The Blackhawks' five-game road trip continues on Halloween, with Chicago taking on the Sharks in San Jose on Thursday night.

Each of these teams will have a win this time: the Blackhawks defeated the Avalanche 5-2 on Monday night, while the Sharks picked up just their second straight win – and second overall – of the season with a 4-2 home win over the Los Angeles Kings on Tuesday night. San Jose also won in Utah on Monday night, turning things around briefly after a miserable 0-7-2 start.

The nine defeats at the start of the season included a 4-2 loss to the Blackhawks in Chicago two weeks ago, and the only thing that has really changed for these two teams in the weeks since is that they have Ws on the scoreboard in their most recent games. San Jose is still a woefully inept squad, made even more subpar by the continued absence of 2024 No. 1 overall pick Macklin Celebrini, who still hasn't played since being injured in the season opener. A pair of decent goaltenders in Mackenzie Blackwood and Vitek Vanecek are about the only thing evident on this team, although both goaltenders have save percentages under .890 and goals-against averages over 3.5 – a combination of their performances and the rumor of a The defense runs in front of them. The top scorers here are Mikael Granlund (13 points in 11 games) and Tyler Toffoli (10 in 11), all of whom will be remembered for playing somewhere other than San Jose at the end of their careers. There isn't much to say about this team that hasn't already been laid out in detail in the preview from the aforementioned October 17th game.

Expect a similar lineup to the Sharks a few games ago against LA: