Vancouver Canucks vs San Jose Sharks Prediction: Best Bet for Thursday
Vancouver allows 4.64 goals per game, by far the worst defensive number in the league, and its starting goaltender is on injured reserve after hip surgery. San Jose is a .500 team with real flaws of its own, and Thursday asks whether a flawed home team can simply take what the league's most generous defense keeps offering.
The Matchup
Vancouver is 3-10-1, and the record understates the defensive problem. The Canucks allow 4.64 goals per game, nearly a full goal worse than any other defense on the slate, and their differential is -1.57 per game despite scoring a respectable 3.07. Elias Pettersson leads Vancouver with 15 points and 11 assists, and Jonathan Lekkerimaki has a team-high 6 goals, so the Canucks can score. They simply cannot keep anyone else from scoring more, and they are 2-5-1 on the road.
San Jose is 6-6-1, scores 2.77 goals per game and allows 3.38, a -0.62 differential that looks modest until it is standing next to Vancouver's. Macklin Celebrini leads the Sharks with 15 points, a team-high 5 goals and 10 assists, and San Jose is 2-3-0 at SAP Center. The Sharks' injury list costs them Alexander Wennberg, who is on injured reserve with an upper-body injury, while Vancouver's costs far more: Thatcher Demko is on injured reserve after hip surgery, and he is the goaltender Vancouver's whole defensive structure was built around.
Key Factors
The crease is where Vancouver's season goes to die. Kevin Lankinen is at 6.17 and .812, numbers that belong to a team pulling its goaltender weekly, and Leevi Merilainen is at 3.35 and .900. San Jose splits between Yaroslav Askarov at 3.13 and .898 and Alex Nedeljkovic at 2.89 and .903, ordinary goaltending that looks elite only by comparison, but comparison is the whole game here. Vancouver needs its backup to outplay his season while its skaters outscore their own mistakes, on the road, again.
Special teams widen it further. Vancouver kills 63.8 percent of its penalties, and San Jose's power play converts 25.0 percent, so every Canucks penalty is close to a scheduled goal against. San Jose kills 81.8 percent against a Vancouver power play at 20.5 percent, a survivable trade.
The honest case for Vancouver is that San Jose is a .500 team that loses games it should win, and Pettersson can take over a period by himself. He has done that this season and Vancouver still lost, because the goals against arrive in bunches no single forward can answer.
San Jose faces the most generous defense in the league, a backup crease and a road team that has won twice in eight trips. The Sharks are flawed, but every flaw Vancouver owns is bigger. Take the San Jose Sharks moneyline at -198.
Game information
| DATE | Thursday (10/29) |
|---|---|
| START TIME | 9:00 PM CT |
| HOW TO WATCH | NHL |
| VENUE | SAP Center at San Jose |
| TOTAL | 6.5 |
| MONEYLINE | San Jose Sharks ML |
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