Quick Bites: Sharks take an early vacation

San Jose Sharks Head Coach David Quinn is not pleased after last night’s 7-1 loss to the Seattle Kraken.

“Embarrassing. We weren’t ready to play. Two breakaways in the first minute and a half. Just absolutely freaking embarrassing. We lost every single battle. Got beat off walls. Every time there was a 50/50 puck battle, we’re fishing for pucks, getting on the wrong side of it. One guy would get beat one-on-one and the other guy would dive in. It was embarrassing,” said Quinn.

“When you don’t skate and you just run around chasing a puck, that’s what’s going to happen. It’s the National Hockey League. They’ve got real good players over there,” continued Quinn. “When you lose one-on-one battles all over the rink ’cause when you go to a situation and you got your head down and you’re fishing for a puck, I’m not trying to kill people, you gotta get competitive and you gotta make sure you play through people and get controlled flesh so you can beat people back to the middle of the rink. All we did was chase the puck. That’s all we did.

“I don’t want to hear about freaking fragile okay,” Quinn said. “It’s the National freaking Hockey League and you better show up ready to play every freaking night. I don’t care about fragile. Sometimes you don’t have it, I get it, but you want to show up and play with the right freaking intentions and we didn’t do it. You gotta come here and show up with the right freaking intentions and not many guys did if any.”

Kaapo Kahkonen chased

Without anyone playing in front of him, Kahkonen had a tough time establishing his game. In just 20 minutes of play, Kahkonen faced 17 shots according to Natural Stat Trick and 8 of them were high danger shots, meaning they were more likely to go in than not.

While Kahkonen was not elite and would probably like to have one of those back, the others were simply instances of him receiving no help. The first period ended 4-0.

Quinn, switched goaltenders in the second, but it seemed to be a bit cruel. It wasn’t like putting Mackenzie Blackwood in net was going to make the Sharks play any better.

In fact, it didn’t.

That brutal second period

Because in that second period, San Jose reached a new low. Micah Blake McCurdy of @IneffectiveMath on Twitter shows just how poor the Sharks showing was.

For a single period the Sharks second last night might be the faintest impression of existence any hockey team has left evidence of that I can remember. pic.twitter.com/QZH99tDJAR

— Micah Blake McCurdy (@IneffectiveMath) November 23, 2023

One shot on goal the entire period.

The game flow chart will show you that despite only allowing one goal in the period, it was still San Jose’s worst in terms of possession.

Other game notes

• Jan Rutta was injured when his head hit the boards in the tail end of the first period. He did not return.
• Tomas Hertl went into the boards awkwardly after battling for a puck with Matty Berniers. Hertl took some time on the bench to work things out and was back on the ice later in the game, but it would be good for him to rest up. Berniers, for his part, went to check on Hertl later in the game.
• Filip Zadina and Nikita Okhotiuk missed large portions of the game. Afterwards, Quinn was asked about the mini benching and he said he couldn’t sit them for real extended periods of time because it would not be “fair” to the other players. But they “just can’t take penalties like that.”
• Mike Hoffman scored the Sharks only goal, but don’t worry. Seattle got one back less than a minute later.