Bet on winless Sharks to pull off upset against Canucks on Thursday night

It’s totally fair if you want to put the winless (and potentially historically bad) San Jose Sharks on your betting blacklist for the NHL season, but before you do that let’s just size up their matchup with the Vancouver Canucks on Thursday night.

As you’d expect, the Sharks are big underdogs at home against the 6-2-1 Canucks and the line has moved towards Vancouver since opening. Not very many people out there are going to be rushing to the window to bet San Jose, but it does seem like this number is now getting into a very tempting range.

Canucks vs. Sharks prediction: Analysis

There’s not getting around the fact that the Sharks have been awful to start the 2023-24 season. San Jose is 0-8-1 and already sports a -26 goal difference. Even more concerning is that the Sharks have scored just nine goals through their first nine games. There are two players in the NHL (Frank Vatrano and Alex DeBrincat) who have just as many goals as the Sharks.

And there’s nothing in the underlying numbers that suggest that any of this awfulness is a fluke. The Sharks rank last in expected goals rate, high-danger scoring chance percentage and are second-to-last in shot attempt differential behind only St. Louis.

This is all very damning, but it also needs to be mentioned that San Jose has played an awfully difficult schedule. Not only did the Sharks play the four division-winners to open the campaign, but they followed that up with a five-game road trip through the Southeast. That’s not ideal for any team, but it’s especially tough for one that was the favorite to finish with the worst record in the league.

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Vancouver’s schedule has not been a walk in the park either and the Canucks deserve plenty of credit for getting off to a great start, but the underlying metrics suggest that Vancouver is punching above its weight a bit and is probably fortunate to be where it is in the standings. The Canucks rank 28th in expected goals rate and 29th in high-danger scoring chance differential, which is not all that much better than San Jose.

None of this is to say that the Sharks are close to the team that the Canucks are right now, but it does point to the fact that the gap between these teams — as wide as it is — isn’t as drastic as these odds imply.

Canucks vs. Sharks prediction: Pick

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