The San Jose Sharks will look to show more of their identity when they face the visiting Los Angeles Kings on Saturday.
San Jose opened the season with a 4-3 overtime win over the Florida Panthers on Thursday.
Will Smith scored two goals and added an assist, and Mason Marchment also tallied in his Sharks debut as San Jose opened a 3-0 lead. Luca Cagnoni added his first career goal in the extra period after the Sharks squandered the lead in regulation.
Macklin Celebrini contributed three assists and Yaroslav Askarov made 23 saves in the win.
“There was a lot going on in that game, a lot that we can kind of build off of and learn from,” Sharks coach Ryan Warsofsky said. “We said it before the game: It wasn’t going to be perfect, we weren’t going to be perfect. But we wanted to show our identity, and I thought we did that more often (on Thursday) than we probably have in the last couple years.”
Saturday is the first of four meetings between the Pacific Division rivals. San Jose won two of three matchups with the Kings last season.
Askarov, the Sharks’ expected starter, is 3-1-0 with a 2.94 goals-against average and an .878 save percentage in four career appearances against the Kings.
Following the Saturday contest, the Sharks head on the road for a pair of Central Division matchups against the Dallas Stars on Monday and the St. Louis Blues on Thursday.
“We want to play fast, we want to get on teams with our team speed, but we need to be physical, and that’s what winning teams do. They’re physical all over the ice,” Warsofsky said. “That doesn’t mean you’re running around trying to put people into Section 220 in the stands. It’s just playing through people and being hard to play against.”
The Kings travel to San Jose cap a two-game, season-opening road trip after being doubled up 8-4 by the Colorado Avalanche in Denver on Wednesday.
Brian Dumoulin, Joel Armia, Trevor Moore and Artemi Panarin scored for the Kings. Alex Laferriere added two assists in Los Angeles’ first regular-season game under new coach Peter Laviolette.
Darcy Kuemper made 21 saves in the loss.
“I think that there were things that we did well and I think that there are things that we need to clean up and do better,” Laviolette said. “I felt like a lot of the things that we gave (Colorado) were our responsibility. They are things that can be in our control: staying out of the penalty box, the execution of what we’re doing, staying behind the rush. We got chances to score offensively, and we didn’t connect on them.
“So we found ourselves chasing the game most of the night.”
In 22 career games against the Sharks, Kuemper is 10-5-5 with a .909 save percentage and a 2.78 GAA.
The Kings head back to Los Angeles following the Saturday game for their home opener against the Panthers on Tuesday.
