SAN JOSE — Would you believe Thursday night’s game at SAP Center came down to which team is the bigger underdog.
The Chicago Blackhawks had assuaged a four-game losing streak with a statement win against the Colorado Avalanche. That’s peanuts compared to the San Jose Sharks, who took some of the stink off their 0-7-2 start with two straight wins.
Make that three.
The Sharks pestered the Hawks from the start to take the first lead of the game, then erased a 2-1 deficit with two unanswered goals during what Hawks coach Luke Richardson called a “disorganized” and “sloppy” second period.
The Hawks made a push in the third and generated plenty of good (or good enough) looks, but they just missed or were stymied by Sharks goalie Mackenzie Blackwood in a 3-2 loss.
“Very frustrating, very disappointing,” Seth Jones said. “It’s a winnable game for us. We think we’re a better hockey team, but we have to go out and show it every night. It’s just frustrating.
“Big win in Colorado, and then we come out and lose this one. It’s one we think we could win and should have.”
Sharks rookie Will Smith scored his first two goals of his NHL career, and with them earned his first two points.
Ryan Donato and Tyler Bertuzzi each scored goals 50 seconds apart for the Hawks, with Connor Murphy assisting on them both.
On a Halloween night in which the Sharks looked like they could barely string two fans together (SAP Center had a season-low attendance of 10,315), the Hawks failed to string together two wins through 11 games now.
Can you see the empty seats through the scaffolding? I get it’s Halloween and it’s the Sharks, but even at the Blackhawks’ worst, the United Center would never. pic.twitter.com/mX4AlDGzvt
— Phillip Thompson (@_phil_thompson) November 1, 2024
“There’s not much to say right now,” Donato said. “You’re disappointed in yourselves. It’s a hard loss. We had a lot of chances that we could’ve scored on, obviously, but it’s not good enough just to create.
“We’ve been saying in the locker room that we’re not going to take any moral victories and getting chances is just not good enough.”
Here are five takeaways from the loss.
1. There’s no getting around it: This was a painful loss.
Especially coming off a technically sound (in other words, non-fluky) win against the Avalanche.
Richardson pointed out how the Sharks entered on a winning streak, but they were also winless through their first nine games. And yeah, the Sharks have made improvements from last season’s last-place team, but so did the Hawks. Supposedly.
The Hawks seem to come up with myriad reasons why they backslide from what they always preach – simple, structured, consistent hockey – but let’s see what the issue is this time:
“We were off and on our game plan, really,” Richardson said.
He explained: “This team’s a fast team, and they get going up and down, north and south. And sometimes we can get trapped into playing their game plan instead of playing ours. We started to try and play their game plan a little bit in the second period. And that’s not really the way our team’s built.”
2. At a loss to explain another loss.
After the Hawks took command in the first period, how did they allow the Sharks to wrest momentum from them in the second?
Donato stammered, “If we had that answer, we would’ve… I don’t know. I don’t know.”
Jones could pinpoint it: “The second period, we started turning pucks over: same old story. We give them life.”
He had a reason the Hawks offense dried up, too.
“You’ve heard it a thousand times,” he said. “We start going east-west in the neutral zone. Sometimes we think we’re the Globetrotters in the neutral zone when we need to be getting pucks deep and going to work and scoring rebound goals like we did last game.
“Just keep it simple.”
3. If there’s a bright side, it’s Ryan Donato production.
Really, who saw this coming?
Donato, playing on the third line, leads the Hawks in goals with six. His 42.9% shooting percentage is bonkers (and frankly unsustainable, so enjoy it while it lasts). He ranks ninth in the league in that category right now and first among skaters who’ve take at least 10 shots.
His career high is 16 goals in 74 games for the Seattle Kraken, so where is this offensive outburst coming from?
“I worked hard in the summer,” he said. “It’s hard to look at it after a hard loss like that, but I pray a lot. That’s all I can say. I try to show up and do the right things and work hard, but my faith has carried me a long way.”
Richardson said he isn’t surprised.
“Dono’s definitely a shooter,” he said. “He’s a guy that has had some really good fortune lately, but it’s from working hard and getting to the right spots.
“He’s got a certain role on this team of checking the other teams’ top lines, and he is doing a pretty good job in that department, as well. So very similar to (Jason) Dickinson’s success in the goal department from last year and in that role.”
It does bear shades of Dickinson, who shared the team lead in goals (22) with Connor Bedard.
Donato’s goal came 37 seconds after Smith’s opening goal for the Sharks.
Richardson said, “I like to see our team react when we get scored on just the way he did, we scored right away back.”
4. You could say Connor Bedard got the shaft, so to speak.
OK, bad pun, but Bedard did hit Blackwood’s goalie stick on a couple of shots.
“He had two and I think someone else had one off the knob part of the stick. So it wasn’t meant to be, I guess, to go in that part of the net tonight,” Richardson said.
Bedard is tied for 18th in the league with 37 shots on goal, but he’s making just 8% of those shots.
Positive regression has to be coming his way.
“He’s kind of elusive the way he shoots that puck and gets his body going one way and shoots it the other way,” Richardson said. “I like him shooting the puck and we’re going to continue to keep asking him to do that.”
5. Bedard has been dreadful at the dot.
Entering Thursday’s game, Bedard had won just 30% of faceoffs – not great numbers for a center. He’s made it a point of emphasis.
“Just try to practice it as much as I can,” he said. “I feel like there’s been games where it’s been pretty good, and then you still have those games where it’s tougher. But it’s something that I want to get better at throughout the year.”
Against the Sharks Thursday, he went 4-of-9 (44.4%).