SAN JOSE – San Jose Sharks center Mikael Granlund is all too familiar with the talents of Juuse Saros. He was teammates with the Nashville Predators No. 1 goalie for four-plus seasons and experienced first-hand how difficult it is to get a puck past the one-time Vezina Trophy finalist.
“I don’t think I’ve ever beat him in a practice,” Granlund said. “I don’t know anything about goalies. Let’s just put that out there first. But his positioning and the way he moves, I’ve never seen that fast of a goalie.”
Granlund got one by Saros on Saturday, scoring in the third period when the Sharks started putting more pressure on the Predators and their netminder.
Still, the Sharks lost to Saros for the 11th time in 14 all-time meetings, with the Finnish-born goalie making 23 saves in a 4-2 Predators win at SAP Center.
Filip Zadina also scored for the Sharks, who are now 0-3-0 on this five-game homestand that continues Tuesday against the New Jersey Devils. San Jose has won just once in its last six games, scoring a combined 13 goals along the way.
“It was frustrating today because we had some really good stretches and some really tough ones,” Sharks coach David Quinn said. “The one thing that we’ve got to do is clean up our bad stretches. They can’t be as bad as they’ve been, but we did a lot of good things against a good team.”
Some takeaways from Saturday’s game:
THRUN’S NIGHT, AND ADDISON’S: Quinn mentioned Saturday morning that Calen Addison, not Henry Thrun, would be on the ice with the Sharks’ first power play unit against the Predators, even though Thrun had practiced in that spot earlier in the week.
When the Sharks were on their first two power plays in the opening period, though, it was Thrun, and not Addison, out there with Granlund, Fabian Zetterlund, Anthony Duclair, and William Eklund.
Addison only played three shifts in the first period, with his last one ending in a Kiefer Sherwood goal.
Michael McCarron had the puck in the corner to the right of the Sharks’ net, and Addison skated toward him, trying to stop the pass that went right to Sherwood’s stick for a pretty one-timer that got past Kaapo Kahkonen and under the crossbar.
Quinn said that Addison has, “just got to defend harder more consistently. That’s usually what happens when he gets in a little bit of trouble and I just thought the first goal, there needed to be harder defending from his end of it, a little bit better decision.”
Addison took a more regular shift in the second and third periods and ended up with 12:34 in ice time. Thrun, playing just his second game after missing six in a row with an upper-body injury, ended up with 23:37 in ice time, trailing only Roman Josi’s 24:08 among all skaters.
“That’s not the number we want him at, so in fairness to him, he played a little bit too much tonight,” Quinn said. “Nobody’s fault but just wanted to send a message or two a couple of times. We shortened our d-corps up a little bit.”
Thrun said he made an error on Nashville’s third goal, as it appeared he could not decide whether he wanted to hit Sherwood at the Sharks’ blue line or sit back a bit. Sherwood got by him anyway before he fired a shot past Kahkonen for a 3-1 Predators lead 3:40 into the third period.
“I just made a bad read on it,” Thrun said. “I was trying to play aggressive down a goal and just kind of was half in and half out, which does you no good.”
“The thing I love about Henry is he’s coachable, he learns from his mistakes, and he’ll have a better night next time.”
We’ll see when the ‘next time’ is for Addison and whether Quinn tweaks his lineup for Tuesday’s game against the Devils. One possibility is to sit Addison and dress Nikita Okhotiuk, who was scratched Saturday and has now sat out four of the last five games.
Here’s what we know: Among the group of defensemen the Sharks have who are 24 or younger, Thrun has the most trust from the coaching staff.
ZADINA’S CONFIDENCE: Zadina scored his eighth goal of the season at the 9:34 mark of the third period off an assist from Jan Rutta to cut Nashville’s lead to 3-2.
After he scored twice on Feb. 15 against the Calgary Flames to snap a nine-game goal drought, Zadina now has three goals in four games and eight on the season in 51 games. He is approaching his career high of 10, set in 2021-2022 when he played 74 games for the Detroit Red Wings.
Zadina had four shots on goal Saturday. This season, in the six games in which he has four or more shots, he has five goals and two assists. In the 45 other games where he’s shot it three times or less, he has three goals and eight assists.
Zadina can make good things happen when he has the puck on his stick.
“He’s played well, not just because he’s scoring.” Quinn said of Zadina “I think he’s done a good job in a lot of other areas. I’m happy for him.”
Zadina, like other Sharks players, has been putting in work with development coach Mike Ricci. It’s paying off.
“Ricci told me that hard work pays off, but you never know when,” Zadina said. “It’s slowly coming and I’m just trying to do my job.”
