The San Jose Sharks are preparing for their biggest game of the season as they get set to host the Nashville Predators on Saturday night.<\/p>\n
San Jose (36-31-7, 79 points) holds the tiebreaker over Nashville (35-31-9, 79 points) as the two battle for the second wild-card spot in the Western Conference.<\/p>\n
The Sharks, who extended their winning streak to four games with a 4-1 victory over the visiting Toronto Maple Leafs on Thursday, also have a game in hand on the Predators.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis time of the year, you have to play with a high level of desperation,\u201d San Jose coach Ryan Warsofsky said. \u201cAt times, I thought we did a good job of that (on Thursday). At times, we got a little bit loose.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ve got to get the two points, we\u2019ll learn from it, we\u2019ll move on. We\u2019ll have a good meeting on Saturday morning and get ready for arguably the biggest game of the year.\u201d<\/p>\n
Zack Ostapchuk and William Eklund each had a goal and an assist on Thursday for San Jose, which has won the first three contests of a six-game homestand.<\/p>\n
Collin Graf and Adam Gaudette also tallied, and Alex Nedeljkovic made 18 saves for the Sharks, who have points in five straight games (4-0-1).<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need guys to contribute in a lot of different areas,\u201d Warsofsky said of Thursday\u2019s depth scoring. \u201c\u2026 The more guys we got going, the more guys contributing, is going to help our group in the long term.\u201d<\/p>\n
Saturday will mark the second of three meetings this season between the two clubs and the first of two meetings in 10 days. Nashville doubled up San Jose 6-3 on March 24, and the teams will conclude the season series on April 13 in Nashville.<\/p>\n
The Predators enter Saturday\u2019s contest following a dramatic 5-4 shootout win over the Kings in Los Angeles on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Nashville squandered a 3-0 lead and needed eight rounds to pick up a key shootout win over the Kings, who trail them in the wild-card race.<\/p>\n
Jonathan Marchessault, Filip Forsberg, Zachary L\u2019Heureux and Steven Stamkos scored in regulation for the Predators, and Luke Evangelista recorded the lone shootout goal.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt this time of the year, it\u2019s about getting points, and we gained a point on a team that we are chasing, so we\u2019ll certainly take it,\u201d Stamkos said.<\/p>\n
Juuse Saros made 29 saves for the Predators, who snapped a three-game skid and improved to 15-16-6 on the road this season.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt certainly has an elevated feel,\u201d Stamkos said of the wild-card race. \u201cI mean, I don\u2019t know if really anything can replicate a playoff game, but it\u2019s as close as you\u2019re going to get for regular season in terms of two teams that are playing for their playoff lives.\u201d<\/p>\n
Following Saturday\u2019s contest in San Jose, the Predators will return to Los Angeles as part of a five-game trip.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe knew this was our season on the line here on this road trip, so got the win and great start,\u201d Stamkos said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The San Jose Sharks are preparing for their biggest game of the season as they get set to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":540228,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5127],"tags":[5,4,519,168,5306,5305,1780],"class_list":{"0":"post-540227","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-jose-sharks","8":"tag-hockey","9":"tag-nhl","10":"tag-san-jose","11":"tag-san-jose-sharks","12":"tag-sanjose","13":"tag-sanjosesharks","14":"tag-sharks"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116346578858366054","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540227","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=540227"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540227\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/540228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=540227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=540227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=540227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}