GDB 80.0: No way, San Jose (2pm MT, SNW)

Photo credit:isuckatpicking

1 year ago

If you were looking for yet another Oilers matinee then have I got a treat for you. This afternoon, the Oilers will take on the San Jose Sharks for the third of four meetings on the season, and for some reason, the NHL feels as though we want to watch this happen in the daylight hours.

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As much as it annoys me that we have yet another matinee to get through — by my count the Oilers have had 14 of them this year — this game is too important for me to get too worked up about it. Instead, all I care about is putting two more points in the bank as the Oilers continue their push for home-ice advantage in the playoffs and maybe even the division if we’re lucky. Of course, there are no easy games in this league and the San Jose Sharks are playing some pretty solid hockey over the last couple of weeks. The point here is that the Oilers should probably win this game, but they can’t take it lightly either.

At 3-4-3 over their last 10 games, the Sharks are limping toward the finish line with no indication that they’re embracing the spoiler role whatsoever. Even with wins over Vegas and Winnipeg mixed into that stretch of mediocrity, the Sharks haven’t been able to string any wins together or really stand in anyone’s way that needed the points. Losers of their last two games, San Jose is another team that the Oilers need to beat if they have any chance of catching Vegas for the Pacific Division lead. Now three points behind with only a trio of games left to play, the Oilers will need to win out and get some luck while they’re at it, but chasing down the Golden Knights can only happen with another win this afternoon at the SAP Center in San Jose.

Let’s see what the numbers say…

THE NUMBERS

	OILERS	SHARKS
RECORD	47-23-9	22-40-16
WIN/LOSS STREAK	W6	L2
Last 10 Games	9-0-1	3-4-3
GOALS FOR	312	228
GOALS AGAINST	256	301
POWER PLAY%	32.6	18.5
PENALTY KILL%	76.6	83.1
AVG. SHOTS/FOR	33.5	29.7
AVG. SHOTS/AGAINST	31.5	31.9
TEAM SAVE%	.913	.893
CORSI FOR%	52.25	49.04
PDO	1.004	0.983
TEAM SHOOTING%	9.07	8.91
EXPECTED GOALS FOR%	53.50	51.24

Numbers courtesy of Natural Stat Trick (Sv%, CF%, PDO, Shooting%, xGF% all at 5×5)

PRESENTED BY BETWAY

LINEUPS…

Oilers UPDATED

RNH – McDavid – Hyman
Kane – Draisaitl – Yamamoto
Kostin – Bjugstad – Janmark
Foegele – Ryan

Nurse – Desharnais
Ekholm – Bouchard
Kulak – Broberg
Demers

Skinner

The most interesting part of this story is that the Oilers recalled Jason Demers on Thursday in an effort to get him into his 700th NHL game against his former team, the San Jose Sharks. A classy gesture to be sure, I kinda forgot that Demers was in the organization let alone the fact that he was sitting on game 699 in his career. So to have the Oilers give him the start against his former club to reach the milestone is a pretty cool way to honour the longtime Shark veteran. Demers will likely fill in for Cody Ceci, who has gone home for the birth of his child.

Listed above are the practice lines from yesterday that Bob Stauffer tweeted out, so we’ll see if there are any changes when the puck drops.

EDIT: Desharnais gets the bump to the first pairing with Ceci out. We’ll see how long these pairings last for but there you have it.

Sharks

Bordeleau – Couture – Gushchin
Peterson – Hertl – Gregor
Svechnikov – Sturm – Labanc
MacDonald – Lorentz – Zetterlund

Vlasic – Karlsson
Ferraro – Benning
Thrun – Simek

Kahkonen

When the Sharks and Oilers met up a couple of weeks ago, San Jose played our boys pretty damned hard and that has me thinking that we’re likely to get another dose of the same thing. I guess what I’m expecting is that this won’t be an easy out just like Anaheim wasn’t an easy out on Wednesday, and that means the Oilers will need to come up with another detailed effort to ensure they’re cashing in two points. The thing I like most about Edmonton’s game right now is that they’re finding new ways to win over and above putting a touchdown on the board, and I’m betting on them needing the same resilience again today.

WHAT THEY’RE SAYING…

From Blades of Teal:

We’re well into the final month of the NHL regular season, and who is going to be named the award winners is starting to become more clear.
One of the best indicators for who is going to win each award is the betting odds and it looks like the Sharks will have at least one award winner this season.
Erik Karlsson is about to cap off one of the best comeback seasons in recent NHL history. He leads the list of names to win this year’s James Norris Trophy as the best defenseman.
Karlsson had failed to live up to expectations since joining the San Jose Sharks in 2018, unable to repeat the success he had with the Ottawa Senators. Things went from bad to wore the past two seasons, recording only 22 points in 2020-21 and 35 points in 2021-22.
Then, out of the blue, Karlsson put together the best season of his career. Through 71 games, Karlsson has recorded an eye-popping 87 points as a defenseman. That’s already a career high for him, including both 2012 and 2015 which were years that he had won the NHL’s Norris Trophy.
The Sharks season was disappointing as a whole, but they at least have Karlsson to hang their hat on as they look ahead to the 2023-24 campaign.

TONIGHT…

Photoshop: Tom Kostiuk

Game Day Prediction: The Oilers get three goals early to build the head start they need to close out the 4-2 win.

Obvious Game Day Prediction: Connor McDavid registers yet another multi-point game to get himself to 150 points on the season.

Not-So-Obvious Game Day Prediction: Mattias Ekholm rips a blast from the point in the first period, opening the scoring and securing his fourth goal as an Edmonton Oiler.

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