SAN JOSE – Forwards Will Smith and William Eklund will both return to the San Jose Sharks’ lineup on Sunday when they face the Colorado Avalanche, looking to end a five-game losing streak.
Eklund was a scratch for Friday’s game played in Winnipeg after he played the first two games of the road trip. He was in the lineup Tuesday against the Dallas Stars in the first game of the trip, but did not practice the following day in Chicago. He played through the injury Thursday night against the Blackhawks and had two assists in over 19 minutes of ice time.
This season, Eklund has three assists in four games and has averaged over 21 minutes in ice time, the second-most among all Sharks forwards.
Smith played against the Blackhawks and had what Sharks coach Ryan Warsofsky said was his best game of the season, as he played over 19 minutes. But as part of the team’s development plan for the 19-year-old center, the Sharks rested Smith for the following night’s game in Winnipeg, where the Jets cruised to an 8-3, dropping San Jose’s record to 0-3-2.
Warsofsky said forward Danil Gushchin will remain in the lineup after he played Friday in Winnipeg, but that Givani Smith and Klim Kostin will be scratched.
After their poor performances against the Blackhawks and Jets, the Sharks want to get back to how they played in their first three games. San Jose lost 5-4 in overtime to St. Louis on Oct. 10 and 2-0 to the Anaheim Ducks two days later before their 3-2 shootout loss to the Stars.
“Are we skating on our reloads? Are we tracking? Are we physical? I would say those three things are the big things that I look for,” Warsofsky said. “Are we stopping and starting on pucks? It’s really the finer details of the game. If we’re competing, if we’re making it difficult for teams to come out of their own end. We’re suffocating them in their own end, and then in our own end, we’re stopping pucks and we’re being extremely physical on the walls, so we can get out of our own end.
“We didn’t have much of that, obviously, in Winnipeg. So hopefully we can kind of get that thing going back again. We did the first three games.”
The Sharks could ill afford another injury to a skilled player as forwards Logan Couture (osteitis pubis), Thomas Bordeleau (lower body) and Macklin Celebrini (lower body) on injured reserve. Bordeleau and defenseman Shakir Mukhamadullin are both now considered day-to-day while Celebrini, who has started skating, remains week to week.