Sharks Locker Room: Duclair, Ferraro, Quinn Talk Turkey of a Performance

The San Jose Sharks started Thanksgiving early.

On the first shift, they allowed a Jordan Eberle breakaway. And even with one Seattle Kraken goal disallowed because of an offsides and a David Quinn timeout exhorting them to wake up, the Sharks were down 4-0 after the first period.

“Two breakaways in the first minute and a half. Just absolutely freaking embarrassing,” Quinn lamented. “We lost every single battle. Got beat off walls. Every time there was a 50-50 puck battle, we’re fishing for pucks. Get on the wrong side of it. One guy would get beat one-on-one and the other guy would dive in. It was embarrassing.”

It didn’t get much better after that.

The Sharks pulled a shelled Kaapo Kahkonen but had only one shot on goal in the middle frame. They managed to avoid a shutout off a late third period Mike Hoffman goal, but overall, had only 14 shots.

It was a turkey of a performance.

San Jose will have a chance to respond quickly, after a Thanksgving respite at home, taking on the Montreal Canadiens at 12:30 PM on Friday at SAP Center.

Even though the last-place Sharks are 3-15-1, the response matters. Of course, they aren’t a very good team. These games will happen.

But they’re also the laughingstock of the league right now.

The last time this happened, too short a time ago, the Sharks responded to a 10-1 loss to the Vancouver Canucks on Nov. 2 and a 10-2 loss to the Pittsburgh Penguins on Nov. 4 with their first two wins of the season.

We’ll see if the undermanned Sharks stay down or get up on Friday.

Anthony Duclair, Mario Ferraro, and Quinn were all angry and searching for answers after the game.

Anthony Duclair

Watch full Duclair interview here

Duclair, on the San Jose Sharks’ start:

It was unacceptable hockey. Pretty much lost the game in the first period. We weren’t ready to go. That was just unacceptable. Starting from me, starting from our leadership group. That just can’t happen, especially to a good team like Seattle.

Duclair, on head coach David Quinn’s message during his first-period timeout:

Just compete. We’re being outworked and we’ve said it since the beginning of the season, we have to be the hardest-working team night in, night out, doesn’t matter who’s in the lineup. No matter who’s playing forward or D, just got to compete. Like I said, it’s not about the X’s and O’s. It’s not about the game plan. It’s just about battling out there.

Mario Ferraro

Watch full Ferraro interview here

Ferraro, on why the San Jose Sharks didn’t start on time today:

We as leaders have to figure [it] out. It’s been an issue this year. I don’t really have answers for you right now, Shenger.

Ferraro, on the challenge of staying positive:

To a certain extent, we can’t be all positivity and no constructive criticism. We got to still be hard on each other too at the same time and hold ourselves at a high standard. So as much as we want to be positive, it’s not acceptable to be playing the way we did. We can’t just come out of this and just be positive about the outcome. We have to be positive about going out and having a better game next game. We have to be constructive and hard on each other to battle back and correct the mistakes that we’ve made. It’s the NHL, it’s not a development league, so we can’t be accepting mistakes and say it’s no big deal.

David Quinn

Watch full Quinn interview here

Quinn, on the San Jose Sharks’ slow start:

Embarrassing. We weren’t ready to play. Two breakaways in the first minute and a half. Just absolutely freaking embarrassing. We lost every single battle. Got beat off walls. Every time there was a 50-50 puck battle, we’re fishing for pucks. Get on the wrong side of it. One guy would get beat one-on-one and the other guy would dive in. It was embarrassing.

Quinn, on why the Sharks started out slow again:

Well, Sheng, if I knew that answer, we would’ve started off better. So I’ll find it out. Our game has been trending in the right direction. And this was just brutal.

Quinn, on sitting Filip Zadina and Nikita Okhotiuk for about 10 minutes or so apiece, before putting them back in rotation:

Well, we’re short-handed. We got 11 forwards, so I couldn’t sit someone for a really extended time. I don’t think that was gonna be fair to the other players.

But you just can’t take penalties like that. When you’re chasing the puck all night long, that’s what happens. When you reach in and not interested in competing in a one-on-one battle, you’re gonna take penalties. Wasn’t just him.

Quinn, on if he could point to one area of breakdown which doomed the Sharks:

There are two things: When you don’t skate and you just run around chasing a puck, that’s what’s going to happen. It’s the National Hockey League. They’ve got real good players over there. When you lose one-on-one battles all over the rink and you go into a situation, you got your head down and you’re fishing for puck. [You’re not trying] to kill people, you got to get competitive. You got to make sure you play through people. Get flesh. Beat people back to the middle of the rink. And all we did was chase the puck. That’s all we did.

Quinn, on if the Sharks’ fragility led to first period breakdown:

I don’t want to hear about freaking “fragile”. It’s the National freaking Hockey League, and you better show up ready to play every single night. I don’t care about fragile. Sometimes you don’t have it, I get it. But you want to show up and play with the right freaking intentions and we didn’t do it. You got to come here and show up to play with the right freaking intentions and not many guys did it.