San Jose Sharks at New Jersey Devils
San Jose laid the wood to Philadelphia coming off the break and then lost a 4-2 game in Buffalo, a game that they grossly outplayed their opponent but ran into a hot goalie. In short, the Sharks have looked very good coming off the Olympic break. The top line for San Jose hasn’t done very much coming out of the break, though, as Patrick Marleau, Joe Thornton and Brent Burns have combined for one goal and two assists out of the nine goals scored by the Sharks. Patrick Marleau had an even strength goal late in the third period against Buffalo.
New Jersey has looked probably the best of any team coming out of the Olympic break with two wins to their record so far by a combined 11-3 score. A big reason for this is the power play that has gone 6-for-11 in the two games since the break. In fact, the New Jersey Devils have scored about 15-percent of their power play goals on the season in the last two days. They are playing on back-to-back nights with an older team but they also get to trot out a fresh Cory Schneider tonight as it was Martin Brodeur who got the start last night.
New Jersey went to San Jose earlier in the year and lost a 2-1 game where San Jose had the majority of the chances. Given that it’s a back to back with Schneider in net, a similar result could be expected today.
Of note yesterday is that Jon Merrill stayed on the top power play unit for New Jersey after an experiment there the game before. His price should still be relatively cheap, though I’m not sure about how many players I will be taking from either team today.
Top RW Value |
Top LW Value |
Top C Value |
Top D Value |
Bargain Bin |
Brent Burns (SJS) |
(NJD) |
Joe Thornton |
Jon Merrill (NJD) |
(NJD) $5575 |