Perfect Sharks Visit Desperate Stars in Early-Season Statement Game

Two games in, the San Jose Sharks are unbeaten and the Dallas Stars are winless — and tonight at American Airlines Center, one of those stories has to change. There's no validated model read for this one, so we're going straight to the tape.

Let's be honest about what we're looking at here: a 2-0-0 Sharks team walking into Dallas to face a Stars squad sitting at 0-2-0. Early October records don't mean much over an 82-game season, but they mean something to the locker room, and Dallas is already in a position where dropping a third straight to a team that wasn't supposed to be this good would make for a very uncomfortable week. San Jose, meanwhile, has a chance to send a message that this start is no fluke.

The player driving San Jose's offense right now is Macklin Celebrini, who has racked up 5 assists and 5 points through two games — a genuinely elite pace for any player, let alone one this early in the season. Igor Chernyshov has been the finisher, converting for 2 goals. That's a dangerous combination: a distributor operating at a high level feeding a forward who knows where the net is. Yaroslav Askarov is expected to start in goal for the Sharks, and if he's anywhere near the form that got San Jose to 2-0, Dallas will need to generate volume to crack him.

On the Stars' side, the offensive numbers are thin. Miro Heiskanen leads the team with 1 goal and 1 point, and Mikko Rantanen has chipped in 1 assist. For a team with Dallas's expectations, that production simply hasn't been there. Jake Oettinger is expected to start in net and will need to be sharp — because if San Jose's top contributors keep performing at their current clip, Oettinger could face a busy night. We don't have a model projection to lean on for this one, so I won't manufacture a lean out of thin air. What I will say is this: the numbers favor San Jose's momentum, and Dallas needs someone beyond Heiskanen to step up offensively before this game gets away from them.