Preview: San Jose at Colorado

Another day, another noon start for the Sharks. The finale of this weekend road trip takes them to Denver, where they’ll try to win just their second game in seven tries against a Colorado Avalanche team that’s currently sitting in last place in the Central Division.

With Alex Stalock starting the first half of the back-to-back yesterday, Martin Jones will be in net for the Sharks this afternoon in a game they ought to win. The Avs are 3–6–1 with a -5 goal differential, and Semyon Varlamov’s started the season 2–4 with an .889 save percentage and 3.37 goals against average. The Sharks are healthy again with the exception of Logan Couture; time to salvage the road trip before returning to San Jose for four games in front of the home fans.

Tale Of The Tape

	@
5–5–0	Record	3–6–1
4th in Pacific	Rank	7th in Central
51.2%	Score-Adj. Fenwick	42.2%
101.2	PDO	98.5
16.1	PP%	16.7
80.0	PK%	78.9

12:00 PST – Pepsi Center – Denver, Colorado
TV: CSN-CA – Radio: KFOX 98.5
Know Your Enemy: Mile High Hockey

Last meeting

The Sharks’ playoff hopes were still alive as they beat Colorado 5–1 thanks to 19 saves from Alex Stalock and goals by Scott Hannan (!), Chris Tierney, Patrick Marleau, Logan Couture, and John Scott (!!). Seriously, the Scotts both scored. John’s was into the empty net.

Storylines

San Jose needs a win pretty badly. There are no must-win games in November, but no one wants to drop below .500 after starting 4–0.
The power play scored two goals yesterday (and the penalty kill scored another), but the Sharks were shut out at even strength. It’ll be hard to beat even a last place team if that doesn’t change./

Early start, so here are this afternoon’s expected lineups.

Sharks

Joonas Donskoi – Joe Thornton – Joe Pavelski

Patrick Marleau – Tomas Hertl – Joel Ward

Matt Nieto – Chris Tierney – Tommy Wingels

Barclay Goodrow – Ben Smith – Mike Brown

Marc-Edouard Vlasic – Justin Braun

Paul Martin – Brent Burns

Brenden Dillon – Matt Tennyson

Martin Jones

Alex Stalock

Avalanche