First of all, let me say initially that I only saw the third period of this game. The Sharks seemed to be playing very listlessly the entire period, and managed to commit three penalties in the final 10 minutes, one of them giving up at 5-on-3 for 40 seconds. If I remember correctly from the telecast, the Sharks have given up 11 2-man advantage goals this season. That’s a lot.

The Sharks have a terrible penalty kill, currently 26th out of 30 teams. To commit that many penalties late in the game against a division leader on the road is just stupid. I hope Ron Wilson is cracking some heads, because those are unacceptable mental errors. Looking back over the last few games, I see they committed 3 penalties in the last 10 minutes against Phoenix as well. The first of those resulting in a Coyotes’ power play goal to make the game 5-1, putting the game effectively out of reach. The Sharks also had two penalties in the last 10 minutes in the win against the Kings last week, when the game was only 3-1.

I wish I had access to a full NHL stats database so I could compare the Sharks against all the other teams this season in this regard, but I can’t, and it would take forever to page through all the box scores. Any ideas?