Sharks lose again

SAN JOSE – The top three teams in the Pacific Division are playing o game of hot potato. No one seems to want to win a game these days.

And that goes especially true for the Sharks who lost again, their sixth straight loss, 3-2, to the visiting Detroit Red Wings.

“We got to fix it,” forward Logan Couture said. “There’s certain things we need to do better. As a whole, I think our compete and 1-on-1 battles and all that need to go way up.

“It’s frustrating to lose six in a row. We’re too good of a team to go on a slide like this. These losses at home are not good, especially this one tonight. I thought we’d come with a better effort.”

The Red Wings built a 3-0 lead on goals from Dylan Larkin, Andreas Athanasiou and Christoffer Ehn.

“We’re here to battle,” Larkin said. “We want to play for each other and we want to play for next year, and our leaders make sure we’re ready every game. So guys have opportunities in front of them, and the opportunity right now is to prove themselves in this league, so these guys coming in now are doing a great job battling and playing hard for us.”

Jonathan Bernier made 39 saves to get the win.

Larkin scored with 38 seconds gone in the game.

“It was the first shift of the game they scored, and it seems like that’s been happening too often lately,” Couture said. “We’re falling behind 1-0 early, and then you’re fighting to get back in it.”

Evander Kane and Tomas Hertl scored in the third period to put some lipstick on the dismal effort.

“I didn’t think we had great energy until the third period,” Sharks coach Peter DeBoer said. “I thought we had desperation in the third, but we need it for 60 minutes.”

[WATCH: All Red Wings vs. Sharks highlights]

Martin Jones made 20 in the loss.

“From my view, I thought we just gave them too much respect,” Kane said. “Coming into this game, we’d lost five (straight). I thought we just backed off. We had one guy forechecking and four guys sitting back. We didn’t forecheck as a group of five. If you don’t do that, you’re not going to turn the puck over.

“We didn’t create enough 5-on-5. I think we’re too predictable right now. In the offensive zone, we got to mix things up and be a little more deceptive, and hungrier.”