With the Sharks’ playoff hopes all but extinguished, the intrigue of particular matchups is what makes tuning in still worthwhile at this point. Few are more intriguing than tonight’s showdown between the Sharks and Penguins that features Sidney Crosby’s first and only visit to the Bay Area this season. Crosby is having a down year by his lofty standards but is still fifth in NHL scoring and remains one of the league’s most electrifying talents, with teammate Evgeni Malkin not far behind.

Pittsburgh hasn’t won a game in San Jose since 1997 and the clubs’ most recent meeting in California was one of the most exciting regular season games of the 2013-14 season so we should be in for a good one even if the outcome seems largely academic for the Sharks.

Tale Of The Tape

	@
38-18-9, 85 points	Record	32-26-8, 72 points
3rd in Metropolitan	Rank	5th in Pacific
53.4%	Score-Adj. Fenwick	50.7%
100.9	PDO	99.4
20.4	PP%	21.8
85.4	PK%	79.6

7PM PDT | SAP Center | San Jose, California
TV: NBCSN | Radio: SJSharks.com, 98.5 KFOX
Know Your Enemy: Pensburgh

Projected Sharks Lineup

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

Marc-Edouard Vlasic – Justin Braun
Scott Hannan – Brent Burns
Mirco Mueller – Brenden Dillon

Antti Niemi
Alex Stalock

Projected Penguins Lineup

David Perron – Sidney Crosby – Patric Hornqvist
Chris Kunitz – Evgeni Malkin – Blake Comeau
Daniel Winnik – Brandon Sutter – Beau Bennett
Nick Spaling – Maxim Lapierre – Steve Downie

Paul Martin – Kris Letang
Derrick Pouliot – Ben Lovejoy
Rob Scuderi – Ian Cole

Marc-Andre Fleury
Thomas Greiss

Last Meeting

Just over one year ago, Patrick Marleau scored shorthanded while Brent Burns and Joe Thornton also tallied in the third period to help the Sharks overcome 2-0 and 3-2 deficits to defeat the Penguins in regulation at the Tank.

Storylines

• Matt Irwin is still day-to-day with the injury he sustained during practice late last week and isn’t expected to draw back in tonight, meaning Scott Hannan will retain his spot alongside Brent Burns.
• San Jose is 10-0-1 against the Penguins in the teams’ last 11 meetings at the Tank.
• Crosby’s last game in San Jose was easily one of the worst of his illustrious career as he had zero points and went minus-5 in that 5-3 Pittsburgh loss a year ago./