Two games down, five to go on the Sharks’ season-high, seven-game road trip. They’ll play the third game, their penultimate visit to a Canadian city on this swing, today in Montreal against a Canadiens team that currently sits atop the Eastern Conference and two points behind the Anaheim Ducks for first overall in the NHL standings. Largely on the strength of Carey Price’s unbelievable, MVP-worthy season, the Habs have enjoyed a ton of success this year in spite of some inauspicious underlying numbers. The Sharks will try to expose them the way they did when these teams met earlier in the month.

Tale Of The Tape

	@
35-28-8, 78 points	Record	45-20-7, 97 points
5th in Pacific	Rank	1st in Atlantic
50.8%	Score-Adj. Fenwick	49.7%
99.3	PDO	101.7
21.6	PP%	15.2
79.0	PK%	84.4

4PM PDT | Bell Centre | Montreal, Quebec
TV: CSNCA-HD, NHL Network, CBC | Radio: SJSharks.com, 98.5 KFOX
Know Your Enemy: Habs Eyes On The Prize

Projected Sharks Lineup

Joe Pavelski – Joe Thornton – Melker Karlsson
Matt Nieto – Logan Couture – Tommy Wingels
Patrick Marleau – Chris Tierney – Tomas Hertl
Daniil Tarasov – Ben Smith – Barclay Goodrow

Marc-Edouard Vlasic – Justin Braun
Matt Irwin – Brent Burns
Mirco Mueller – Brenden Dillon

Antti Niemi
Alex Stalock

Projected Canadiens Lineup

Max Pacioretty – Tomas Plekanec – Brendan Gallagher
Alex Galchenyuk – David Desharnais – P-A Parenteau
Jacob De La Rose – Lars Eller – Devante Smith-Pelly
Brandon Prust – Manny Malhotra – Dale Weise

Andrei Markov – P.K. Subban
Tom Gilbert – Jeff Petry
Alexei Emelin – Greg Pateryn

Carey Price
Dustin Tokarski

Last Meeting

Just hours after being acquired from Chicago right before the NHL’s trade deadline, Ben Smith scored a goal and added an assist in his Sharks debut, leading San Jose to a 4-0 win over Montreal on home ice. Alex Stalock made 20 saves for the shutout.

Storylines

• The Canadiens have not scored a goal on the Sharks since December 1st, 2011 when they lost in a shootout at the Tank.
• Habs winger Max Pacioretty and Sharks forward Joe Pavelski have each scored 122 goals since the start of the 2011-12 season. No American-born NHL player has scored more than those two over that span.
• San Jose appears to be going with the same lineup that won in Toronto, though Logan Couture’s line was wearing a practice jersey designating they’ll be the second line tonight despite getting fewer minutes than the Tierney line on Thursday./