Ducks at Sharks
The Pacific seems to be a bit stronger these days with Edmonton joining the likes of San Jose, Los Angeles and Anaheim in the division's upper crust, so games such as Saturday's showdown between the host Sharks and Ducks take on greater meaning. San Jose stretched its winning streak to three with a 3-2 victory over the New York Islanders on Friday while Anaheim is going in the wrong direction, losing to Chicago by the same score Friday to run its slide to three games.
"It's big to get a win after Thanksgiving," Sharks defenseman Brent Burns, who signed an eight-year, $64 million contract extension Tuesday, told reporters after scoring his team-best eighth goal. "You always worry if the legs are going to show up, or if the turkey's going to show up. It's nice to see the boys were skating and working." The Ducks sit fourth in the Pacific, spinning their wheels at 3-3-2 with 19 goals in the last eight games. "We just have to find a way to get us over the top," Anaheim coach Randy Carlyle told reporters. "We're going to focus on the process." Corey Perry (four goals) and captain Ryan Getzlaf (one) - the Ducks' best players - haven't scored in 13 and 15 games, respectively, with Perry's 6.1 shooting percentage on a team-most 66 shots well below his 13.4 career number.
TV: 10:30 p.m. ET, Prime Ticket (Anaheim), CSN California (San Jose)
ABOUT THE DUCKS (9-8-4): Ryan Kesler took advantage of Jonathan Toews' absence Friday by winning 22-of-30 faceoffs, moving ahead of Chicago's captain 60.7 to 60.3 for the NHL's best percentage in the circle. The line of Kesler (eight goals), Jakob Silfverberg and Andrew Cogliano (five) continues to be Anaheim's highest-scoring unit with Silfverberg recording his seventh goal Friday. Jonathan Bernier (3-1-1, 2.02 goals-against average, .935 save percentage in eight games) is expected to be in goal after John Gibson suffered his fourth loss in five games Friday.
ABOUT THE SHARKS (12-8-1): Burns added an assist Friday to increase his team-best point total to 20 and equal Joe Pavelski for the club lead in assists (12). Joe Thornton is 13th on the NHL's all-time assist list with 975, but recorded only two in his last eight contests. Melker Karlsson missed his fifth straight game Friday with an ankle injury, leaving San Jose thin down the middle with Tomas Hertl (lower-body) also out of the lineup and Tommy Wingels leaving Friday's game.
OVERTIME
1. Wingels (four goals), who leads the team with a shooting percentage of 19.0, sustained an undisclosed injury.
2. F Logan Shaw made his Ducks debut Friday and recorded one shot on goal and two hits in 6:41 of ice time. Shaw played two games with San Diego of the American Hockey League after he was acquired from Florida in exchange for F Michael Sgarbossa on Nov. 16.
3. San Jose won the first of five meetings this season 2-1 in overtime Oct. 25 on D Marc-Edouard Vlasic's goal after Anaheim won three of the four encounters in 2015-16 - including the only victory in its last 10 trips to San Jose.