The San Jose Sharks are entering the Olympic break trending in the wrong direction, having lost four straight games and six of their last 10 to drop out of a playoff spot. As such, the hiatus might be coming at the perfect time for the team. They can recalibrate, prepare themselves for a final playoff push and perhaps take a small amount of momentum from their most recent performance.
Sharks Can Reset in Every Way
After opening their most recent road trip with a win over the Vancouver Canucks, the Sharks were in one of the best places they’d been all season, but the following game’s collapse against the Edmonton Oilers sent them down a spiral. They lost all the remaining games on the trip, including ones against teams below them in the standings in the Calgary Flames and Chicago Blackhawks. With all the recent losses, now is as good a time as any to take a break.
The break carries benefits throughout the Sharks organization. The players get a mental and physical reset to put themselves in the best position possible for the stretch run. The coaching staff has time to plan out lineups and further integrate Kiefer Sherwood while also working to fix a struggling power play. Meanwhile, Mike Grier and the rest of the front office can examine the roster’s needs as they try to strike a balance between aiming for the playoffs this season and preparing for the future. They’ll likely move a few pieces in and out of San Jose as the trade deadline approaches, but with a roster freeze in place, they can take time to think over those tough decisions while not having to worry about the constant adjustments that come with hot and cold streaks.
This season, the Sharks have dealt with tons of lineup adjustments due to injury issues and the ups and downs of being a fringe playoff team, something they’re not used to and something that may have been made even more extreme by the condensed schedule. A midseason break isn’t very common, but if the Sharks ever needed one, it’s probably this year. Now they’ll be able to take a few breaths and set themselves up for the final weeks of the regular season.
Loss to Avalanche Could Provide Momentum
The Sharks closed the pre-Olympics portion of the season by taking on the league-leading Colorado Avalanche. Given that they’d just lost two straight games to non-playoff teams, they could have easily folded and gotten blown out. They did get outshot comfortably, but managed to tie the game in the third period and ultimately took a closer-than-expected 4-2 loss.
That game actually provides a lot of positives. It proves that the Sharks are capable of somewhat snapping out of the spin that the Oilers loss started. It’s not nearly as good as a win, but it also could have easily been a six-goal margin like the Sharks suffered against Colorado earlier this season. San Jose was trending in that direction, but responded by remaining competitive against the team that will likely win the Presidents’ Trophy.
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In terms of the outlook for the season, that game felt a lot more like the tone of the season than the previous two games. The Sharks scrapped their way to a surprising level of competition against a superior team, something they’ve done a number of times this season to stay in contention. They should carry that feeling into the break as a reminder of what’s gotten them to this point and what they’ll need to do from here.
Once the break ends, the Sharks’ season will change from a 55-game marathon to a 27-game sprint. The games will matter even more, and margins will get even tighter. It’s a spot that many of the current Sharks have never been in before in their NHL careers. But a lot of their circumstances are giving them a good opportunity to navigate a playoff push, and the Olympic break is a major part of it.
