San Jose Sharks visit Detroit Red Wings in Showdown in Motown

What a game it was last time we got to see the San Jose Sharks take to the ice. William Eklund and Tomas Hertl rescuing a win to take the hockey club off of the bottom of the NHL standings. However, the job is not done. Tonight, their opponent in the final game of this long East Coast road trip before heading back west is the Detroit Red Wings.

Hoping that this game is not as back-and-forth as the game at UBS Arena, this should be a good test for the Sharks. This is a good team in Detroit, without a shadow of a doubt. They have some of the best depth across their skater core of any team in the NHL. But they have a few known flaws in their defensive end. If the Sharks can exploit that tonight against a foe they used to contend with in the Western Conference, perhaps they can get another win.

Former Red Wings draft pick Filip Zadina will be trying to prove that he made the right decision to leave all that money on the table in Detroit to take a chance on himself on San Jose. There would be no better way for the former sixth overall pick to do that than with a win tonight over the team that he played for in the city he called home for five years.

On the Detroit side, the big story will be number 88. Future hockey hall of famer Patrick Kane will be making his season debut and his Red Wings debut tonight. The long time Chicago Blackhawk was traded to the New York Rangers at the trade deadline last year and joined the Wings after hip surgery in the summer. With three of the original six teams on his resume so far, we can expect him to work his way to Toronto, Boston, and Montreal over the coming seasons.

Projected Lineups

San Jose Sharks

Fabian Zetterlund - Mikael Granlund - Anthony Duclair
William Eklund - Tomas Hertl - Alexander Barabanov
Justin Bailey - Nico Sturm - Kevin Labanc
Mike Hoffman - Jacob MacDonald - Filip Zadina

Mario Ferraro - Kyle Burroughs
Marc-Edouard Vlasic - Calen Addison
Nikita Okhotyuk - Jan Rutta

Kaapo Kahkonen
Mackenzie Blackwood

Detroit Red Wings

Alex DeBrincat - Joe Veleno - Patrick Kane
Robby Fabbri - Dylan Larkin - Lucas Raymond
Michael Rasmussen - Andrew Copp - David Perron
Klim Kostin - Daniel Sprong - Christian Fischer

Jake Walman - Moritz Seider
Ben Chiarot - Jeff Petry
Justin Holl - Shayne Gostisbehere

Ville Husso
Alex Lyon

Puck Drop

This will be a 4 p.m Pacific puck drop as the Sharks look to make it a winning stint on the East Coast. To say that when the team did not have a single road win before heading out is insane, but they have proven that there is life within this roster. They can cause problems for any team that takes them lightly. Will they be able to use the underdog mentality to beat a Detroit Red Wings roster that has caused a few upsets of its own?