period.
PICKLES TIES IT! 🥅 pic.twitter.com/rKneG5jKTw
— Sharks on NBCS (@NBCSSharks) January 13, 2024
Watching Vlasic hustle down the ice and then beat Korpisalo gave Sharks fans just a glimpse of the old Vlasic. It was nice.
The guys who needed it scored
While the outcome wasn’t ideal, and neither were the methods of getting there, it was nice to see that some of the players who needed goals were the ones who scored.
The moment that Anthony Duclair scored that first goal for the Sharks, I couldn’t help thinking, “Thank goodness. He needed that one.” That seemed to be the theme of the day for the Sharks. Vlasic’s goal gave me a similar feeling. So did the third marker by Kevin Labanc and the fourth one by Filip Zadina. All of the Sharks who scored today needed that confidence boost.
It had been nine games since Duclair last scored. His last tally was Dec. 21, 2023. Same goes for Zadina. For Vlasic, the drought was even longer. He hadn’t scored since Jan. 1, 2023. Labanc only has one other goal this season and that one happened on Dec. 5, 2023.
Highlight: San Jose Sharks vs. Ottawa Senators
We’ll give Zadina’s goal the highlight of the day if only because it was the most impactful for the Sharks. It was the fruition of extended pressure in the Senators’ zone and showed the resiliency the Sharks have recently lacked.
ZADINA FINDS THE TARGET 🎯 pic.twitter.com/YsXRtw7pW8
— Sharks on NBCS (@NBCSSharks) January 13, 2024
Credit to Mario Ferraro for keeping the puck in at the blueline. It was that heads up play that led to Zadina’s tying goal. Ferraro had three assists today.
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