The New Jersey Devils continued to shock the hockey world on Thursday night as they picked up a come-from-behind road win over the Ottawa Senators and moved to 6-1-0 in the process.
Tonight they'll look to build on that, and head into the bye on a positive note, with a win over the San Jose Sharks.
While many of San Jose's top players are past their primes, and the Sharks are off to a 2-3-0 start, this is still a team to take seriously.
They're controlling 55% of the shot attempts, and out-chancing opponents, at 5v5 but are being outscored due to a shooting percentage below five and a save percentage below 90. Both are unsustainably low and in line to regress positively.
Simply put, their results are luck driven, not due to poor play, so the Devils will have to be on their game if they're going to win again tonight.
Here are the projected lineups:
New Jersey
Taylor Hall - Nico Hischier - Drew Stafford Marcus Johansson - Adam Henrique - Kyle Palmieri Jesper Bratt - Pavel Zacha - Jimmy Hayes Miles Wood - Blake Coleman - Brian Gibbons
Andy Greene - Damon Severson John Moore - Steve Santini Will Butcher - Mirco Mueller
Keith Kinkaid
San Jose (via DailyFaceoff.com)
Kevin Labanc - Joe Thornton - Joe Pavelski Tomas Hertl - Logan Couture - Melker Karlsson Timo Meier - Chris Tierney - Mikkel Boedker Jannik Hansen - Ryan Carpenter - Joonas Donskoi
Marc-Edouard Vlasic - Justin Braun Joakim Ryan - Brent Burns Brendan Dillon - Tim Heed
Martin Jones
Five things to watch:
1) The Sharks rank 7th in Expected Goals/60 at 5v5 while the Devils rank 30th in Expected Goals Against/60. They'll likely concede quite a few chances, especially in the latter half of a back-to-back, so Keith Kinkaid will need to be on his game.
2) Hischier has been generating chances consistently and only last night did he finally get rewarded. I think the flood gates will open if he continues to create like he has thus far.
3) If I'm John Hynes, I'm using last change to my advantage and controlling the matchups so Nico and Hall see as little of Vlasic as possible. I expect he will.
4) The Devils have taken penalties at an alarming rate and, if that continues, it's only a matter of time before they start losing games as a result. They need to be more disciplined.
5) Severson struggled against the Stamkos line the other day so Hynes made an on the fly change and started using Santini against that unit -- and it worked. It'll be interesting to see if Hynes goes straight to a Santini vs Pavelski matchup tonight or runs back Greene and Severson.
Puck drop is just after 7:00 p.m. Eastern and can be seen on MSG+ and NBCSCA.