Effort not an issue, but scoring is for Sharks in first post-trade deadline game

Curtis Pashelka, The Mercury News on Mar 9, 2025

Published in Hockey

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SAN JOSE – History suggests wins might be few and far between for the San Jose Sharks between now and the end of the regular season.

Certainly it would be hard to argue that the Sharks, already with the fewest victories in the NHL, improved as a team after surprisingly shipping out their top scoring defenseman and one of their leading scorers, along with a few other veteran players before the NHL trade deadline.

That said, the Sharks can still control their work ethic, and that wasn’t an issue Saturday night. Scoring was, though, as the Sharks managed only power play goals by Nikolai Kovalenko and Will Smith in a 4-2 loss to the New York Islanders at SAP Center.

The Sharks outshot the Islanders 20-8 in the first but still trailed 2-0 after a power play goal to Anthony Duclair on a tipped puck and an even-strength goal to Jean-Gabriel Pageau with 39 seconds left before intermission.

Kovalenko’s goal came at the 6:27 mark of the second period on a Sharks power play.

A few moments after Macklin Celebrini won a faceoff in the Islanders’ zone, he controlled the puck and found defenseman Shakir Mukhamadullin at the point, who fired a shot toward the net that Kovalenko got a stick on for his first goal since Jan. 4. Kovalenko had played in just seven games since that point, as he missed 14 games with an injury.

The Sharks traded five players in the 48 hours preceding Friday’s NHL trade deadline, sending out pending unrestricted free agents Vitek Vanecek and Nico Sturm to the Florida Panthers and Luke Kunin to the Columbus Blue Jackets. The unexpected moves came when Jake Walman, the team’s top offensive defenseman, and Fabian Zetterlund, were sent to contending teams.

Walman was traded to the Edmonton Oilers on Thursday and Zetterlund, in the most shocking trade, was traded to the Ottawa Senators.

Last year, after Tomas Hertl was dealt to the Vegas Golden Knights and Duclair to the Tampa Bay Lightning before the trade deadline, the Sharks went 4-14-2, After last season’s trade deadline, when Timo Meier was traded to the New Jersey Devils, the Sharks again won just four of their last 20 games.

The Sharks hope to do a little better this season, but it will be a challenge.

“We’re going to focus on one day at a time,” first year Sharks coach Ryan Warsofsky said. “We’ve got a game tonight against the New York Islanders. We’re going to compete as hard as we possibly can, which we’ve done the majority of the season. I always say you can’t control the result. We can control our process to get there. We can control our effort. We can control paying the price to win hockey games. We can control our attitude and our energy as a group, and that will be the main focus.”

Saturday’s game was the opener of an eight-game homestand for the Sharks that doesn’t end until March 29. Their next game is Tuesday against the Nashville Predators.