The San Jose Sharks hit the bottom of the barrel with their 10th straight loss on Thursday night, and unfortunately the team finds itself in familiar territory.
This is the second time this season that the Californian club has lost ten times in a row. Between October 12 and November 4, David Quinn's men had not achieved a victory to begin the campaign.
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“Our guys continue to compete by the sweat of their brow and work hard, and they'll show up the next day and we'll get out of this quagmire,” the head coach said hopefully after the 2-1 loss to the Winnipeg Jets.
“We were playing the best team in the Western Conference and it was close,” Quinn continued. Our first 15 minutes weren’t good, but then they had six chances to score in a five-on-five system.”
The Philadelphia Flyers are the last to have suffered two series with at least ten defeats. It was 2021-2022 and the Pennsylvania team had finished last in the Metropolitan Section.
Déjà-vu
There is no doubt that this is the fate that awaits sharks in the Pacific if they do not turn things around quickly. For now, they can rest on the fact that they have done worse things.
In 1992-93, San Jose was the focus of three terrible series. The “Sharks” suffered 13 defeats twice in a row and crowned their season of misery with a series of 17 defeats. That's still nothing when you compare them to the 1974-1975 Washington Capitals, who were defeated 10 times in a row four times.
For Quinn, victory requires attention to detail, which is sorely lacking in his training. His men try to stay positive, but fatigue is starting to show.
“At the end of the day, you have to find ways to win,” forward Luke Kunin said. It's frustrating at the moment. The guys are working, they're trying to make ends meet, and the only way is to put your head down and go to work.
“We don’t need major adjustments,” he added. Maybe perform better, whether on the forecheck or in the neutral zone. […] We have to slow down our opponents.”
The task will be enormous in the coming days as the Sharks will face the Toronto Maple Leafs twice on Saturday and Tuesday.