SAN JOSE — The San Jose Sharks’ game against the Colorado Avalanche at Ball Arena in Denver on Thursday will be shown exclusively on ESPN instead of the team’s normal broadcast partner, NBC Sports California.
The game, the last on the Sharks’ seven-game road trip, is also being streamed on ESPN+.
Thursday’s nationally televised game is scheduled to begin just after 6:30 p.m. (PST) in the second half of a double header on the network. The Buffalo Sabres-Tampa Bay Lightning game, which begins at 4 p.m., is also being shown on ESPN.
For the Sharks-Avalanche game, Bob Wischusen will provide the play-by-play, AJ Mleczko will be the color analyst, and Leah Hextall will be the ice-level reporter.
NBC Sports California resumes its Sharks broadcasting schedule on Saturday when the team hosts the New York Islanders at SAP Center to start a season-long eight-game homestand.
The Sharks (17-37-9) have won two straight games but still enter Thursday in 32nd place in the NHL’s overall standings with 43 points. The Avalanche (36-24-2) have won three straight games and, entering Thursday, held the first wild card spot in the Western Conference with 74 points.
The game occurs the night before the NHL trade deadline, Friday at noon (PST). The Sharks made two trades on Wednesday: sending goalie Vitek Vanecek to the Florida Panthers for AHL forward Patrick Giles and acquiring defenseman Vincent Desjarnais from the Pittsburgh Penguins for a 2028 fifth-round draft pick.
Thursday’s game is also the first back in Colorado for Sharks goalie Alexandar Georgiev, who, along with Nikolai Kovalenko, was traded to San Jose in December in the deal that saw goalie Mackenzie Blackwood go to the Avalanche.
The Sharks’ record since the trade is 7-22-4 with Georgiev holding a 4-12-1 mark and an .882 save percentage in 18 games with San Jose. In his last six games, though, Georgiev has a 2-2-1 record with a .894 save percentage. Kovalenko is on injured reserve.
In 25 games with the Avalanche, Blackwood is 16-7-2 with a .921 save percentage. The Sharks also received Colorado’s 2025 fifth-round selection as part of the trade, but that pick will become the worse of the Avalanche’s two current fourth-round selections in 2025 (Colorado’s own or Vancouver’s selection) if at least two of the conditions are met:
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– Colorado advances to the third round of the NHL Playoffs in 2024-25
– Blackwood wins 25 regular season games from the date of the trade to the end of the 2024-25 regular season
– Blackwood starts 30 NHL regular season games from the date of the trade to the end of the 2024-25 regular season.
