The Utah Hockey Club were only a couple of points outside a playoff position at the holiday break.
Going into Friday’s home clash with the bottom-feeding San Jose Sharks in Salt Lake City, Utah is in desperate need of changing its fortunes, having only one win in eight games and five points off the playoff pace near the midway point of the season.
The culprit during the 1-5-2 swoon is a lack of offense. After suffering a 4-1 loss to the Florida Panthers on Wednesday to kick off an important seven-game homestand, Utah has scored two or fewer goals in seven of nine outings.
“Offensively, we need to be more connected,” coach Andre Tourigny told the Salt Lake Tribune after the Florida clash. “I feel we were pretty good defensively. Offensively, we did not have the same speed, rhythm, puck movement coming from our breakout to the offensive zone.”
The defeat was a one-goal game before Florida scored a pair of empty-net goals, making the lack of finish costly.
“I think we were managing the puck the right way,” forward Logan Cooley said. “I think we’re in it with these teams like Dallas, Florida. The goals are going to start to come. I think we’ve just got to stay positive and take the positives out of it.”
An offensive boost could also help with Utah’s other big issue: a lack of home-ice success. Utah has lost four consecutive games at home and has a paltry 5-8-4 record in its own rink.
Speaking of struggling teams, the Sharks arrive after suffering a 4-2 home loss to the Vegas Golden Knights on Tuesday, a game in which they fell behind by a pair of goals in the first period and were unable to mount a comeback.
“(We have to) be ready to start from puck drop,” coach Ryan Warsofsky said. “Our puck play was soft. We didn’t execute. We were soft to play against. (In) front of our net, just not physical enough.”
The Sharks were expected to have plenty of struggles this season as they climb from rock bottom of their rebuild, but believed they were on a positive path just five weeks ago.
As they prepare to face Utah, the Sharks have only two victories in their last 11 games and three in 15 outings — 3-11-1.
“We’ve got to get better, starting with practice,” Warsofsky said.
Two positives could be found in the loss. First, goaltender Alexandar Georgiev stopped 38 shots in what was his best game since being acquired. The other is how San Jose scored both goals on the power play, the only good part of the game in Warsofsky’s view.
“We needed to produce. It hasn’t been good enough,” said defenseman Timothy Liljegren, who snapped a 15-game goal drought with his tally midway through the third period to make it a one-goal deficit. “So, it was good getting goals from that.”
–Field Level Media
