Sharks off to historically bad start to season

The San Jose Sharks’ putrid start to the 2023-24 regular season keeps getting worse and worse.

The California team is 0-10-1 in their first 11 games, and in their last two games have lost by a combined score of 20-3 (10-1 to the Vancouver Canucks on Nov. 2 and 10-2 to the Pittsburgh Penguins on Nov. 4).

The historically awful start puts the Sharks in bad company with the 1943-44 New York Rangers for most consecutive losses to start an NHL season with 11. The team’s goal differential of minus-42 is also the most in league history through a team’s first 11 games.

On Monday’s episode of "Daily Faceoff LIVE," Frank Seravalli and Tyler Yaremchuk discuss what’s wrong and San Jose and if there’s anything even worth looking forward to.

Tyler Yaremchuk: The San Jose Sharks look bad in the standings, they look bad on the stat sheet, and they look bad on the ice. They look bad walking into the arena, Frank! It is just miserable from start to finish for this Sharks team. They are the first NHL team since 1965 to allow 10 goals in back-to-back games.

I don’t know what you do here. I know this wasn’t necessarily “by design,” they are a rebuilding team and want to get some good picks, but how can you go through 82 games of this? How can a group of professional hockey players be losing this badly?

Frank Seravalli: It really speaks to a lack of care and a lack of compete, that’s what stands out to me. If you give up 10 goals one night, I guess that happens sometimes. But two games in a row? You might as well not even show up to the rink. Just call yourself the San Jose Barracuda, because they’ve looked like a minor-league team.

I think maybe the toughest part for the Sharks is not just the lack of pride in their game…it’s that there’s not really anything to look forward to. There’s no group of budding prospects, there’s no stockpile of draft picks, there’s nothing you can look at that makes you think, “This gets us really excited.”

You can watch the full episode here…