SAN JOSE >> It’s tough to say where the San Jose Sharks would be in the Western Conference standings right now — at the midway point of the season — if they had held onto some of the third-period leads they had last month.
Would they actually be in the mix for a playoff spot instead of near the bottom of the NHL standings?
Probably not. But from the Sharks’ standpoint, dwelling on the past is perhaps useless. What’s done is done.
But going forward, the Sharks would love to repeat their third-period effort from Thursday, when they, aside from two or three sequences, looked significantly more composed in their own end in protecting a one-goal lead than in other recent games.
Rookie goalie Yaroslav Askarov certainly did his part, making 11 saves — including a dynamic stop on Nick Paul — over the final 20 minutes as the Sharks preserved a 2-1 victory over the Tampa Bay Lightning. San Jose also killed a third-period roughing penalty to Macklin Celebrini.
The Sharks’ win snapped an eight-game losing streak. It also gave the group a badly needed dose of confidence as it finally held onto a late lead against a playoff-caliber team, with games against the equally dangerous New Jersey Devils and Vegas Golden Knights on the near horizon.
“I think we when we realized when they got a couple looks off of turnovers, we nipped it in the bud, and we didn’t let it continue to unravel,” Sharks coach Ryan Warsofsky said. “We kept our composure. We understood what was going on in the hockey game. We matured a lot tonight.”
In December, the Sharks held and lost third-period leads to Utah, Winnipeg, Colorado, Edmonton, and Vegas, in that order. In those five games, the Sharks managed just one point, with that coming in their 3-2 overtime loss to the Oilers on Dec. 21. That was only because of Askarov’s exceptional 39-save performance at Rogers Place.
But while the Sharks (12-23-6) left nine points on the table during that stretch, the important part was that they finally learned from those mistakes and should be a better team for it down the road. They also stuck together during some tough times.
Thursday, while the Sharks still gave a handful of quality scoring chances, they competed harder all over the ice and did a better job of ending plays in their zone.
“We’ve been in this situation a lot during this little skid that we went through here, a lot of opportunities to close it out,” said Sharks alternate captain and defenseman Mario Ferraro, who scored a goal and fought his college teammate, Mitchell Chaffee, after Chaffee’s questionable second period hit on Nikolai Kovalenko.
“But tonight, I just thought we kept pushing when we could. Even after the (third period) penalty kill, we kept trying to do our thing. Yeah, they got their chances. … But I thought we did a much better job tonight, as opposed to other nights, of playing with a little more confidence and not really thinking about just winning, but doing what it takes to win, getting pucks deep, and we did a much better job of that in the third today.”