Game Day Preview #34: Dec 27/22- Canucks vs San Jose

VANCOUVER CANUCKS (15-15-3) vs SAN JOSE SHARKS (11-18-6)

ROGERS ARENA, VANCOUVER, BC

7:00 PM PST

TV: SPORTSNET PACIFIC RADIO: SN650

Well, we asked for a better effort from the Canucks following a couple brutal recent performances on home ice, and we got it in Edmonton on Friday night, as the Canucks handed the Oilers a 5-2 loss, coming back from a 2-0 deficit after the first period. Bo Horvat had a monster game with a 2G 2A performance, and also got a pair of goals from someone who really needed one, J.T. Miller.

They’ll take on a team that they also had to do a comeback on the last time they met: the San Jose Sharks. There used to be a time where a game against the Sharks could be written down as an automatic loss, but those days are gone, as the Canucks have won 9 of the last 10 meetings between these teams.

Last time, the Canucks got a late Andrei Kuzmenko PP goal to tie it, before Elias Pettersson ended it in OT, giving the Canucks two OT wins over the Sharks so far this season. Given their recent disappointing efforts on home ice recently, we hope that we can see a lot more of the play we saw in Edmonton on Friday as the Canucks play their last home game of the calendar year before ending 2022 with games in Winnipeg on Thursday and Calgary on New Year’s Eve.

LINEUPS

This may have been in my stocking. Or nhl.com.

Sharks projected lineup

Timo Meier — Logan Couture — Alexander Barabanov

Nick Bonino — Tomas Hertl — Kevin Labanc

Noah Gregor — Nico Sturm — Matt Nieto

Oskar Lindblom — Steven Lorentz — Evgeny Svechnikov

Jaycob Megna — Erik Karlsson

Marc-Edouard Vlasic — Matt Benning

Scott Harrington — Mario Ferraro

James Reimer

Kaapo Kahkonen

Scratched: CJ Suess, Nick Cicek, Radim Simek, Jonah Gadjovich

Injured: Nikolai Knyzhov (Achilles), Markus Nutivaara (lower body)

Canucks projected lineup

Ilya Mikheyev — Bo Horvat — Brock Boeser

Conor Garland — J.T. Miller — Curtis Lazar

Andrei Kuzmenko — Elias Pettersson — Lane Pederson

Dakota Joshua — Nils Aman — Jack Studnicka

Quinn Hughes — Tyler Myers

Oliver Ekman-Larsson — Luke Schenn

Riley Stillman — Ethan Bear

Spencer Martin

Collin Delia

Scratched: Sheldon Dries, Kyle Burroughs, Travis Dermott

Injured: Thatcher Demko (lower body), Tanner Pearson (hand), Tucker Poolman (undisclosed)

GAME DAY CHATTER

GAME DAY BATTLE HYMN

Brand new banger from New Zealand thrashers 3000 AD for ya today. ‘Cells’ comes from their debut album ‘The Void’, which is available now on Bandcamp.

Enjoy the game, everyone! Go Canucks Go!