PREVIEW: Red Wings play Sharks to open two-game homestand on Friday

DETROIT -- Spending the weekend with Hockeytown faithful, the Detroit Red Wings will kick off a two-game homestand when they host the San Jose Sharks at Little Caesars Arena on Friday night.

“I feel like, sometimes, you can forget about how [the fans] can be such a big part of the game,” Elmer Soderblom said. “If we’re down or defending a lead, we can use the crowd as an energy boost.”

The Red Wings (28-16-4; 60 points) and Sharks (24-19-3; 51 points) will drop the puck for the second and final time this season at 7 p.m., with broadcast coverage on FanDuel Sports Network Detroit and the Red Wings Radio Network (97.1 The Ticket in Detroit). This will conclude the two-game regular-season series, with Detroit already beating San Jose by way of a shootout, 3-2, at SAP Center on Nov. 2.

“This is the grind time,” Red Wings head coach Todd McLellan said. “In every sport you hear coaches talk about dog days, this is the time where teams can really take advantage of one another.”

After being shut out by the Boston Bruins, 3-0, at TD Garden on Tuesday, Detroit is looking to regroup on home ice, where the club has gone an impressive 16-8-1 so far this season.

“[The Bruins] came out hard,” said goalie John Gibson, who backed up netminder Cam Talbot in Boston. “They had energy and kind of weathered the storm. We ran out of gas there at the end, but Talbs played well, gave us a chance to win and kept us in there all night.”

Gibson, who was named the NHL’s Second Star of the Week on Monday, will make his 29th start of the campaign on Friday. In his first season with the Red Wings, the 32-year-old is 17-9-1 with a 2.75 goals-against average, .903 save percentage and three shutouts.

“It’s really nice to have that confidence knowing they’re in the net,” Soderblom said about Gibson and Talbot this season. “We trust them. They’ve been winning games for us here, so I think that’s huge. We’re just so happy to have two really good goaltenders that can win games for us.”

Friday’s game against the Sharks will be the Red Wings’ fourth in seven days and fifth in nine, continuing a regular-season schedule that’s certainly not letting up anytime soon with the NHL’s Olympic break (Feb. 11 – 22) now less than a month away.

“Because of the condensed schedule, it’s either gameday or get ready for gameday,” McLellan said. “You never get a long break, where you’re practicing for four or five days in a row. It’s been a while since we can even remember that type of schedule, so I do think it seems like it’s going by fast. But 34 games [remaining] is a big total still, so we can’t get ahead of ourselves.”

With seven wins over their last 10 games, the Sharks are in the Western Conference’s second Wild-Card spot and coming off a 3-2 victory over the Washington Capitals at Capital One Arena on Thursday.

“It’s not a team we see all the time,” McLellan said of the Sharks. “When you catch up on what they’re doing -- their season started a little wavery and you weren’t sure where they were going to go, but from that point on all they’ve done is build up confidence. You take that young skill they have, inject some confidence and they believe they can beat anybody right now. Their belief system is quite strong.”

McLellan added that Detroit will “obviously have to be aware of” Macklin Celebrini, who has recorded the second-most assists (47) and third-most points (71) in the NHL this season.

“It’s not an easy task, because the book on him isn’t big yet in the NHL,” McLellan said of the No. 1 pick in the 2024 NHL Entry Draft. “He’s taking it by storm. An incredible player. He’s starting to show some tendencies, and other teams are looking at that as well, but he comes out of the night with two or three points. He’s definitely driving that team.”