SAINT PAUL, MINN. — It’s bad when a 4-1 loss constitutes an improvement.

But such is the case for the San Jose Sharks, who got blown out 7-2 by the Los Angeles Kings on Wednesday.

Macklin Celebrini scored the lone goal against the Minnesota Wild.

If you’re in the Sharks locker room, and you’re trying to stay positive, you can point to playing one of the best teams in the Western Conference to pretty much a standstill for the majority of the game.

But the cold reality? The San Jose Sharks have lost six of seven, with no end in sight.

The Sharks have a tough back-to-back against another Stanley Cup contender in the Dallas Stars on Saturday.

After the game, Ryan Warsofsky praised Michael Misa and Ty Dellandrea but admitted his fourth line hasn’t clicked in a while. Celebrini discussed what the Sharks did better tonight. Yaroslav Askarov shared what he saw on Quinn Hughes’s 3-1 dagger goal. And Darnell Nurse talked about controlling what you can control.

A deeper game story with micro-stats from Stathletes and game action clips, Sharks Insight, will be published soon.

Ryan Warsofsky

I liked his game. He was good. He was engaged. Thought he was good on that power play too. Made nice play down low.

Macklin Celebrini

For the most part, we took care of the puck really well. I thought we got a lot of offensive zone time. We were good on breakouts. We weren’t just hemmed in and them playing all over us all the time. I thought we got sustained O-zone pressure

Yaroslav Askarov

Just like the screen, Mis was on the line, flash screen, didn’t see anything. Got beat to the far side.

Darnell Nurse

To get out of it, the people that are going to get out of it are in this room. No one outside is going to control our destiny, our fate, or go out there and play for us. All we can control is what we do for each other now.

We know what we’re capable of and we’re not going to get discouraged by the first quarter of the year.

I thought we were a little more direct in the offensive zone, getting pucks to net, breaking out the puck. We weren’t so much slapping [the puck] on the boards, we were making plays to each other, skating the puck out of our zone. Those are all signs of us coming together and playing together.