SAN JOSE – One day after the Sharks lost on the road in overtime to the last-place team in the Pacific Division, they welcomed the NHL’s best team to SAP Center on Saturday night and actually played a more complete game.
Unfortunately for the Sharks, the end result was about the same.
The Sharks allowed goals to David Pastrnak in both the second and third periods and were unable to come up with a response in a 4-2 loss to the Boston Bruins before a sellout crowd of 17,562 at the downtown arena.
With Sharks defenseman Matt Benning serving a holding penalty, Pastrnak took a pass from Brad Marchand and beat a screened James Reimer to give the Bruins a 3-2 lead at the 16:45 mark of the second period.
Pastrnak then scored an insurance goal, his 29th of the season, as he took a pass from Patrice Bergeron and beat an outstretched Reimer at the 9:00 mark of the third period, helping the Bruins (31-4-4) earn their 10th win in their last 13 games.
Logan Couture and Mario Ferraro both scored even-strength goals for the Sharks. Defenseman Erik Karlsson had his franchise-record 14-game point streak snapped.
The Sharks are now 1-3-2 since the Christmas break with an overall record of 12-21-8 at the halfway point of the season. Their 32 points represent the fewest they’ve had at the midway mark since the 1995-96 season when they had an 8-29-4 record.
“For us, we can just control what we do moving forward,” Sharks captain Logan Couture said. “From tonight, we played a very good team pretty close all night. Could have gone either way there for a while in that game. So we’ll take the positives.”
Special teams were critical. While the Bruins went 1-for-2 with the man advantage, the Sharks went 0-for-4 and are now 0-for-13 on the power play over the last four games.
“That’s a team that has the record they have because they deserve it, they’ve earned it,” Sharks coach David Quinn said of the Bruins. “It’s 2-2 and our power play just hasn’t been up to snuff lately. It’s something that we’ve got to get out of, and it kind of hurt us a little bit again tonight.”
The Sharks had chances to crawl back into the game but were unable to get the equalizer, as Bruins goalie Linus Ullmark improved his record this season to 22-1-1.
The Sharks are 5-9-8 this season in games decided by two goals or less.
“A lot of close losses,” Couture said of the first half. “The optimist (in me) says we’re right in games. The pessimist says that we’ve only won 12 of them. Losing sucks. We’ve lost too many games here for the last couple of years.”
The Bruins entered Saturday’s game with the NHL’s best record, with their last regulation-time loss coming on Dec. 9 in Arizona. Since then, Boston had gone 9-0-3 to move into sole possession of the first place in the NHL’s overall standings.
“We’ve played a lot of great teams hard this year and we don’t have to concoct some secret formula to win a hockey game,” Quinn said before Saturday’s game. “You’ve got to do the things we’ve done, obviously not enough this year, but we’ve got to follow the blueprint that we’ve created when we’re successful and do it for 60 minutes and not take our foot off the pedal.”
The Sharks didn’t start on time as the Bruins took a 2-0 lead in the first 5:32 of the opening period.
Brad Marchand gave Boston a 1-0 lead 63 seconds in as he went from one end to the other, shedding a check from Kevin Labanc, and getting past both Ferraro and Scott Harrington before he beat Reimer with a backhand high to the glove side for his 12th goal of the season.
Just 4:30 later, the Sharks gave too much space in the slot to Craig Smith, who beat Reimer with another glove-side shot that the San Jose netminder probably should have stopped.
Reimer, though, settled down after that and finished the first period with 10 saves in what was his first start since Dec. 31. His best save came with just under two minutes to go, as he stretched out with his stick to stop defenseman Charlie McAvoy’s wraparound attempt to keep it a 2-1 Boston lead.
The Sharks’ goal came 1:25 after Smith’s goal, as Alexander Barabanov took a stretch pass from Marc-Edouard Vlasic and fed Couture, who raced toward the front of the Bruins net and redirected the puck past Ullmark for his 15th goal of the season.
Reimer needed a good result. In his last six games before Saturday, he had a 2-3-1 record and a .879 save percentage, dropping his overall save percentage this season to a pedestrian .896.
Between Reimer, Kaapo Kahkonen, Aaron Dell, and Eetu Makiniemi, the Sharks entered Saturday with an NHL-worst .879 save percentage. The Bruins’ save percentage was a league-best .926.
In 11 home games this season, Reimer, before Saturday, was 2-7-2 with a .887 save percentage and 3.48 goals against average.
“I’ve played some really good games, I’ve had some games where I’ve underperformed and some games where I’ve just been good,” Reimer said of his first half. “There are ebbs and flows to the season and I would hope that in the last half of the season I can settle in on a really consistent basis where I’m giving this team above-average, goaltending and really good goaltending every night.”
The Sharks were coming off a 5-4 overtime loss to the Anaheim Ducks on Friday in which they were, at times, their own worst enemy.
Turnovers led directly to three Anaheim goals, including John Klingberg’s overtime winner. Tomas Hertl gave away the puck along the boards near the Ducks’ blue line, then didn’t backcheck hard enough to get to Klingberg in time before he one-timed a pass from Troy Terry past Kaapo Kahkonen.
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