Who: Pittsburgh Penguins (3-2-0, 6 points, 4th place Metropolitan Division) @ San Jose Sharks (0-2-2, 2 points, 7th place Pacific Division)<\/p>\n
How to Watch: Locally broadcast on SN-PIT and NBC Sports California, streaming on ESPN+<\/p>\n
Pens\u2019 Path Ahead: The Penguins return home next Tuesday for a 7 p.m. ET home game against the Vancouver Canucks before hitting the road again for a Thursday matchup with the defending champion Florida Panthers.<\/p>\n
Opponent Track: The Sharks got off to a dispiriting start to the 2025-26 season with back-to-back overtime losses to the Vegas Golden Knights and Anaheim Ducks followed by a 5-1 blowout by the Utah Carolina Hurricanes. San Jose is still looking for its first win of the season after last night\u2019s 6-3 road loss to the Utah Mammoth.<\/p>\n
Season Series: The Penguins will meet up with the Sharks again in Pittsburgh on December 13th. These two teams split the season series in 2024-25, with the Pens coming out on the winning side of a five-round home shootout last November but conceding a 2-1 road loss in January.<\/p>\n
Hidden Stat: The Sharks are tied with two other teams (the Ottawa Senators and Calgary Flames) for the worst goal differential in the NHL at minus-9 as of Friday.<\/p>\n
Getting to know the Sharks<\/p>\n
Projected lines (from Friday\u2019s game at Utah)<\/p>\n
Jeff Skinner – Macklin Celebrini – Philipp Kurashev<\/p>\n
William Eklund – Alex Wennberg – Tyler Toffoli<\/p>\n
Collin Graf – Ty Dellandrea – Will Smith<\/p>\n
Barclay Goodrow – Adam Gaudette – Ryan Reaves<\/p>\n
Nick Leddy – Dmitry Orlov<\/p>\n
Mario Ferraro – Vincent Iorio<\/p>\n
Sam Dickinson – Vincent Desharnais<\/p>\n
Goalies: Alex Nedeljkovic (Yaroslav Askarov started last night)<\/p>\n
Scratches: Michael Misa, Shakir Mukhamadullin<\/p>\n
Injuries: John Klingberg, Timothy Liljegren<\/p>\n
One highlight of Friday night\u2019s loss for the Sharks was Macklin Celebrini, who showed off his hands with his first goal of the season.Askarov gave up six goals on 34 shots last night, setting the Penguins on track for a reunion with Alex Nedeljkovic. The former Pens netminder has allowed at least four goals in both of his previous starts this season, although in his defense the Sharks are so far allowing an NHL-high<\/a> 38 shots against per game.The Sharks spent this offseason loading up on<\/a> veterans, adding former Penguin Ryan Reaves alongside Jeff Skinner, John Klingberg, Adam Gaudette, Dmitry Orlov, Nick Leddy and Philipp Kurashev in order to add more experience around the team\u2019s young core of Celebrini, Will Smith and William Eklund.San Jose general manager Mike Grier is likely looking to flip some, if not most, of those veterans at the trade deadline. Skinner, Reaves, Kurashev, Leddy and Klingberg are all pending UFAs<\/a>.Both aspects of that plan\u2014 the Sharks\u2019 young stars learning from veteran players, and veteran players increasing their value so contenders will pay up to grab them at the deadline\u2014 depend on things going better than they have during San Jose\u2019s dismal four-game start to the season. Ryan Warsofsky, who formerly worked with Erik Karlsson in San Jose before his promotion to head coach ahead of the 2024-25 season, could decide to mix these lines up in order to spark some changes tonight against the Pens.<\/p>\n Projected lines (from Friday\u2019s practice<\/a>)<\/p>\n Rickard Rakell – Sidney Crosby – Bryan Rust<\/p>\n Anthony Mantha – Evgeni Malkin – Justin Brazeau<\/p>\n Tommy Novak – Ben Kindel – Filip Hallander<\/p>\n Connor Dewar – Blake Lizotte – Noel Acciari<\/p>\n Parker Wotherspoon \/ Erik Karlsson<\/p>\n Caleb Jones \/ Harrison Brunicke<\/p>\n Goalies: Arturs Silovs, Tristan Jarry<\/p>\n Potential Scratches: Philip Tomasino, Connor Clifton, Mathew Dumba<\/p>\n IR: Kevin Hayes (upper body), Jack St. Ivany (lower body), Rutger McGroarty (upper body), Joel Blomqvist (lower body)<\/p>\n The Penguins practiced in Los Angeles on Friday before taking the trip up north to San Jose. Ben Kindel, Harrison Brunicke and Filip Hallander all seem to be on track to stay in the lineup. Philip Tomasino was bumped out as Noel Acciari hung onto his spot on the fourth line.Evgeni Malkin has seven points through the first five games of the season. That\u2019s good for the fourth-best season start by a forward aged 39 or older in NHL history, per Penguins PR<\/a>. Only Gordie Howe in 1968, Jean Belliveau in 1970 and Joe Sakic in 2008 have totaled more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Who: Pittsburgh Penguins (3-2-0, 6 points, 4th place Metropolitan Division) @ San Jose Sharks (0-2-2, 2 points, 7th…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":222769,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,1325,575,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-222768","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-general","11":"tag-nhl","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222768","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=222768"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222768\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/222769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}