PREVIEW: Red Wings take on the Sharks in San Jose on Sunday

SAN JOSE – Finishing off the California stretch of their five-game road trip out West, the Detroit Red Wings will pay a visit to the San Jose Sharks at SAP Center on Sunday night.

The Red Wings (8-4-0; 16 points) and Sharks (4-6-2; 10 points) will drop the puck at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT, with broadcast coverage on FanDuel Sports Network Detroit and the Red Wings Radio Network (97.1 The Ticket in Detroit).

Before the calendar flipped to November, the Red Wings dropped a 5-2 decision to the Anaheim Ducks at Honda Center on Friday night. Several self-inflicted mistakes, as head coach Todd McLellan again discussed after Sunday’s morning skate at SAP Center, ultimately proved costly in Anaheim.

“We fell behind in a way that we don’t want to,” McLellan said. “We’re not always going to be perfect, but the short-handed goal – the one the night before is a bad bounce on Finnie – but the one in Anaheim was just very poorly played positionally. Even after that, a few times in the first period, there were times when we talked about sorting things out coming back into our end and making sure we pick up the proper people. Well, we couldn’t even do that because of our puck management.”

Correcting those mistakes and leaning into their strengths, as Albert Johansson explained, is the focus for him and his teammates as they prepare for San Jose.

“We need to stay ahead of the other team,” Johansson said. “We got to try to get the puck deep in their zone and get our forecheck going. When we get our forecheck going and win some puck battles down there, we’re a good team.”

McLellan’s first NHL head coaching gig came with the Sharks from 2008-15, where he led them to the Stanley Cup Playoffs in each of his first six seasons behind the bench. To this day, McLellan remains the franchise’s all-time leader in games coached (540), wins (311), points (688) and postseason contests coached (62).

“I was very fortunate, as a young coach, to be leaving the Wings and coming here,” McLellan said. “Back then, there were a lot of similarities between the two organizations. [The Red Wings] had just won a cup. We were just trying to win one in San Jose. We had great players and an unreal support system going on within the organization, so a lot of parallels between the two. As a young coach, you don’t often get a team that’s pushing to win. You often get a team that’s rebuilding or retooling, and I was very fortunate that way.”

But, back to the present -- San Jose has won three of their last four contests, including a 3-2 overtime victory against the visiting Colorado Avalanche on Saturday afternoon.

Selected with the No. 1 overall pick in the 2024 NHL Entry Draft, Macklin Celebrini is off to a strong start in his sophomore campaign with a team-leading 18 points on seven goals and 11 assists. The 19-year-old forward also scored against the Avalanche, extending his point streak to a career-high seven consecutive games.

“He’s fast,” Johansson said about Celebrini. “He has good skill, a good shot and good vision. Overall, he’s a good player and can skate. We got to keep an extra eye on him tonight.”

Eklund (5-6—11) and Will Smith (4-6—10) are behind Celebrini on the Sharks’ scoring leaderboard, while goalie Alex Nedeljkovic has a 2-2-1 record with a 3.60 goals-against average and .887 save percentage in net this season.

“They’re a very dangerous team,” McLellan said. “Their two lines can really snap the puck around and have good offensive instincts, so we’ll have our hands full.”