SAN JOSE — The San Jose Sharks now have four games left in the regular season and it feels like it’s only a matter of time before they are officially locked in as the NHL’s last-place team.
Regardless of whether the Sharks finish in 31st or 32nd place, though, the coaching staff and front office have been using this time to evaluate which players should be back next season and what others might be elsewhere.
The Sharks on Tuesday let slip a two-goal second-period lead before Andrei Kuzmenko scored a power-play goal at the 2:58 mark of overtime to lift the Calgary Flames to a 3-2 win before an announced crowd of 11,031 at SAP Center.
With Mario Ferraro serving a holding penalty, Kuzmenko collected a loose puck near the side of the Sharks net and beat goalie Mackenzie Blackwood for his 18th goal of the season.
The loss was the Sharks’ 13th in the last 15 games as they moved to within six points of the Chicago Blackhawks for 31st place in the NHL’s overall standings. San Jose would clinch the worst record in the NHL and have a 25.5% chance of winning the draft lottery if Chicago wins at St. Louis on Wednesday.
The Sharks have four games left to play, starting with Thursday’s date in Seattle. These final few games, Sharks’ coach David Quinn said, will help finalize the team’s opinions on various pending unrestricted free agents, or soon-to-be restricted free agents.
The Sharks have seven pending UFAs presently on their roster and seven RFAs, including five with arbitration rights.
“You’re fighting for your career — every game, really — in this league,” Quinn said. “Some guys are obviously a lot more secure than others with contract situations. But we’ve got a bunch of guys that are going to be unrestricted free agents and we’ve some young players that are restricted free agents. We kind of run the gamut with contract situations.
“So I think every player is fighting for their lives in the league and some more so than others.”
Quinn felt the Sharks stopped executing and sat back after they took a 2-0 lead early in the second period
The Sharks got goals from William Eklund and Jacob MacDonald, with MacDonald’s goal, following a takeaway by Mike Hoffman, putting his team up 2-0 at the 2:22 mark of the second period.
But the Sharks were mostly outworked by the Flames from that point forward, and allowed Calgary back into the game.
Rasmus Andersson scored off his own rebound at the 5:35 mark of the second as some Sharks players were caught out on the ice for over a minute.
Then with Marc-Edouard Vlasic serving a tripping penalty, Nazem Kadri scored his 26th of the season, collecting a pass from Yegor Sharangovich to the left of the Sharks net and beating Blackwood high above the glove side.
Blackwood finished with 37 saves, as the Sharks were outshot 30-18 at even strength.
“We just cheated the game in the second and third,” Quinn said. “I thought we wanted it to be easy. We were hoping that things were going to happen instead of approaching the game the honest way and the right way.
“We were fortunate to get it overtime.”
The Sharks also finished the game 0-for-4 with the man advantage, and that included a chance stretching from late in the third period into overtime.
“You’re trying to not get rid of possession. You’re trying to get the best shot off possible, but sometimes it’s better to keep it simple,” Sharks forward Thomas Bordeleau said. “I think we entered the zone well, we moved the puck well in the zone, and it was just a question of finding those shooting lanes a bit more.”
Eklund’s goal was his 16th of the season and his sixth in the last 10 games. He had his first career hat trick on Saturday against St. Louis, with his third goal coming in overtime as the Sharks beat the Blues 3-2.
Eklund goal came at the 7:22 mark of the first period.
Eklund carried the puck across his own blue line and found Mikael Granlund with a cross-ice pass in the neutral zone. Granlund then found Fabian Zetterlund with a pass into the Flames zone, all while Eklund beat his man to the Calgary net and went forehand to backhand to beat Flames goalie and Gilroy native Dustin Wolf.
Wolf finished with 20 saves in his return to the building he came to countless times as a kid.
Wolf, who turns 23 next week, had made two previous starts against the Sharks in his career, but both of those came in Calgary. He earned his first NHL win against San Jose at the end of last season, but lost to the Sharks on Feb. 15, allowing six goals on 21 shots.
This was hardly Wolf’s first time playing at SAP Center. During the 2021-2022 when he played with Calgary’s AHL affiliate in Stockton, Wolf went 4-0-0 with a .953 save percentage in four games at the Shark Tank. That was the Barracuda’s last season at SAP Center before they moved to Tech CU Arena next to Sharks Ice in San Jose in 2022.
“I’m sure it means a lot,” to Wolf, Flames coach Ryan Huska said. “The one nice thing for him is he’s played this building a lot over the years. He’s very familiar with this area, so it’s good to get him back in. I know he’s excited. He was one of the first guys here at the rink this morning.”