San Jose Sharks coach Todd McLellan hinted at a lineup overhaul
when he declared that
”
maybe some guys need to watch a few games
”
after his struggling team was routed, 5-2, by the Edmonton
Oilers for a sixth consecutive loss on Thursday night.
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SAN JOSE
San Jose Sharks coach Todd McLellan hinted at a lineup overhaul when he declared that “maybe some guys need to watch a few games” after his struggling team was routed, 5-2, by the Edmonton Oilers for a sixth consecutive loss on Thursday night.
But uncertainties on the injury front may limit what he can do when the Sharks face the St. Louis Blues at HP Pavilion on Saturday night.
Logan Couture, for example, did skate Friday for the first time since the knee-on-knee collision he suffered Tuesday night against Toronto, but remains questionable for the St. Louis game. As is Ryane Clowe, who was clipped by a skate on the back of his leg just before a fight against Edmonton’s Theo Peckham on Thursday night and stayed off the ice Friday.
Factor in the fact that Torrey Mitchell and John McCarthy are already on injured reserve and McLellan’s forward options may be limited.
Whatever McLellan ends up doing, his players understand that benchings are an option for any coach whose team is underperforming and on an extended losing streak.
“It’s tough times, and he’s got to play the guys who are going to give him that consistent effort and that he can trust on the ice,” Setoguchi said after a Friday practice that was more cerebral than physical. “If you’re not one of those guys and you’re not doing it, you know you’re letting yourself down and letting the team down.”
Thursday night’s 5-2 loss to the lowly Edmonton Oilers seemed to hit McLellan particularly hard, and he looked at both his players and himself when it came to getting the Sharks back on track.
He talked about the need to find different buttons to push when it came to instruction and motivation, and his first attempt at doing that came during Friday’s practice when he turned the ice surface into a classroom.
For about 30 minutes, he and his players gathered in front of the benches, going over plays on a white board. For another 15 minutes or so, the cluster moved to center ice to continue the instruction. Finally, there was a limited amount of actual skating.
“We walked through a lot of things, what we believe we do well and what we believe we have to do well to be successful,” McLellan said. “I thought it was therapeutic, healthy for our club and if we can put it into play tomorrow, we’ll be better for it.”
He added that the change was needed because “the message that we’re delivering now is either not being heard or not being accepted. We took it out on the ice. We put players in different situations and talked about how to handle those different situations.”
McLellan rejected the idea of a bag skate, working the players to exhaustion, to punish his players for their shortcomings because it could leave them in no shape to meet St. Louis.
“We’ve played every second day. We’re four forwards short,” he said. “There’s other ways we can vent and show emotion.”
For players, it was essentially back to basics on Friday.
“It was really just talking about our game, redefining our game. What do we do, what do we do well, what do we need to do to succeed,” Douglas Murray said, “so there’s no gray areas or question marks any more.”
Missed assignments plagued the Sharks in their loss to Edmonton — Dany Heatley, for example, was supposed to pick up Oiler left wing Liam Reddox on the play that led to the Oilers’ first goal — and the coaching staff wanted to fix those kinds of problems.
The Sharks are now without a point in both their last six home games and the last six they’ve played anyplace. The franchise hasn’t experienced that level of futility in well over a decade, and it’s hardly what was expected of a team that has been among the NHL elite for the past four seasons.
“If we had the answers, we would have fixed it by now,” Murray said. “I don’t even know what to say anymore other than that we’re trying to correct our mistakes. It’s frustrating. It’s tough to be on a downward spiral.”
— Story by David Pollak, San Jose Mercury News
