Calgary Flames vs. San Jose Sharks: NHL Odds, Prediction
It’s an unusual 1 p.m. Pacific start time from San Jose on Saturday afternoon when the Sharks face the slumping Calgary Flames for the final time this season. It’s Calgary’s last matinee of the year.
Flames vs. Sharks Betting Analysis
This is the fourth and final meeting with San Jose having clinched the season series by leading 3-0. The one game in northern California was a 3-2 shootout victory for the Sharks on Dec. 28. San Jose tied it 2-2 on a goal by Timo Meier at 12:00 of the third, and rookie Joonas Donskoi scored the winning goal in the shootout past David Rittich. At the time, it was Calgary’s first loss of the season when leading after two periods.
Garnet Hathaway leads Calgary with three points (1G, 2A) vs. San Jose in 2017-18. Johnny Gaudreau is the only Flames player with two goals in the series. Mike Smith is 0-2-2 with an ugly 5.42 goals-against average and .816 save percentage. Rittich took that one loss and also relieved Smith once, and Rittich has a 1.45 GAA and .949 SV.
Evander Kane leads the Sharks with four goals vs. the Flames, which is impressive considering he came over from Buffalo at the trading deadline. That’s because last Friday in a 7-4 win in Calgary, Kane had all four goals for his first career hat trick. Entering that game, Kane’s career total of 178 goals was the fourth-highest among active players without an NHL hat trick. It was the fourth four-goal game in Sharks history (most recent had been Jan. 23, 2017 by current Maple Leaf Patrick Marleau).
Calgary Flames
The Flames (35-30-10) haven’t been eliminated from playoff contention yet but it’s getting close. Losing four straight and nine of 12 will do that to a middle-of-the-pack team this time of year. Smith hasn’t been good during this current four-game run in which Calgary has surrendered a total of 20 goals. In Wednesday’s 4-0 home loss to the Ducks, Smith allowed three goals on 11 shots and was pulled after two. This month, Smith is 1-5-0 with a 3.79 goals-against average and .861 save percentage in his six appearances. Not that it would help the defence, but Calgary has badly missed winger Matthew Tkachuk, who missed his fifth consecutive game Wednesday with an upper-body injury. The team continues to call him day-by-day. Tkachuk remains third on the Flames with 49 points.
San Jose Sharks
San Jose (42-38-9) could finish anywhere from second in the Pacific Division (where it sits now) to conceivably out of the playoffs entirely (unlikely) and has won a season-high six games in a row, the longest active streak in the Western Conference. The Sharks beat visiting Vegas 2-1 in overtime on Thursday. Martin Jones made a spectacular save early in the OT off a Logan Couture turnover, and that save would result in a Sharks break back down ice where Couture won it 39 seconds into overtime. It was Couture’s fourth game-winner of the season and his 31st goal overall, one shy of a career high set in 2010-11. The Guelph, Ontario, native has seven points in the past five games.
