San Jose Sharks Special Teams Anything But Special At The Moment
The San Jose Sharks have lost four of their last five games, and one area where they have struggled is the special teams aspect of the game. Peter DeBoer wanted to focus on improving the penalty kill for the Sharks this season, and thus far, while San Jose is better, they could be more consistent in this area.
To date, the Sharks are tied for 17th in the league with a penalty kill percentage of 80 percent. Last year, San Jose ranked 25th in the league with a penalty kill percentage of 78.5 percent, so while the Sharks are higher in the league rankings, their overall percentage is only slightly better than last season. Granted, it’s still a small sample size at the moment, but there’s room for improvement on the penalty kill.
One plus thus far has been the addition of Paul Martin who is known as a penalty-kill specialist and he’s been solid for San Jose to date. With Martin out of the lineup, the Sharks allowed four of their six power play goals against.
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Meanwhile, in the one area where there wasn’t expected to be much of a drop off, the power play, has seen a major dip in production through the first nine games in 2015-16. Currently, after going 0-for-2 last night against the Nashville Predators, San Jose ranks 26th with a power play percentage of 11.1 percent (3-for-27). It’s even worse when you consider the fact that the Sharks began the season going 2-for-8 against the Los Angeles Kings on opening night, meaning San Jose is just 1-for-their-last-19 (5.3 percent) with the man advantage.
That’s unacceptable from a group with the firepower and talent that San Jose possesses. Last year, the Sharks only saving grace was a power play that ranked sixth in the league with a conversion rate of 21.6 percent.
The power play has let the team down in recent games as the Sharks couldn’t find an equalizer against the Predators and they couldn’t get back into the game against the Kings despite a 5-on-3 advantage. At this point, the power play is draining momentum from the team.
Now the loss of Logan Couture obviously hurts, but the Sharks still have enough talent to get the job done. Right now, Joel Ward is filling in for Couture, and this power play needs to focus on getting shots on net and trying to score a garbage-type goal to finally break the streak. San Jose has the capability to rattle off plenty of goals with the man advantage, but it all starts with getting that first one and turning around this power play.
While the Sharks have been much better at five-on-five this year, San Jose needs to elevate their special teams play to improve their all-around game.
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