The Sharks are looking for a bounce-back performance against the Seattle Kraken tonight. The Sharks put together a lifeless performance against the Flames on Thursday night. Getting dominated for 60 minutes and wasting another stellar performance from Yaroslav Askarov.
They will be doing so without Jeff Skinner, the Veteran winger, who was placed on IR after an awkward fall into the boards ended his night early against Calgary. The injury looked ugly, but there is optimism in the Sharks' building that while Skinner will miss some time, it wasn’t as bad as it looked on the ice. In the meantime, center Zack Ostapchuck was called up from the Barracuda to fill the vacant roster spot. This is his second call-up this season, although he has yet to get into a game with the Sharks this year; that will change tonight.
Their lines tonight are as follows.
Kurashev - Celebrini - Smith
Eklund - Wennberg - Graf
Gaudette - Dellandrea - Toffoli
Goodrow - Ostapchuk - Reaves
Orlov -Klingberg
Ferraro - Mukhamadullin
Leddy - Desharnais
Nedelkjovic
The Sharks' lines have been put into the blender, and it makes sense after generating almost no offense on Thursday. Kruashev gets a stab on the first line with Mack and Will, while Graf gets bumped up into the top 6; he has been one of the Sharks' better forwards this past week. Toffoli finds himself in the bottom six. He has been demoted to the third line mid-game in the last few contests; hopefully, starting on the third line helps wake him out of his funk. He has looked sluggish as of late on the ice. Ostapchuck draws in centering the 4th line for his first game of the year.
On defense, there are also some changes; Liljegren and Dickinson are drawn out of the lineup for Mukhamadullin and Leddy. Warsofsky cited Dickinson as a development day, while Liljegren is scratched for the 2nd time in 3 games. While he has been solid for the Sharks offensively and moving the puck, he has looked lackluster defensively in what is a crowded blueline. Leddy draws back in for the first time since Oct 23rd after suffering an injury and a string of healthy scratches.
The Sharks have been bailed out by goaltending in recent weeks; both Askarov and Nedeljkovic have been phenomenal. Askarov has a 965% save percentage in November, while Nedeljkovic has a 954% save percentage in November. These numbers are asinine, given how badly the Sharks get outshot on a night-to-night basis. While I don’t expect either to crash back to their October form, their current play in the recent Sharks stretch is unsustainable. The Sharks need to clean up their play on defense and get better at holding onto the puck to give their goalies some help if they have any chance of winning games consistently. They will look to do that tonight in front of Nedeljkovic.