The Pittsburgh Penguins will look to take seven out of a possible eight points on their four game road trip when they take on the San Jose Sharks this evening. The last time the Penguins played in San Jose was the night they won the Stanley Cup. Mostly every player dressing for the Penguins tonight was a part of that evening. The same goes for the Sharks as they have had little roster turnover as well.
Earlier this year the San Jose Sharks took it to the Pittsburgh Penguins for a majority of the game. They played well enough to win, but the Penguins came out of nowhere in the third period and stole the game. The last game also did not include Sidney Crosby or Kris Letang so tonight is going to have a way different look than on October 20th.
San Jose is the best Score-Adjusted Fenwick team in the NHL right now (55.3%) and Pittsburgh is the eleventh best (51.0%). The Sharks are still a really good team.
Here is the matchup
Hockeyviz.com @Ineffectivemath
Here are some notable things heading into the game.
Martin Jones was excellent against the Pittsburgh Penguins in the Stanley Cup Final last spring, but he has had a rough start to the season. His even-strength save percentage is only 90.4%. That is pretty terrible. Marc-Andre Fleury is sitting at 92.1% which is right around league average. Matt Murray stopped 32 out of 33 shots in his season debut against Anaheim. Regardless of who the Penguins play in net they have been outperforming Jones so far in 2016-17. It does however look like Matt Murray is getting the start.
Murray facing #Pens top PP. Looks like he may get the start tonight -SK
— Pens Inside Scoop (@PensInsideScoop) November 5, 2016
Joe Thornton and Patrick Marleau have been not great at generating offense during 5v5 action this year.
Patrick Marleau has shown signs of slowing down in recent years, but Joe Thornton has not. The alarm bells don't need to sound on Thornton just yet but his offensive production at even-strength is something to monitor moving forward. For reference Joe Thornton was at 2.50 last year which is incredibly good. Patrick Marleau was at 1.16 which is not very good at all.
Brent Burns being at 2.64 as a defenseman is awesome. He really is one of the best players at his position and creates a ton for the Sharks. He and Letang are similar in that if either player is out of the lineup those teams are going to be hit hard by their absence.
Kris Letang is coming off back to back two points games since returning from injury. Kris Letang has only played in six games so far this year and his six points are twice as many as any other Penguins defensemen. Justin Schultz and Trevor Daley have three points while Cole and Maatta each have one. Brian Dumoulin is still looking for point number one on the year.
The Hagelin-Crosby-Hornqvist line was only together for part of last game. Tonight should be their full game debut. Even if San Jose goes strength on strength I think it will be difficult to slow down the Penguins trio.
Could we be seeing a Conor Sheary return? He was doing line rushes as a regular member of the fourth line and taking power play reps with the second unit.
#Pens lines:
— Pens Inside Scoop (@PensInsideScoop) November 5, 2016
Hagelin-Crosby-Hornqvist
Kunitz-Malkin-Kessel
Wilson-Bonino-Rust
Sheary-Cullen-Fehr
-SK
Tom Kuhnhackl doing a lot of standing around as Pens take line rushes at morning skate, even more than Sestito. Sheary in on 4th line.
— Bill West (@BWest_Trib) November 5, 2016
There hasn't been much in the way of Tom Kuhnhackl information, but I am willing to bet he is banged up a little bit.
Potentially the Last Night Owl Club until March.
Thanks for reading!