Just the facts
- When: Tonight, 8 PM
- Where: SAP Center – San Jose, CA
- How to follow: NESN, 98.5 The Sports Hub
- Opposing perspective: Fear the Fin
Know your enemy
- 10-8-3, 23PTS, T-5th in the Pacific Division
- Macklin Celebrini: 13G-18A-31PTS; Will Smith: 7G-13A-20PTS; William Eklund: 5G-8A-13PTS
- Yaroslav Askarov: 7-5-1, 2.97 GAA, .908 save percentage
Note:
The stats above don’t include San Jose’s game against Ottawa on Saturday night.
Game notes
- One more in the Golden State! Fresh off of an overtime win in Los Angeles, the Bruins head approximately five hours north (or ten, depending on traffic) to take on the San Jose Celebrinis.
- The aforementioned Celebrini is carrying San Jose on the young season: the Sharks have scored just 62 goals on the season, meaning Celebrini has been involved in 50% of them. Not bad for anyone, let alone a kid who won’t turn 20 until June.
- Michael Misa, the San Jose’s first-round pick and the second overall pick in June’s draft, has been out since before Halloween and doesn’t appear close to returning. Jeff Skinner, who apparently plays for the Sharks now, is out injured as well.
- As mentioned above, the Sharks hosted the Ottawa Senators on Saturday night, a game that hadn’t started as I was putting this preview together. That game was scheduled for 7 PM Eastern, so the Sharks will have just over 24 hours between puck drops.
- Alex Nedeljkovic started Saturday night’s game, meaning the Bruins will almost certainly be seeing Jaroslav Askarov tonight.
- Sharks head coach Ryan Warsofsky is a Marshfield native and the older brother of former Bruin David Warsofsky. If this was an ESPN broadcast, you’d probably hear this mentioned two dozen times, but NESN might only say it once.
- Prior to their recent run of two losses followed by two wins, the Sharks had been on a nice streak of five wins in a row. Considering they only won 20 games all of last season, that’s a pretty impressive output.
- For the Bruins, there isn’t much new. No news on Elias Lindholm, other guys remain out, world keeps spinning.
- If you’ve seen the movie Kicking and Screaming, a cinematic classic starring Will Ferrell and Mike Ditka (yes, the same one), their game plan boils down to “get the ball to the Italians.” For the Bruins, it’s “get the puck to Morgan Geekie.”
- In case it kept you up last night, Darcy Kuemper has apologized for trying to trip David Pastrnak. Phew.
See ya tonight!
