Last week, I trumpeted the Sharks as a team that was dominating on the road and set up to pull away from the pack with a five-game homestand.
They started with a win over former teammates and the Ottawa Senators. Then, they went 0-1-3 on the rest of the homestand and followed it up with a 2-1 regulation loss to the Phoenix Coyotes in the desert.
A five-game losing streak, albeit one in which they have registered three points in the standings, is the worst since Feb. 20, 2008, when they lost their fifth in a row while getting just one point. The last time they lost more than that was November of 2005, when they earned just three points in a 10-game losing streak, prompting them to trade for Joe Thornton.
So what has gone wrong?
For one, the Sharks have fallen back into the same bad habits I have been decrying since the 2008 playoffs: They do not play 60 minutes. Championship-calibre teams do not take shifts off because one or two lax shifts can undo the effort of the rest of the game.
We saw this on more than one occasion in the current losing streak:
In the first of their five losses, they were one goal up on ...
Read Full Article at Bleacher Report - NHL
Article written by MJ Kasprzak
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