No NHL team has fewer hits than the Sharks this season, and if that were a statistic that coach Todd McLellan trusted to reflect his team’s physical play, he likely would be troubled.

But the process of charting hits — the lone measurement to gauge a team’s toughness within the rules — is flawed. For that reason and others, McLellan says he doesn’t value that stat.

“It’s a tough stat to really rely on,” McLellan said. “We don’t use those numbers at all as coaches.”

The Sharks have been credited with 591 hits this season, an average of 17.4 per game. What makes their spot at the bottom of the NHL rankings even more stark is the fact that the top three teams — the Los Angeles Kings with 1,012 hits, the Dallas Stars with 993 and the Phoenix Coyotes with 937 — are all Pacific Division rivals.

McLellan doesn’t reject the idea his players can do a better job of finishing their checks. “We can grind it out a little more, there’s no doubt about it.” But he isn’t worried about showing up on the short end of the nightly numbers.

Part of that is because he preaches a puck-control offense, and teams with the puck are usually the ones being hit. Part of that is because what constitutes a hit is subjective, varying from arena to arena and night to night.

McLellan cites two games this season to make that point. In New Jersey on Oct. 21, the Sharks outhit the Devils 9-6 on the official scoresheet. In Dallas on Nov. 19, the Stars registered 53 hits to 17 for San Jose.

Fifteen hits one game? Seventy in another? Some games are more physical, but that range seems more about who does the counting rather than what occurs on the ice.

The NHL employs off-ice officials in every building to track stats such as hits, giveaways and blocked shots. And there are some less-than-restrictive guidelines. A hit, for example, goes to the player initiating contact — but it also can depend on whether someone is taken out of the play.

Yet even one of those off-ice officials — who requested anonymity because of league policy limiting contact with the media — acknowledged that hits are a judgment call and expressed disbelief at some of the numbers involved.

“I want to see any regular season game with 70 hits,” he said.

Jamie McGinn leads the Sharks with 73 hits, and his attitude mirrors that of his coach.

“We do hit,” he said. “If you look back, I don’t know if we’re credited with all the hits that guys throw. It’s different in every building.” Maybe, he added, “we can step it up, each player, with one or two more hits a game. But I don’t think we’re going to dwell too much on that. We’ve just got to focus on putting the puck in the back of the net and winning games. Hitting is at the bottom of the list of things we have to work on.”

Douglas Murray has a well-earned reputation as the team’s biggest bruiser, and while the defenseman understands that the process isn’t perfect, he does think the Sharks do not take advantage of what should be one of their strengths.

“We should be more physical and wear teams down because we’re a big team,” said Murray, whose 59 hits are second-highest on the Sharks despite his missing 10 games with a wrist injury.

Ryane Clowe — whose 45 hits put him behind only McGinn and Murray — said the general topic has come up before the past few games.

“We talked about being more physical on the forecheck,” said Clowe, whose per-game hit count is down from 2.0 to 1.3 this season.

The numbers in San Jose’s 3-2 overtime loss to the Vancouver Canucks on Wednesday night do reflect that.

The Sharks did outhit the Canucks 30-24, but that was the first time since Dec. 3 that the Sharks had the higher hit count at the end of the game. In the intervening 10 games, San Jose was outhit 267-153.

Again, that number isn’t something that troubles McLellan, who has a different method of assessing his team’s physical play:

“If we’re forechecking the way we want to forecheck, the first thing that happens is we place the puck in the right spot,” he said. “The second thing is we have enough people in the area, and the third thing is we come up with the puck.

“If that means running over guys to get it, then so be it,” he said. “But if we’re coming up with the pucks, then we’re happy.”

For more on the Sharks, see David Pollak’s Working the Corners blog at blogs.mercurynews.com/sharks.