Edmonton Oilers vs San Jose Sharks: Looking To Sweep California

The Edmonton Oilers are in San Jose for a matinee game. If the Oilers win today, they will have successfully won all games on the California tour. They have already beaten the LA Kings and Anaheim Ducks.

The San Jose Sharks are having a fairly rough season. They didn’t have the best projections coming into the season, and they are living up to those poor projections. They are in a tough spot as a franchise, to rebuild or not to rebuild.

The Sharks still have a couple of veterans on big contracts, with those players it is hard to rebuild. 3 of their top-paid players are 32 years old or over. Not to mention they aren’t playing up to their cap hit. Except for Erik Karlsson, this is arguably the best season of his career. He will likely win the Norris.

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The other high-paid older players are Marc-Édouard Vlasic with a $7 million cap hit till the 2025-26 season and Logan Couture who has a cap hit of $8 million till the 2026-27 season. These contracts already look bad and they are only going to end up looking worse as they age.

In order to rebuild they will need to shed these salaries and the players along with them. The problem is no one will want to take these contracts. Most teams wouldn’t even want to trade for Karlsson because of his cap hit and he is about to win the Norris trophy. With all going on I wouldn’t expect the Sharks to be a contender again for a while.

Edmonton Oilers Can’t Sleep On Weaker Opponents

The Edmonton Oilers did a good job getting two points in Anaheim on Wednesday, but they have had a few days off so hopefully, they don’t have a slow start. This Oilers team has a history of struggling on games coming back from an extended break.

The good news is that they are coming back and playing the San Jose Sharks. The Edmonton Oilers have won the previous two meetings this season against the Sharks. On January 13th they beat them handily 7-1, then on March 20th they had a much closer 5-4 win.

I would expect this game to be somewhere in the middle. Not a blowout, but yet not so close that it will be nerve-racking near the end of the game. If I had to take my best guess I would say the Oilers will end up winning by 3.

Projected Edmonton Oilers Lines

Cody Ceci has flown back to Edmonton as he is expecting the birth of his child.

Projected San Jose Sharks

This is the Sharks lineup from a couple of days ago. I wouldn’t expect many changes if any.

Another thing I am looking forward to about this game is the start time. I don’t really understand why the NHL makes start times that mean nothing. The 8PM start on Wednesday didn’t have the game start till around 20 minutes after 8. Even if the 2PM start actually starts 20 minutes late it is still a reasonable time when the game ends.