There is no secret formula to winning in the NHL come spring. The blueprint has been out there for decades. It’s written in bruises, blocked shots and blood. You follow the rules, or you go home.

The San Jose Sharks are going home.

There are still games to play, sure, and yes, being in the hunt this late into the season is a victory for a franchise that has spent the better part of a decade wandering the desert. But those utterly non-competitive back-to-back shellackings at the hands of the Oilers and Ducks this week?

That wasn’t just a slump. That was an existential crisis disguised as a hockey game.

The Sharks’ rebuild trajectory was pointing straight up. And everything — including the ultimate thing — is still possible for this team in the years to come.

But the team’s poor play after the Olympic break — especially when the lights were brightest — has allowed some doubt to creep in.

If the Sharks wants to stop wasting Aprils playing out the string, they have to look at the three tried-and-true rules of playoff hockey, realize they just went 0-for-3, and never let it happen again.

Rule 1: Get dirty

Nobody cares how pretty your game is when the games start meaning something. Ask the Florida Panthers. Ask Vegas. It’s about survival. You chip it out, you grind it out, you win board battles and you throw the puck at the net until something bounces your way.

The Sharks? They spent two games trying to paint the Mona Lisa while a back-alley brawl was going down.

Against Anaheim, it took them nearly 15 minutes to register a single shot on goal — and that was on a dumped-in icing attempt. They followed that with a shotless first half of the second period.

It’s the classic hallmark of a young team trying to out-skill a league that, when you get to the spring, demands you out-will it. The baby Sharks forwards are out here looking for the extra pass, trying to dangle defensemen, hunting for the perfect high-percentage look.

Guess what? They never came.

Playoff-caliber defenses were simply closing the gaps and laughing.

The Sharks can do some of these little things that win games this time of the year well (but not consistently).

But the team’s frankly unbelievable lack of shots has been damning these past two games.

They were too cute by half.

Embrace the chaos, dig down and know that the only way to beat grit is with grit. Especially when you don’t have a blue-line group that can carry the puck to the red line, much less through the neutral zone.

The Sharks have a forward group that makes things happen in the corners and with loose pucks in front of the net.

If only pucks were put in front of the net.

Rule 2: The blue line is your lifeline

You don’t win Stanley Cups — hell, you don’t even sniff the postseason — without a defensive corps you can trust when the building gets loud. You need six guys who can command the ice moving backward, move the puck going forward and keep control of the game.

Solid, if unspectacular, is the name of the game in the spring.

San Jose currently has exactly one defenseman they can trust to do that: Vincent Desharnais.

A reliable, one-way, stay-at-home guy.

After that? It’s a comedy show. Mario Ferraro is getting bullied. Shakir Mukhamadullin is pure chaos, which is why he spends half his time in the press box. Nick Leddy is skating like he’s knee-deep in wet concrete, and John Klingberg’s issues have been documented to death.

Then there’s Dmitry Orlov, who has been so unplayably bad lately that he literally became a meme amongst puckheads on the internet. And rookie Sam Dickinson, bless his heart, has spent the last two weeks getting put in a blender by opposing forechecks.

GM Mike Grier’s offseason mandate isn’t a tweak; it’s a demolition. A total rebuild of the blueline corps.

Only Orlov and Dickinson are on the books for next year. It’s a blank slate, but it’s a terrifying one. And if things don’t change dramatically, the Sharks’ fate will be the same next season, too.

Rule 3: Know your matchups (and don’t panic)

Late in the year, every shift is a chess match. This is why, come playoff time, you hear about bench location and last-shift rights.

But, on a more basic level, you need four lines with an actual identity so you know exactly what you have, so you can match up with what your opponent has on a shift-by-shift basis.

What you don’t need is a head coach slamming the panic button like a rat in a Skinner box. (A Jeff Skinner box?)

Yet, here we are with Ryan Warsofsky. Over the last two weeks, his line blender has been stuck on high. He’s triple-shifting Macklin Celebrini. He’s ghosting Will Smith entirely after the first period. His top lines are a total hodgepodge, while he inexplicably leans on his fourth line as a crutch in big moments.

The Ty Dellandrea situation on Thursday said it all. First off, he was playing. Strange enough, but understandable in a back-to-back situation. But then he gets absolutely undressed by Leo Carlsson for a highlight-reel goal in the first. Warsofsky’s response? He rewards him. He moves him up the pecking order, giving him shifts with Michael Misa and, later, with Smith and Collin Graf.

Dellandrea wasn’t playing well. Warsofsky was just on tilt. He’s been like that since the real playoff push began.

Tinkering is a reality in the NHL. Breaking your own team’s chemistry because the pressure finally ticked up is another story entirely.

It begs a harsh but necessary question heading into the summer: Is Warsofsky just the guy to get the Sharks to a level of competence, or is he actually the guy who can take this team to serious contention?

He’ll have the chance to prove it next year, but the burden of proof now rests on his shoulders.

There you have it: The Sharks went 0-for-3. And because of it, they are about to be 0-for-7 on making the postseason this decade. The future might still be bright in San Jose, but the present just handed them a massive reality check.

And now an offseason — one where optimism will be mixed with a bit of urgency.

It’s a good place to be, so long as you’re not there for long.