Takeaways: Sharks’ coach grows frustrated with Groundhog Day act
SAN JOSE — For at least one night, Edmonton Oilers general manager Peter Chiarelli looks like he knows what he’s doing.
Roughly 14 hours after Chiarelli replaced Todd McLellan with Ken Hitchcock, the Oilers (10-10-1) earned the third-winningest coach in NHL history his 824th win by beating the Sharks 4-3 in overtime.
Chiarelli fired McLellan, who coached the Sharks for seven years, Tuesday morning after the Oilers lost six of seven games by a combined margin of 29-17. McLellan entered the season with a short leash after the Oilers followed up a 103-point season in 2016-17 with just 78 points last year.
Still, it’s debatable whether any of it is McLellan’s fault. Chiarelli traded 2018 Hart Trophy winner Taylor Hall for Adam Larsson, Jordan Eberle for Ryan Strome and signed Milan Lucic to a seven-year, $42 million contract. Can anyone win with that hand?
Back in Sharks territory, here’s what we learned in Tuesday’s overtime loss at SAP Center.
1. Pete DeBoer grows frustrated with Sharks’ Groundhog Day act.
The Sharks really needed to put together a complete effort Tuesday night.
After a horribly inconsistent first quarter of the season, the Sharks played to their identity perfectly in a 4-0 win over the St. Louis Blues Saturday. They tightened up the defense, got solid goaltending and kept pushing after they took an early lead.
DeBoer wanted to see the Sharks build off that performance against an Oilers squad that entered Tuesday’s game on crutches. Instead, several common themes jumped out in his face like Ned Ryerson greeting Bill Murray in Groundhog Day.
Lackluster effort? Check. Coughing up a lead? Check. Surrendering goals on odd-man rushes? Check.
“Tonight’s a disappointing one because I thought, had we gotten a little bit better of an effort from everybody, from 20 guys, we should have gotten two points,” the Sharks coach said. “We didn’t have enough participants tonight.
“It wasn’t one or two guys. It was almost everybody.”
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After Logan Couture gave his team a 3-2 lead by scoring his first goal in 11 games in the final minute of the second, the Sharks allowed the Oilers to tie the game early in the third and then win it in overtime.
The game marked the eighth time in 11 losses this season that the Sharks (11-8-3) have coughed up a lead. You don’t need to be a hockey whiz like Chiarelli to figure out why the Sharks are blowing so many games this season.
“Too many odd-man rushes,” Couture said. “It wasn’t horrible tonight. It was better than it has been, but still too many, especially when you’re out there against (McDavid). You can’t give him that many chances.”
Couture is speaking from first-hand experience. He made a rare mistake that helped produce the two-on-one that led to Drake Caggiula’s tying goal at 3:32 of the third. In fact, Couture did exactly what he faulted his team for doing last week when he discussed the Sharks defensive flaws following their 5-3 loss to the Toronto Maple Leafs.
With Tomas Hertl locked in a 50-50 battle at the Oilers blue line, Couture assumed the best and skated forward in anticipation of Hertl sending the puck up the boards. Instead, he lost the battle and the high forward was missing as McDavid and Cagguila skated down the ice on an odd-man rush.
Likewise, after the Sharks took a lead in the second, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins tied the game on another two-on-one, a shorthanded goal following a turnover on the power play.
“We weren’t sharp,” DeBoer said. “Shorthanded goals, giving up breakaways. Just some reckless stuff.”
2. McDavid creates matchup headaches all night long.
Finding matchups to contain McDavid is a seemingly-hopeless task to begin with. It’s nearly impossible when he’s taking 30 shifts and skating for 24 minutes a night.
The Oilers took advantage of a McDavid mismatch in the first when Hitchcock got his line out on the ice against Joe Thornton’s group. The fastest skater in the world going up against a 39-year-old coming off two major knee surgeries? Yikes.
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At the end of a 45-plus second shift in which the McDavid line hemmed Team Thornton into its own zone, the Oilers captain buried a feed from Leon Draisaitl.
As the game progressed, DeBoer tried to skate the Couture line and the Marc-Edouard Vlasic pairing against McDavid, but Hitchcock’s decision to double shift his star throughout the third frustrated the effort.
“Sure, you’re looking for some matchups, but the reality is when the guy plays 25 minutes a night, you’re not going to be able to match a line against him,” the Sharks coach said. “Everybody’s got to get the job done.”
McDavid capped off his three-point night by setting up Draisaitl in three-on-three overtime, a format that seems handpicked for his skillset.
“You know going into that game that you have to minimize the damage that (McDavid) and Draisaitl do,” DeBoer said. “They each had three points, so that’s what you get.”
3. Oilers play a tight Hitchcock-style of game.
Without a single practice, Hitchcock managed to tighten the screws on an Oilers defense that had just coughed up 29 goals in six games.
The Oilers held the Sharks to 25 shots, just the third time DeBoer’s squad has produced 25 or fewer shots in a game this season. That’s the bounce of a team determined to leave a strong impression on the new sheriff in town.
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