Kings Deliver Disappointment to Sharks Once Again in Big Stadium Series Win

The San Jose Sharks have to be getting used to defeat at the hands of the Los Angeles Kings. After falling in consecutive years to L.A. in the postseason, the Sharks dropped Saturday’s nationally televised Stadium Series game by a 2-1 score and may have set the stage for an even more devastating and important loss.   

Not that the game itself is insignificant. While the outdoor game has become somewhat commonplace for the NHL, it almost fills the role the All-Star game once did, providing a high-profile (and highly marketable) moment that stands out from the grind of the 82-game regular season. It’s also easy to forget sitting at home, but each of these games is a serious and unique event for the fans who consistently support them in large numbers, even in as counterintuitive a locale as California:

The game itself was nothing to write home about; it was a low-scoring affair, as most of these games are. There wasn’t a lot of artistry to the goals; a good redirect by Kyle Clifford to open the scoring was probably the high point, followed as it was by a bad-angle shot that somehow beat Jonathan Quick and then a marginal marker from Marian Gaborik that decided the affair.

I made the comparison to the All-Star Game earlier, but there are some critical differences. The outdoor venue gets played up a lot, but the more important distinction is that the game counts in the standings, and in this particular instance the contest involved two closely matched rivals who could very easily end up on opposite sides of the playoff cutoff.

The intensity was obvious in the play, and it was also obvious in a first-period interview that NBC aired with Sharks coach Todd McLellan. The coaches in an All-Star Game can afford to be relaxed and have some fun; not so in a contest with these stakes. McLellan was blunt when asked if he was pleased with the way his team had adjusted to the venue.

Dave Sandford/Getty Images

“Not yet,” he said, clearly disgusted. “We’ve got some work to do, obviously; they’ve hemmed us in the end here a little bit. We’ve got to get used to moving the puck a little bit quicker, moving it a lot firmer than we have and getting going the other way.”

He won’t be any happier when he looks at the standings.

San Jose entered the game in possession of the final wild-card slot in the West, with 68 points through 60 contests. The Sharks have been hotly pursued of late by a pair of resurgent teams; one of those teams is the Kings, who with 66 points through 57 contests entering action were hot on San Jose’s tail and had the advantage of games in hand.

Now the two clubs are tied, with the Kings on a seven-game winning streak and looking at a schedule that still has three more games remaining on it than that of their California rival. Calgary (68 points in 59 games) and Vancouver (69 points in 58 games) are also in the thick of a Pacific Division race with intolerably narrow margins for victory and defeat.

One of those four teams, almost certainly, will end up outside the playoffs while one will end up with home ice in the first round. The gap between the team starting at home and the team sitting sadly at home could be almost nonexistent.  

Dave Sandford/Getty Images

“It was all business,” Gaborik told NBC after the game. Of course it was; with the stakes this high it had to be. The two points awarded Saturday night could end up deciding who makes the playoffs and who doesn't. 

Losing a tight game in front of 70,000 fans there personally and a nationwide audience watching from home isn’t fun at the best of times. If the Kings end up edging out San Jose for one of the final playoff spots in the West it’s going to be even uglier in hindsight, a missed opportunity of disastrous proportion.

That, unfortunately for Sharks fans, is a depressingly familiar possibility.

Jonathan Willis covers the NHL for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter for more of his work.