The San Jose Sharks lost to the Vegas Golden Knights 5-1 during its home opener at SAP Center on Friday. The game was both teams’ third match against each other in six days.
Continuing with the fledgling rivalry, the Sharks and the Knights did not let up, remembering the teams’ heated series just a few months ago in the 2019 Stanley Cup Playoffs.
The game was centerman Logan Couture’s first regular season home game as captain of the Sharks.
“It was very disappointing . . . we turned over way too many pucks again. So, that was disappointing,” Couture said.
Just like how Vegas took control of the games in its previous two bouts with the Sharks, the Golden Knights just seemed like the superior team.
Vegas came out hot, throwing big hits and capitalizing on multiple cross-crease passes early to set the tone for the rest of the game.
Conversely, it was not a good showing for San Jose, showing miniscule effort throughout the entirety of the game.
The Sharks played lethargic offense, which proved to be a disastrous way to score. Simultaneously, the team was unable to defend themselves from being ripped apart by the Vegas forwards.
The main takeaway seemed to be goalie Martin Jones’ inability to keep the puck out of the net in recent games.
In the two periods he played before being pulled from the net, Jones faced 23 shots, allowing 4 goals.
It is unheard of to have a good starting goalie dip below a .900 save percentage, but to go out and accrue a .862 save percentage simply will not cut it for the team.
“The biggest issue was the powerplay,” Sharks coach Peter DeBoer said.
San Jose had five power play opportunities, scoring on zero of them.
Additionally, Vegas scored two shorthanded goals while on the penalty kill during those five Sharks power plays.
To put that into perspective, the Sharks only allowed nine shorthanded goals all season last year.
The Knights themselves had 3 unsuccessful power plays, but they didn’t need scoring – San Jose did.
The Sharks’ players were seemingly demoralized displaying little motivation and negative body language all game, as the Golden Knights hounded and harassed them all game long.
“We just got out there and tried to make something happen,” Sharks defenseman Erik Karlsson said.
But that “something” never came to fruition, as San Jose quickly went down 2-0 stemming from poor defence in the first period.
“A lot of times you can feel defeated already,” Sharks defenseman Brent Burns said.
This trend followed throughout the second period as well, resulting in a commanding 4-0 lead for the Knights.
After allowing four goals in the first period, DeBoer elected to pull Jones from the net, giving back-up goalie Aaron Dell a chance to play some minutes.
Dell went on to let in one goal himself in the period, making it a 5-0 game.
Seemingly the only good thing to happen for the Sharks came late in the third period, when winger Barclay Goodrow scored the team’s first and only goal of the game making it 5-1.
After the goal, some of the drama from the game finally boiled over, as a line scrum behind the Vegas net occurred.
Lasting several minutes, the altercation ended with no real fights occuring, but several players from both teams were handed 10-minute game misconduct penalties.
Unfortunately for the Sharks, the tussle didn’t provide a spark large enough to overcome the four-point deficit they needed to surpass.
The game’s final horn blared at a seemingly empty stadium, with most of the fans having packed it up already.
The 5-1 loss to division rival Vegas was surely not the way San Jose wanted to start the team’s home record.
“We just have to do better,” Burns said.
The Sharks have gone on to lose an additional game against the Anaheim Ducks, bringing their record to an unfavorable 0-3 on the season.
San Jose hopes to achieve its first win of the season against the Nashville Predators today at 5 p.m. in Nashville.
