For the third time in their last five games, the Sharks will face Edmonton but the Oilers team visiting the Bay Area tonight will be coached by a different man than the one who was behind the bench for the Oilers’ 5-2 loss to the Sharks at the Tank last Tuesday. Dallas Eakins has been relieved of his head coaching duties (and, in all likelihood, is relieved to be relieved of them), replaced at least temporarily by the two-headed coaching monster of Todd Nelson and GM Craig MacTavish.

Despite some real improvement in their underlying play, the Oilers have lost 16 of their last 17 games and are headed for their ninth straight postseason-less spring. The Sharks have a golden opportunity to rattle off their seventh win in a row at home and move into second place in the Pacific Division.

Tale Of The Tape

	@
7-19-6, 20	Record	17-11-4, 38 points
7th in Pacific	Rank	3rd in Pacific
48.1%	Score-Adj. Fenwick	52.1%
969	PDO	996
12.6	PP%	24.0
80.2	PK%	83.7

7:30PM PST | SAP Center | San Jose, California
TV: CSNCA-HD | Radio: SJSharks.com, 98.5 KFOX
Know Your Enemy: The Copper & Blue, Cult Of Hockey, Oilers Nation

Projected Sharks Lineup

Tomas Hertl – Joe Thornton – Joe Pavelski
Patrick Marleau – Logan Couture – Tommy Wingels
Barclay Goodrow – James Sheppard – Melker Karlsson
John Scott – Andrew Desjardins – Chris Tierney

Marc-Edouard Vlasic – Justin Braun
Brenden Dillon – Brent Burns
Scott Hannan – Matt Tennyson

Antti Niemi
Alex Stalock

Projected Oilers Lineup

Taylor Hall – Ryan Nugent-Hopkins – Teddy Purcell
David Perron – Mark Arcobello – Jordan Eberle
Nail Yakupov – Leon Draisaitl – Tyler Pitlick
Matt Hendricks – Boyd Gordon – Steve Pinizzotto

Andrew Ference – Jeff Petry
Brandon Davidson – Mark Fayne
Brad Hunt – Justin Schultz

Ben Scrivens
Viktor Fasth

Last Meeting

Last Tuesday, on the back half of a home-and-home series, the Sharks defeated the Oilers 5-2 on two goals from Joe Pavelski along with Barclay Goodrow’s first NHL marker. Marc-Edouard Vlasic and Mike Brown both left the game with injuries for San Jose while Melker Karlsson made his big league debut.

Storylines

• Edmonton’s only win in its last 17 games (as well as its only win against a Western Conference opponent this season) came against the Sharks on December 7th.
• Antti Niemi will start in goal for the Sharks, likely against Ben Scrivens for Edmonton who kept the Oilers in the game against Arizona on Tuesday before an eventual last-second overtime loss.
• John Scott draws into the lineup for Tye McGinn.