Macklin Celebrini and the San Jose Sharks face Nick Suzuki and the host Montreal Canadiens in an East-meets-West showdown on Tuesday night.
Tuesday’s tilt is the first of two meetings between the teams this season. The Sharks swept the series last season and have won two of their last three in Montreal.
San Jose is 1-1-1 on its current six-game road trip and still seeking its first regulation win of the season. It’s also playing on the tail end of a back-to-back, falling 3-1 to the Maple Leafs in Toronto on Monday evening.
In that game, Mason Marchment gave the Sharks a 1-0 lead in the first period, but penalty trouble ultimately ended up in the back of the visitors’ net. Auston Matthews and Gavin McKenna scored power-play goals, while Nick Paul scored into an empty net late in the final frame. Yaroslav Askarov made 29 saves for San Jose in the loss.
“Whatever you want to call it, ‘puck luck’ or just bounces, but at the end of the day, I’ve had a lot of chances and guys in our room have gotten a lot of chances that they’re kicking themselves about,” Celebrini said. “We’re not playing bad hockey. We’re losing one-goal games. … We’re in all of these games. It’s just the little stuff. The details that cost us games down the stretch. And tonight, not executing when we needed to.”
The Sharks have allowed third-period goals in each of their games on the current road trip.
“There’s definitely room for improvement when you give up a goal like that two games in a row,” Sharks head coach Ryan Warsofsky said following a 4-3 shootout loss to the Detroit Red Wings over the weekend. “A lot of it is just getting the details right and understanding where we are in the game.”
Meanwhile, the Canadiens are looking for their first regulation win since their season opener on Sept. 29. Montreal has won three of its last four games: 1-0 against the Red Wings in the shootout, 4-3 versus Buffalo in the shootout, and another 4-3 win against the Sabres in overtime.
In the overtime victory, the Habs took a 3-2 lead into the third period, but Tage Thompson tied the game at 10:12. Cole Caufield, who also scored Montreal’s second goal of the night, netted the game-winning goal 54 seconds into overtime when he finished a breakaway by scoring on the blocker side on Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen. Juraj Slafkovsky and Alexandre Carrier each had two assists in the victory, and Jacob Fowler made 23 saves.
“Buffalo is not an easy team to play when you have a lead,” Canadiens head coach Martin St. Louis said. “They open up their game a lot, and you have to be calculated with your decisions. Even in the offensive zone, you can’t make ‘almost’ plays. The ‘almosts’ are the plays that they live for. They’re hoping you make an ‘almost,’ and then it goes the other way.”