SAN JOSE — It’s not every day you hear a hockey player wax poetic about the securities industry.
But that’s the metaphor Sharks centerman Nico Sturm used to describe the course of San Jose’s growth. The Sharks currently sit seventh in the Pacific Division, just one point ahead of the Anaheim Ducks for the last place.
Yet Sturm, who has been with San Jose since 2022, sees a positive differential with this year’s Sharks team.
“It’s kind of like the stock market,” Sturm said. “You look over the last year, two years, has it gone up or gone down? And not just in the last week, the last two weeks. That’s just life in the NHL, both as an individual player and as a team. Some games, you feel like you’re fighting the puck or the puck’s not coming to you at all.
“Other games, there’s like three, four games in a row, you feel like the game loves you back, and the puck’s ending up on your stick. You get the rebounds, you get the bounces. Overall, as a team, you’ve got to continue to build. I do think we’re turning in the right direction.”
Most recently, the Sharks have trended down in the market, losing a testy matchup with Utah on Saturday in San Jose. That game featured a few notable no-calls that the Sharks didn’t love.
Part of improving as a team is earning the respect of the league and its officials. San Jose doesn’t feel like it’s quite there yet.
“The reality is you’re not gonna get that until you’re a better team. That’s the reality of life in the NHL. You’ve gotta earn it,” Sturm said. “… And the refs, while they certainly weren’t great the other game, they were not the reason why we lost the game. There were bad calls on both sides.”
Mikael Granlund, who took a high hit from Logan Cooley that was not called in the third period, kept the focus on maintaining Sharks’ level of physicality, a priority under first-year coach Ryan Warsofsky.
“It’s part of the game,” Granlund said. “Give a hit, you need to take a hit. And a lot of it is just battles. Winning battles. It’s not always a big hit, but if you’re really hard and heavy on your battles, that’s probably the greatest physicality there is.”
Warsofsky’s mandate heading into the season was for the Sharks to become a harder team to play against than last year, when they finished dead last in the NHL standings and had many uncompetitive games.
San Jose isn’t at that level yet, and Warsofsky can tell based on the general disposition of the league at large. But he thinks the Sharks are taking the right steps toward that goal.
“That’s not against the officials,” Warsofsky said. “That’s just where this organization has been the last few years. But it’s starting to turn. We’re starting to get respect back in the National Hockey League for the most part. Most of the year, we’ve been pretty competitive.”
San Jose has a golden opportunity to showcase how much it has grown on Tuesday. The Sharks will welcome the league-leading Winnipeg Jets to SAP Center, a squad that boat-raced them 8-3 in their last meeting on Oct. 18 in Winnipeg.
Winnipeg Jets’ Adam Lowry (17) and San Jose Sharks’ Nico Sturm (7) collide during third-period NHL hockey game action in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Friday, Oct. 18, 2024. (John Woods/The Canadian Press via AP)
What better chance could there be to display how much San Jose has improved?
“I want us to go on the attack,” Warsofsky said. “Instead of playing for survival and just trying to get through hockey games, I want to get on the attack and get on these guys. When we do that, we can play with the best teams in the league.”
Injury update
Warsofsky said after Monday’s practice that forward Klim Kostin, who was placed on injured reserve after suffering an upper-body injury against Tampa Bay on Dec. 5, remains day-to-day.
The earliest the Sharks could activate Kostin is Dec. 20, after the end of their three-game homestand. But it sounds like Kostin might need a little more time.
“Won’t play tomorrow, still day-to-day,” Warsofsky said. “I think he had a good day today. I’ll check back with our guys. But I would say he’s a little bit — I would say it’s probably not Thursday either. Not skating yet, so that kind of puts him behind a little bit.”
Kostin is not expected to be out for the long term, but his status is up in the air as San Jose prepares to travel to Edmonton on Saturday and Vancouver on Monday.
San Jose Sharks’ Klim Kostin (10) skates with the puck against the Anaheim Ducks during the first period at the SAP Center in San Jose, Calif., on Saturday, Oct. 12, 2024. (Shae Hammond/Bay Area News Group)