Oilers Game Notes: Road trip continues against San Jose team desperate for points<\/p>\n
They\u2019ll be facing a Sharks team that has won five of its last six after a six-game losing streak in March.<\/p>\n
With Edmonton<\/a> pushing for first place in the Pacific Division and San Jose battling for a playoff spot, this one should feel like a playoff game.Edmonton Oilers @ San Jose SharksDate: Wednesday, April 8Start Time: 8:00 PM MTLocation: San Jose, California\u00a0Venue: SAP Center\u00a0Watch: Sportsnet<\/p>\n 1. The Sharks are looking to reach the playoffs for the first time since 2018-19, when a team led by Logan Couture, Joe Thornton, Brent Burns, and Erik Karlsson advanced to the Western Conference Final.<\/p>\n Since then, San Jose has undergone a full rebuild. Mike Grier replaced longtime general manager Doug Wilson in 2022, while Ryan Warsofsky is now behind the bench following the brief tenures of Bob Boughner and David Quinn.<\/p>\n Barclay Goodrow is the only player remaining from that 2019 playoff run. Reacquired off waivers from the Rangers in the 2024 offseason, Goodrow brings championship experience after winning two Stanley Cups in Tampa Bay and now serves as one of the veteran voices on a young team looking to take the next step.<\/p>\n 2. San Jose\u2019s rebuild is already starting to show results.<\/p>\n Macklin Celebrini, selected first overall in 2024, leads the team with 107 points in 76 games in his sophomore NHL season. Will Smith, the fourth overall pick in 2023, is second in scoring with 23 goals and 55 points in 63 games.<\/p>\n Beyond that emerging core, the Sharks have several promising young pieces, including 2025 second-overall pick Michael Misa, puck-moving defenceman Sam Dickinson, and goaltenders Yaroslav Askarov and Joshua Ravensbergen.<\/p>\n 3.\u00a0After finishing third in Calder Trophy voting in 2024-25, Macklin Celebrini is putting together one of the most productive seasons by a teenager in NHL history. One more point would give the 19-year-old the third-most in a single season by a teenager, trailing only Wayne Gretzky (137 in 1979-80) and Sidney Crosby (120 in 2005-06).<\/p>\n While he\u2019s unlikely to break into the Hart Trophy conversation alongside Nathan MacKinnon, Connor McDavid, and Nikita Kucherov, there\u2019s no denying that Celebrini has been San Jose\u2019s MVP. The Sharks are 2-15-3 in games where he doesn\u2019t record a point, and he\u2019s been involved in nearly half of the team\u2019s 232 goals.<\/p>\n 4.\u00a0Though the Sharks have been able to generate offence consistently, the team ranks 29th in the league in terms of goals against, giving them a minus-35 goal differential.<\/p>\n Askarov has appeared in 44 games in his first full NHL season, posting a 21-18-3 record along with a .885 save percentage. Alex Nedeljkovic owns a 16-13-4 record with a .896 save percentage as San Jose\u2019s 1B goalie, while Laurent Brossoit allowed six goals on 23 shots in one appearance.<\/p>\n 5.\u00a0This will be the fourth and final meeting in the regular season between the Oilers and the Sharks.<\/p>\n Edmonton picked up a 4-3 overtime win at home in the first game between the two Pacific Division rivals in January, San Jose edged out a 5-4 victory at home shortly after the Olympic break in February, and the Oilers responded a few weeks later in March with a 5-3 win at Rogers Place.<\/p>\n A win by the Sharks would finish the regular season at two wins each, a significant improvement after Edmonton won all four meetings last season by a combined score of 13-6.<\/p>\n What they said\u2026<\/p>\n San Jose head coach Ryan Warsofsky on the Sharks learning to believe they can win\u2026<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve come a long way from day one, where we were just trying to hang in games and not get blown out, to now expecting to win. That\u2019s a big step in my opinion.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen players believe in something and believe in each other, that\u2019s when you start to see real progress and success. That\u2019s what\u2019s so powerful.\u201d<\/p>\n Sharks goaltender Alex Nedeljkovic on the group rallying around Macklin Celebrini\u2026<\/p>\n \u201cFor the rest of us, we\u2019ve got to step it up for him. You see how hard he works and how much he wants to win. That should push all of us. He\u2019s our guy.<\/p>\n \u201cI want to get better every day so that when something goes wrong, there\u2019s that trust. If he turns one over, I\u2019m there to bail him out. If I give one up, I know he\u2019ll respond the other way.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s how it should be. He\u2019ll do his thing, but the rest of us have to do ours.\u201d<\/p>\n Sharks defenceman Mario Ferraro on the chemistry that the young team has built\u2026<\/p>\n \u201cThe bond we have \u2014 road trips, dinners, hanging out together \u2014 it all matters. You\u2019d think that\u2019s standard, but it\u2019s not always the case.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve been on different teams, and this is one of the closest groups I\u2019ve been a part of. It shows in ways you might not always see, but it\u2019s a big part of winning.\u201d<\/p>\n Final word\u2026<\/p>\n This game has significant implications for both teams.<\/p>\n The Oilers are clinging to first place in the Pacific Division<\/a> by way of a tiebreaker. Edmonton and Vegas both have 88 points through 78 games, and Anaheim is right behind them with 87 points.The Sharks, meanwhile, are three points behind Nashville for the final wild-card position in the Western Conference<\/a> with two games in hand, though Los Angeles is also standing between them and a playoff spot.<\/p>\n Even with the disadvantage of playing the previous night in a different city, the Oilers are the more battle-tested group. They should be able to handle a young San Jose team desperate for points.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oilers Game Notes: Road trip continues against San Jose team desperate for points They\u2019ll be facing a Sharks…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":259176,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[88,90,89],"class_list":{"0":"post-259175","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-jose","8":"tag-san-jose","9":"tag-san-jose-headlines","10":"tag-san-jose-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=259175"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259175\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/259176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}