Six losses in seven games
San Jose has been outscored 28-12 across its last seven games, losing six of them, and tonight the Sharks walk into Dallas on the second night of a back-to-back and the third road game in four nights. They lost 4-1 at Minnesota on Friday, a game in which Macklin Celebrini scored the lone goal to make it 1-1 with 7:49 left in the second period and Yaroslav Askarov stopped 25 shots.
The mood in the room is blunt. After a 7-2 loss at Los Angeles on Wednesday the team held a players-only meeting. “It’s unacceptable. It’s not good enough. To a man, to a team. It’s not on the coaches right now,” Kiefer Sherwood said. Celebrini, the captain, was more measured after Friday. “We definitely played a lot better game,” he said, saying the process was better even if the result was not.
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Coach sees progress, scoreboard disagrees
Coach Ryan Warsofsky thought the first two periods against the Wild were probably the Sharks’ best of the season. Four straight defeats say that has not translated into points yet, and a fresh back-to-back is a hard place to start fixing it.
Dallas wants its identity back
The Stars are not flying either, though they are in better shape. They lost 2-1 in a shootout at Columbus on Thursday after the Blue Jackets tied it with 3:14 left in regulation, and they are 2-2-1 in their last five. That followed a 6-5 win at Washington on Tuesday, a scoreline that Glen Gulutzan said was out of character for his team. The Columbus game, he said, was “back to our identity.”
Casey DeSmith made 29 saves in that loss, and Mikko Rantanen scored for a third straight game. Rantanen has three goals and two assists during a four-game point streak. Wyatt Johnston also has a four-game streak, with one goal and five assists, and has points in six of his last seven.
Defenseman Miro Heiskanen missed Thursday with an upper-body injury and might return tonight. Dallas opens a four-game homestand against a team that badly needs a result.
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