Sheng Peng
NEW YORK — The San Jose Sharks are playing better, but no doubt, they still have a lot to work on.
Head coach David Quinn was very specific about some of the defensive breakdowns that he saw in their 6-5 loss to the New York Rangers on Sunday night.
“We turned it over. Just the turnovers, just frustrating. You got a puck on your stick in critical areas, and we just made poor decisions. That really was the story,” he said. “The other piece of it is, we’ve got to finish our tracking and our backchecks.”
There were a couple breakdowns where the blame might not be so obvious – and one where, just for example, William Eklund can be better.
As the Sharks get better and better, every play will matter more. They certainly mattered last night in a one-goal loss.
Turnovers
Two Rangers goals came off the same type of turnover.
It’s always easy to blame the guy closest to the puck, the one who turns it over.
On the Artemi Panarin (10) hat trick goal, that’s Fabian Zetterlund (20) who can’t get the puck out.
On the K’Andre Miller (79) strike, ultimately the game-winner, that’s Alexander Barabanov (94) who’s stopped trying to exit.
And especially Zetterlund, who actually had the puck on his stick for a beat, you’d like a little more.
But digging deeper? Anthony Duclair (10) had the right idea, but it was a pass to a man who was about to get jumped on the forecheck.
Nikita Okhotiuk (83) was wilder, a little like an NFL quarterback trying to make a spectacular pass as he’s getting taken down, pick six city, in his errant chuck to Barabanov.
“You’re passing your problem to somebody else, and you can’t do that,” Quinn said. “You gotta anticipate that someone’s going to jump ’em and that’s what happened twice on two of our goals [against]. We just gave the puck to someone who was covered.”
The middle of the ice is also an area where you can’t make a mistake – turnovers there literally feed the counterattack.
Tracking
What does Quinn mean by tracking and finishing your backcheck?
Tracking, by the way, is the route that a player takes when backchecking.
Watch Eklund (72) lose Will Cuylle (50) in the neutral zone.
“We didn’t finish our track,” Quinn said. “He did a great job getting in a position to finish. He stood up and took a breath. And all of a sudden, they’re on a breakaway.”
Eklund also appeared to be puck-watching here, focused at first on the flip pass and not his man.
You can see Eklund change his route: For a split-second, he was skating toward the puck, and not with Cuylle. Everything in the NHL happens so fast – by the time that the 21-year-old winger realizes his mistake, it’s too late.
Chasing the puck more than you should is, of course, a young mistake, one that hopefully leaves Eklund’s game sooner than later.
That wasn’t the only young mistake on this goal. The aforementioned Okhotiuk, 23, just 30 NHL games under his belt, was out to lunch.
“That’s just bad coverage,” Quinn said. “A defenseman can’t be outside the dots like that.”
When Eklund loses Cuylle, there should be a defender backing him up. But Okhotiuk is too far from the middle of the ice i.e. he’s “outside the dots”.
“There’s a lot of great effort out there but everybody gives effort. You got to give a second and third effort. We did that at times. And we did that a lot,” Quinn said. “But if you’re gonna beat a team like that, especially in the situation we’re in, shorthanded [with injuries] as we were, you can’t leave anything to chance. We left too much to chance.”
When the San Jose Sharks learn that, especially the younger ones –Zetterlund’s backcheck on the Panarin hattie is a good example of that not quite there extra effort — they’ll start winning more games. But until then?
Fasten your seatbelts, it going to be a bumpy rebuild.