The San Jose Sharks were 6-2 down at Crypto.com Arena on Wednesday with the game long settled when the Los Angeles Kings went on the power play. Out came their first unit.
Quinton Byfield tipped in an Artemi Panarin point shot at 14:28 of the third to make it 7-2. Kiefer Sherwood had been watching what the Kings were doing before that.
“They’re up 6-2, put their top power play out. Panarin’s blocking shots, celebrating to his bench,” Sherwood said per Sheng Peng. “It’s disrespectful.”
He wasn’t looking to blame anybody else for it either.
“We have to look ourselves in the mirror and do something about it,” he said. “Until we do something about it, stuff’s not going to change.”
Wednesday night at Crypto.com Arena:
| Final score | Kempe’s goals | Panarin’s assists | Kings power-play goals |
|---|---|---|---|
| 7-2 | 3 | 4 | 3 |
Why are the Sharks struggling?
They went into the summer intending to take a step, adding Jacob Trouba, Darnell Nurse and Mason Marchment around a young core that includes Macklin Celebrini, and they now sit 7-9-1 and sixth in the Pacific Division having lost five of their last six.
Sherwood’s assessment of where the fault lies was blunt and pointed entirely inwards.
“It’s unacceptable. It’s not good enough. To a man, to a team. It’s not on the coaches right now,” he said. “We’re not winning our battles, we’re not being hard to play against, we’re not making plays. We have to turn it here.”
He also said the group doesn’t deserve any praise at the moment, and promised the work ethic would be fixed for the next game.
The players handled the rest of it themselves. San Jose held a players-only meeting afterwards, with reporters kept waiting outside a closed dressing room for an unusually long time, which one observer noted is not something that normally happens on a trip to Los Angeles.
Adrian Kempe finished with a hat trick for the Kings and Panarin, their leading goal scorer this season, contributed four assists without scoring himself.
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