Sharks squander golden chance to bolster playoff position as another Canadian team makes a comeback
The Sharks are continuing a five-game road trip with a bad taste in their mouth after back-to-back losses to end a three-game Canadian road swing.
After losing to Edmonton in overtime on Thursday, San Jose took two early leads in Calgary, but a late shorthanded goal by Joel Farabee gave the Flames a 3-2 lead and the win at the Scotiabank Saddledome.
San Jose’s road trip continues with games at Chicago and Colorado before the NHL takes an extended break for the Winter Olympics in Italy, which will feature NHL players for the first time since 2014.
Will Smith scored the game’s opening goal on a power-play tap-in at the 3:11 mark of the first period, depositing a perfect pass across the slot from Alexander Wennberg for the backdoor score.
“It was a good play on the wall by Wenny,” Smith told reporters after the game. “Tried to open up for him, and then he made a great pass. Just tried to get it on net and it went in.”
Calgary responded later in the period when Morgan Frost flung in a loose puck from the front of the net as the Sharks scrambled to defend down two men.
San Jose got back on the board just after the expiration of a power play that carried across the first two periods, as William Eklund drove the net and poked a puck loose in the crease that found Adam Gaudette’s stick on the right side of the net for a quick tap.
Matvei Gridin answered for Calgary off a beautiful cross-ice pass from Morgan Frost, who winged the puck across the shot for a fluid one-time finish from Gridin. The 19-year-old winger beat Sharks goalie Alex Nedejkovic to his left side.
Calgary took its first lead when Farabee swiped in a backhand shot while the Flames were shorthanded at the 6:53 mark of the third period.
Goaltender Alex Nedelkovic, who made 39 saves to keep the Sharks in the game, left the contest with 3:15 remaining after taking a hard shot to his lower body. He returned to the ice after taking some time during a break in the action.
“I just needed to get off the ice,” Nedelkovic said after the game. “My leg was starting to bug me a little bit, so I just needed a little breather. And thankfully, it was a TV timeout, so I was able to kind of get things under control. My leg just started to kind of twitch a little bit, so I wanted to make sure everything was all right. I didn’t think it was (serious). Just wanted to – in the moment, it didn’t feel all right. So I thought it was fine for the most part. I just needed a second.”
San Jose (27-22-4) has now squandered two quality opportunities for points in consecutive games. The Sharks led Edmonton 3-0 before a third-period collapse and finished with just one point after an overtime loss.
Now with their defeat at the hands of Calgary (22-26-6), the Sharks took home no points against the second-worst team in the Pacific Division, which had lost 10 of 13 games and five in a row heading into Saturday’s action.
It was not a recipe for a happy head coach.
“We just couldn’t get it going at all,” Ryan Warsofsky said. “We couldn’t stop the puck. There were a lot of issues, but that was one of them.”
San Jose slipped further back in its quest to reach the NHL playoffs for the first time since 2019, remaining one point behind Los Angeles, Seattle and Anaheim for the final Wild Card spot and the Pacific Division lead.
The Sharks have two more chances to pick up points before the NHL breaks for nearly a month to allow many of its players to pursue Olympic gold in Milan.
“It’s a tough one to swallow, but we got two more games here,” Nedelkovic said. “We’re .500 through the first three games (of the road trip). It kind of stings, but we’ll take it. And we got a big one against Chicago to flip the script a little bit.”