The San Jose Sharks hope to start building a brighter future for this roster by seeing signs of growth in their youth movement. That begins tonight when Team Teal takes on the Calgary Flames. Since last month's trade deadline, the Sharks' youth movement has been urgent, moving on from many veterans. Some of the young kids coming in have been good, and they're playing for their place on this roster next season when the Sharks hope to be better.
San Jose will be looking for Macklin Celebrini to continue dominating the league. He's not scored a goal in his last eight games, and the Sharks need their young, budding star to score. Just breaking out of this slump will benefit the Sharks because it will lead to confidence for the young Canadian, and the team's disappointing campaign will have damaged that a lot. Building him up with the talent around him is paramount to the team's future success.
Calgary has a very slim hope of making the postseason, so this is a fantastic chance for the Sharks to play spoiler and try to ruin their Pacific Division rivals' season. It's nothing more than an annoyance for the Flames since they are likely out of the race already, but the Sharks can help put the final nail in the coffin if they can collect two points in their penultimate home game of the year.
Projected Lineups
Calgary Flames
Yegor Sharangovich - Nazem Kadri - Martin Pospisil
Jonathan Huberdeau - Morgan Frost - Matt Coronato
Joel Farabee - Mikael Backlund - Blake Coleman
Ryan Lomberg - Kevin Rooney - Adam Klapka
Joel Hanley - MacKenzie Weegar
Kevin Bahl - Rasmus Andersson
Jake Bean - Brayden Pachal
Dustin Wolf
Dan Vladar
San Jose Sharks
Tyler Toffoli - Macklin Celebrini - Will Smith
William Eklund - Alex Wennberg - Collin Graf
Carl Grundstrom - Ty Dellandrea - Cameron Lund
Barclay Goodrow - Zach Ostapchuk - Noah Gregor
Mario Ferraro - Jack Thompson
Lucas Carlsson - Timothy Liljegren
Henry Thrun - Marc-Edouard Vlasic
Alexandar Georgiev
Georgi Romanov
Puck Drop
Tonight's game will begin at 7:30 p.m. as the Sharks try to find a few more high notes before the end of the year. The last game against Seattle resulted in Team Teal getting blasted by the Kraken in a battle of the depths, but now the Flames try to come into the tank hoping to keep the pressure up on Minnesota and St Louis, and the Sharks will look to end that.