Dead Men Walking: Sharks @ Canucks Pregame / Thread

[Ed Note: Kent is still being battered by the flu, so consider this your pregame piece too. Submit those score predictions at will]

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Seven games left. You can almost taste the freedom.

No one every said tanking would be pretty. For the opponent, the next two games represent a chance to climb into a tie with Anaheim and one point back from Pacific-leading Los Angeles. For Vancouver it means...who knows? Respectability perhaps but that feels intensely hollow.

San Jose also hasn't lost in Vancouver in their last nine attempts, which includes the first round playoff sweep in 2013. So the safe money is on the Canucks reaching nine straight losses by the end of the evening. If so, and they also can't win on Thursday, they'll tie their franchise-worst 10-game losing streak from 1997.

If the stars align like that, it'll open the door to create an entirely new deplorable losing record streak directly in front of Kesler (*spits*) and Anaheim on - appropriately enough - April 1st.

But, hey, what good is this dumpster fire of a season if they don't cement a few new records in the process?

Projected Human Guinea Pig Formations

Daniel Sedin - Henrik Sedin - Jannik Hansen

Sven Baertschi - Bo Horvat - Jake Virtanen

Alexandre Burrows - Markus Granlund - Emerson Etem

Brendan Gaunce - Jared McCann - Chris Higgins

Ben Hutton - Nikita Tryamkin

Dan Hamhuis - Yannick Weber

Matt Bartkowski - Alex Biega

Jacob Markstrom

Tomas Hertl – Joe Thornton – Joe Pavelski

Melker Karlsson – Logan Couture – Joonas Donskoi

Patrick Marleau – Chris Tierney – Joel Ward

Micheal Haley – Dainius Zubrus – Tommy Wingels

Paul Martin – Brent Burns

Dylan DeMelo – Justin Braun

Brenden Dillon – Roman Polak

Martin Jones

One Observation

Some brave soul out there in internet land, presumably of sound mind and body, actually sat down at a table, opened up their computer and strained the very limitations of human logic in an attempt to justify why Sbisa for Yakapov could be a real thing.

In real life.

Seriously.

Fearless Prediction

At this point the book is out on Vancouver: put in a solid third period - even a paltry five or ten minutes - and the points are probably yours.

Maybe the Sharks take their foot off the gas after punching their ticket last night, but I don't see why any playoff-bound team is going to suddenly play down to Vancouver's level.

4-2 Sharks.

This season needs to end.

GCG.