The Sharks are back in action tonight against the Edmonton Oilers and have a chance to move into second place in the Pacific Division after a long road back to relevancy.

While the Sharks were returning to form the Canucks, Flames and Kings all hit rough patches and have watch San Jose pass them by. San Jose’s recent stretch of success directly coincides with the acquisition of Brenden Dillon and they’ll look to avoid losing to the Oilers for the second time in the last five games.

Edmonton’s recent coaching change shouldn’t change the product on the ice too much, although a hot goaltender can ruin any teams night.

Keys to the Game

Pin Them Down

The Sharks are a good possession team and they should be able to control the play against Edmonton. They have to start at the initial puck drop and don’t concede possession – at any point – until the final whistle has sounded.

The Oilers do have talent up front that can burn you given enough chances so the Sharks habit of not showing up for portions of games will have to be rectified. It burned them already against Edmonton this year. Bombard the Oilers goaltender and pin the defense in their own end and good things will happen.

Make The Save

A misconception in the Sharks recent streak of good games has been that the goaltending has been playing better. That’s not the case. Niemi and Stalock have done what they’ve done all season long. The team in front of them has just played considerably better hockey.

Whoever gets the nod for the Sharks needs to make routine saves and just continue to do what is expected of them. As much as I enjoy Stalock’s animated puck play he needs to remain closer to the cage more often when he plays.

Special Teams

Special teams play can be a killer in games you should win. The Oilers PP has struggled all year and their PK is just below average.

San Jose needs to take advantage of any man-advantage opportunities they get and make an extra effort to deny Edmonton the same. If you play a strong 5v5 game but fail to get results on the sheet it can turn into anyone’s game via special teams play.


Cautiously optimistic is how I enter this game. The Oilers already stunned the Sharks once this year and if San Jose comes in thinking everything is all sunshine, lollipops and rainbows they’re going to get smacked again.

The Sharks have to realize that they can’t be satisfied with the climb they just made. That was simply a huge step they needed to make to become relevant in the Western Conference again. Now they have to keep that play up to remain in solid playoff positioning moving forward. Taking games off is not an option – they did that enough already this year – if they want to make people believe they’re for real again.

The Sharks haven’t had a sellout since November 6th against the Vancouver Canucks so it will be interesting to see if the hometown crowd has started to believe in this team again after an impressive 10 games worth of hockey. The Sharks blunders this year has left a bad taste in the mouth of fans – a taste not yet removed as of the last game against Nashville.

Another win tonight should go a long with the fans heading into a marquee matchup with the St Louis Blues on Saturday – the potential first sellout in over a month.

With the quality of competition upcoming for the Sharks beyond tonight’s game it puts more worth on the two points up for grabs. Should the Sharks hit a speed bump during the following six games they can take comfort in knowing they didn’t leave any extra points on the table.

Puck drop is at 10:30pmET(7:30pmPDT)

Thanks for reading.

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