A players-only meeting after one blowout is the most normal thing in hockey. Losing teams call them all the time, and most of the time nothing changes, because the problem was never that the room stopped talking. So the Sharks huddling up after getting run 7-2 by the Kings on Wednesday isn't a sign the season is already over.
What it does tell you is that the players are doing the hard work right now that the front office should be doing.
Go read the quotes. Sherwood stood up and said nobody's feeling sorry for themselves: "Until we do something about it, stuff's not going to change. So, we need to do something about it moving forward." Macklin Celebrini, the 20-year-old they handed the C to in September, the youngest captain in team history, said flatly, "It's got to change." These are the guys fronting the cameras and holding it together. Ryan Warsofsky welcomed it: "It shows that we've got some leadership in here, and we're all frustrated." Good on him for not treating it as a coup. But a healthy team in early November doesn't need its baby-faced captain running public damage control.
RatingSan Jose has been outscored 24-11 over its last six games, and it just gave up seven goals to a Kings team that opened the year without a single win.
Remember the plan. Add Jacob Trouba, Darnell Nurse and Mason Marchment, bring in veterans who were supposed to steady a young group and end the losing, then let the kids grow inside that structure. Entering November, the Sharks have lost five of their last six and sit near the bottom of the Pacific, still coughing up goals in bunches. Whatever that off-season shopping list was meant to buy, it hasn't bought a defense yet.
The crowd that watched this and decided the season's a lost cause, time to bottom out and chase a pick, is getting way ahead of itself. It's November. Celebrini and the young forwards around him aren't where the blame lives this early in a rebuild. Celebrini had gone six games without scoring before he snapped it against the Kings, and the honest read is that a 20-year-old carrying this much is the one thing keeping this season alive.
That's exactly why the meeting should make you uneasy, though not for the reasons the panic crowd thinks. It's a good locker room doing a job that belongs to the men above them. Celebrini standing there saying "we believe in each other" is admirable. He shouldn't have to. The people who promised this roster would be better than this owe somebody an explanation, and they weren't the ones in the room after the horn.
