Tag: sharks alert

SAN JOSE — Following one of the worst seasons in franchise history, David Quinn on Wednesday was fired as coach of the San Jose Sharks.

“After going through our end-of-the-season process of internal meetings and evaluating where our team is at and where we want our group to go, we have made the difficult decision to make a change at the head coach position,” Sharks general manager Mike Grier said in a statement.

“David is a good coach and an even better person. I would like to personally thank him for his hard work over these past two seasons. He and his staff did an admirable job under some difficult circumstances, and I sincerely appreciate how they handled the situation.”

The status of the Sharks’ assistant coaches,

Scott Gordon, Brian Wiseman, Ryan Warsofsky and goaltending coach Thomas Speer, was not immediately clear.

Quinn, who had one year left on his contract, posted a 41-98-25 record in two seasons. The Sharks’ 19-54-9 record this season was the worst in the NHL.

Grier also announced that Ray Tufts, the Sharks’ longtime head athletic trainer, will not return to the team.

“Ray spent more than two decades overseeing the care and well-being of our players,” said Grier.  “We thank him for his service to the organization and our players and wish him and his family the best in the future.”

Please check back for updates to this story. 

SAN JOSE – Devin Cooley nearly earned his first career NHL win for his hometown San Jose Sharks inside the arena he visited dozens of times as a kid.

Of course, it couldn’t be that easy. Nothing has been for the Sharks this season.

The Sharks took a four-goal lead early in the second period, frittered it all away, then saw Seth Jones score at the 18-second mark of overtime to give the Chicago Blackhawks a stunning 5-4 win on Saturday before a sellout crowd of 17,435 at SAP Center.

In 2,749 games as a franchise, including playoffs, the Sharks’ loss on Saturday marked the first time in team history that they led by as many as four goals and still lost.

In a season of excruciating lows for the Sharks (16-46-8), Saturday’s loss had to be the most gutting.

“You can never take your foot off the pedal,” Sharks coach David Quinn said. “I don’t think we did it too much, but enough to get them back in the game.

“Overall, I liked our game. They were opportunistic, and we got a little bit away from what we were doing early in the game to build the lead that we did. But they made plays when they needed to.”

Thomas Bordeleau scored twice in the first period and Fabian Zetterlund had two goals and an assist, but the fragile Sharks’ losing streak now is at seven games as they fell five points back of the Blackhawks (20-46-5) for 31st place in the NHL standings.

“Just need to play 60 minutes the same way, stay aggressive,” Bordeleau said. “We can’t be losing that game.”

It first appeared that Saturday’s game become a rare laugher in the Sharks’ favor.

But after Zetterlund scored his second goal of the game and his 20th of the season, firing a wrist shot past Chicago goalie Petr Mrazek to give San Jose a 4-0 lead at the 1:24 mark of the second period, the Blackhawks started to find their legs.

Ex-Sharks winger Ryan Donato scored his 11th of the season at the 6:45 mark of the second period, and Tyler Johnson added his 16th of the season.

Jones’ fifth goal of the season at the 6:20 mark of the third period cut San Jose’s lead to one — a shot that Cooley wanted back.

“When I get really excited I start to sit back really low and that opens up holes underneath, and so every single day we’ve been working to be more upright and it seals the holes,” Cooley said. “I knew exactly what I needed to do and instead I sat back and it goes right through the arm.”

Phillipp Kurashev then scored with 47 seconds left in the third period to tie the game 4-4, completely demoralizing the Sharks.

No player felt worse about Saturday’s collapse than Cooley, the Los Gatos native who had about dozen family members in attendance.

Cooley made nine saves in the first period but stopped just 17 of 21 shots in the second and third periods. Jones’ game-winner came on the first shot in overtime.

“The team was dialed in. I thought they played amazing,” said Cooley, who was making his second career NHL start, “and I just couldn’t make the saves I needed to.”

Cooley, 26, a Los Gatos native, became the first individual from Santa Clara County to play for the Sharks when he started for San Jose last Sunday in Chicago. He made 26 saves in what turned into a 5-2 Blackhawks win.

After Saturday, his future with the Sharks is cloudy at best. The team, now with 12 games left, might also want to get a look at another goalie in the system, perhaps Eetu Makiniemi with the Barracuda to back up Mackenzie Blackwood, who will almost certainly start Tuesday’s home game against the Dallas Stars.

Cooley needs a contract for next season, and it might not come from the Sharks who already have Blackwood, Vitek Vanacek, Magnus Chrona and Georgi Romanov locked up. Makiniemi, who came to San Jose in 2022 in the trade that saw Brent Burns go to the Carolina Hurricanes, is a restricted free agent.

The San Jose Sharks faced some headwinds in their game against the Minnesota Wild on Sunday night.

The Sharks were playing their second game in as many nights — just like the Wild were — but were also dealing with an illness now running through the locker room, sapping some of the team’s energy.

The biggest obstacle, though, was the play of Wild forward Kirill Kaprizov, who recorded his third hat trick of the season to help hand the Sharks a disappointing 4-3 loss at Xcel Energy Center.

With the Sharks leading 3-2, Kaprizov scored at the 2:38 and 16:01 mark of the third period, with the second goal completing the hat trick and putting the Wild ahead to stay as San Jose was sent to its seventh straight loss.

“When you don’t have it, you’ve got to find a way to hang around and I thought that’s what we did,” Sharks coach David Quinn said. “It was just unfortunate. They’ve got Kaprizov and we don’t.”

Anthony Duclair, Mikael Granlund, and Nico Sturm all scored for the Sharks (15-39-6), who managed just 15 shots on net as they completed a two-game road trip with a 0-1-1 record.

The Sharks led the Wild on two occasions Sunday, including in the third period as the two teams traded goals.

After Duclair scored his 14th of the season 23 seconds in for a 3-2 Sharks lead, Kaprizov tied it, one-timing a pass from Matt Boldy past goalie Kaapo Kahkonen, who made 28 saves for the game.

Kaprizov’s third goal of the game was also his 29th goal of the season, as he became the fifth-fastest active player to 300 career points. Having now played 258 games, he’s behind only Sidney Crosby (219), Alex Ovechkin (237), Connor McDavid (240) and Evgeni Malkin (240).

“He’s a phenomenal player,” Sturm said of Kaprizov, his one-time Wild teammate. “That third goal, that’s him. He gets lost as the third guy high, there’s a puck battle, and he’s got the smarts to where he just waits for the puck to squirt out to him.”

The Sharks now start a three-game homestand on Tuesday against the Dallas Stars.

The Sharks were without center William Eklund, who came down with an illness Sunday. With Eklund unavailable, Kevin Labanc drew back into the lineup after he was a healthy scratch Saturday in Dallas and Luke Kunin moved into Eklund’s role as the Sharks’ second-line center.

Eklund had goals in each of the last two Sharks’ games and for the season has 10 goals and 27 points in 58 games.

Sunday’s game was Kahkonen’s first against his former team. He was drafted by the Wild in 2014 in the fourth round and played three-plus seasons in the organization before he was acquired by the Sharks two years ago for defenseman Jacob Middleton.