San Jose's swings are wilder. In the last 5 the Sharks have beaten Ottawa 6-2 on the road and then lost to the same Senators 5-1 at home, been shut out 2-0 by Buffalo, and squeezed past Vancouver 3-2. The Ottawa rematch is the warning. Michael Misa tied it 1-1 in the 1st, and then an attack missing Alexander Wennberg went quiet for the last 40 minutes while Ottawa scored 4.
What San Jose does have is Macklin Celebrini, and he has been deciding games when he's healthy. He missed 2 games with a lower-body injury early in the month and came back against Edmonton. Then against Montreal he scored twice and set up another, finishing it with a power-play winner 2:13 into overtime, his 4th career overtime goal, which ties Ilya Kovalchuk and Sean Monahan for the most by a player 20 or younger. Alex Nedeljkovic made 31 saves in that one. If the Sharks are going to beat a Calgary team that has been defending well, they'll need that version of Celebrini, not the 1-goal nights.
The injury lists hit both lineups. Calgary is without Connor Zary and Brennan Othmann up front, with Jonathan Huberdeau on IR and not close to returning, plus Samuel Honzek on IR. That's a lot of forward depth gone, which makes the scoring from Frost, Coronato and Strome against Seattle more impressive and harder to bank on. San Jose is missing Wennberg and Igor Chernyshov on IR, and the Ottawa loss showed how much the middle of that lineup depends on Wennberg.
Puck drop is 6:00 PM PT. Neither of these teams is a juggernaut. Calgary sits at 6-7-0 and San Jose at 7-7-1 as of now, so Monday comes down to fit more than talent: a Flames team that has been tight in its own end, on the road and short a goalie, against a Sharks team that can score in bunches and can also disappear for 2 periods. The board isn't open yet, and the Colorado result will say a lot about how much Calgary has left by the time the team gets to San Jose.
