Tonight at 7:00 p.m. ET, the San Jose Sharks (19-3-5, 43 points) and Pittsburgh Penguins (19-9-1, 39 points) hit the ice at Consol Energy Center in Pittsburgh for the first of two meetings against each other this season. The game can be live streamed here. San Jose fans can hear all of the action on102.1 KFOX while Pittsburgh fans can do the same on 105.9 WXDX The X.
San Jose enters play on top of the Pacific Division on the back of a six-game winning streak while Pittsburgh has improved their win streak to four games and sit atop the Eastern Conference. The winner of this game will join the Chicago Blackhawks as the only team with 20 victories this season.
The Sharks defeated the Toronto Maple Leafs 4-2 on Tuesday to pick up their sixth straight win. Tyler Kennedy, who won a Stanley Cup with the Penguins and captain Sidney Crosby, will now have the task of slowing down his old teammate as a member of the Sharks.
"Don't give him much room. That's the biggest thing," Kennedy said in the San Jose Mercury News about how he can stop Crosby. "And you've got to make sure he plays in their end more than he does in our end. No matter what guy you play in hockey, if he's in his own end, he's not a threat."
The Penguins are coming off of a 3-2 overtime win over the New York Islanders on the road Tuesday night.
"We battled back and forth between playing the right way and getting away from it, but the bottom line is, we found a way to win," James Neal told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. "And it's good for our team to be able to do that."
Pittsburgh is paced by Crosby, who has a league-leading 38 points off of 15 goals and 23 assists while Evgeni Malkin has seven tallies and 30 helpers for 34 points and Chris Kunitz has found the twine 14 times and added 14 assists for 28 points. Malkin (lower-body) will miss tonight's game.
Joe Thornton has three goals and five assists during a six-game point streak and paces San Jose with 30 points off of five tallies and 25 helpers while Logan Couture has found the back of the net 10 times and added 18 assists for 28 points and Patrick Marleau (12 goals, 14 assists) and Joe Pavelski (nine goals, 17 assists) each have 26 points.
In the crease, Antti Niemi is 16-3-5 with a 2.21 goals-against average and a .918 save percentage for the Sharks while Marc-Andre Fleury has a 15-7-1 record with a 2.06 GAA and a .918 save percentage for the Penguins.
The Sharks look for their seventh straight win while the Penguins hope to stretch their current streak to five games when they hit the ice tonight at Consol Energy Center in Pittsburgh.
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