Through the early part of the season Youth Jaden Schwartz Jersey , the San Jose Sharks have had a hard time holding leads and closing out opponents. After a disappointing road trip, San Jose looks to reverse those trends on Thursday night against the Buffalo Sabres.The Sharks are back at SAP Center after dropping three of five, capped by a 3-2 setback to the New Jersey Devils on Sunday. In three losses, San Jose (2-3-1) either let leads slip away or failed to capitalize before a contest was out of reach.Article continues below ...“We’re not scoring enough and not getting enough saves; it’s a bad combination,” coach Peter DeBoer said after the game in New Jersey.The Sharks surrendered three third-period goals in a 4-0 loss to the New York Islanders on Oct. 8. Three nights later, San Jose yielded the tying goal in the third before falling in overtime to the New York Rangers. DeBoer’s club then gave up two goals in the final 20 minutes of the loss to the Devils.In the opening game of the trip on Oct. 5, the Sharks wasted an early two-goal lead before beating the Los Angeles Kings 3-2 in overtime.But San Jose’s struggles go beyond end results. One facet of the club’s special teams unit is struggling while another is flourishing. The Sharks are 2 for 21 with the man advantage, but also has three short-handed goals this season. The club registered eight such tallies in 2017-18.“We have to find a way to get another goal a night, and part of that is power play and part of that is 5-on-5,” said DeBoer. “We have to find a way to get another save a night. Part of that is defending a little tighter and part of that is getting another save.” One player off to a solid start is San Jose winger Evander Kane, and he’s scheduled to face the team that traded him away last winter for the first time.Selected fourth overall in the 2009 NHL Draft, Kane never lived up to high expectations in nine-plus seasons with three clubs before being dealt to the Sharks in February.But Kane provided an immediate boost for San Jose. In 17 games, he collected nine goals — including a career-high four against the Calgary Flames on March 16. In his first playoff action, the 27-year-old notched four goals in nine contests Jake Allen Jersey , but the Sharks lost in the second round to the expansion Vegas Golden Knights in six games.Kane, who signed a seven-year contract extension in May, leads the Sharks with four goals and is tied with Kevin Labanc for the team lead with five points.Buffalo has split the first two games of a five-game swing after falling 4-1 to Vegas on Tuesday. Vladimir Sobotka scored in the final minute to help the Sabres avoid being blanked for the second time this season.“We’ve got to make sure our execution has to be ready when the puck drops,” coach Phil Housley told the Buffalo News. “Not 10 minutes into the game or at the end of the first period.”Even with the loss, Buffalo is 6-1-1 in its last eight road games against Pacific Division foes. However, the Sharks swept both meetings in 2017-18 and are looking for their fourth straight win in the series.Sobotka, who is playing with his first Eastern Conference team after nine seasons with the St. Louis Blues, has eight points in his last eight matchups versus the Sharks. The native of the Czech Republic registered the only hat trick of his NHL career on March 9, 2013, in San Jose.While Carter Hutton has struggled with nine goals allowed in his last two games, the Sabres’ new starting netminder could be poised for a bounce-back game. Hutton is 4-1-1 with a 1.32 goals-against average and .955 save percentage in his career against San Jose.Linus Ullmark, who earned his first NHL shutout last Saturday by making 36 saves in a 3-0 win over the Arizona Coyotes, has never faced the Sharks. At the Stanley Cup Finals earlier this year, Commissioner Gary Bettman couldn’t talk enough about the feel-good story of the Vegas Golden Knights and the NHL’s role in bringing major league sports to Las Vegas.When it came to a question about concussions and the degenerative brain disease chronic traumatic encephalopathy Joel Edmundson Jersey , Bettman wasn’t nearly as chatty.“There’s nothing new on the subject,” Bettman said before turning to Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly and asking, “Do you want to answer that?”Daly didn’t, though he did note that the NHL believes there’s not enough scientific information to draw a definite link between concussions and CTE.“This is not the commissioner’s view, it’s the science view,” Daly said.No big surprise there, since Bettman and Daly run a league that has tolerated — and tacitly condoned — players hitting each other in the head ever since the era of the league’s Original Six began in 1942. And it is true that while there is increasing research that indicates concussions can cause CTE, there is a lot more researchers need to learn about head injuries before establishing it as a scientific fact.Still, the NHL moved this week to settle a lawsuit from former players who accused the league of failing to warn them about the dangers of concussions and about the risks of playing hockey. The league agreed to settle with retired players in a deal that could net each $22,000 and make them eligible for up to $75,000 in medical treatment.That’s not much for players who got their brains scrambled playing the hard-nosed sport of hockey. More importantly, perhaps, is that it’s not an admission that the league did anything wrong, with the NHL not acknowledging any liability.It’s simply a way to move on Vladimir Tarasenko Jersey , with a token payment to the 318 retired players settling the legal score.The total cost to the NHL is $18.9 million, a far cry from the NFL concussion settlement that covers 20,000 former players with payouts expected to top $1.5 billion over 65 years. As of last month, the NFL concussion lawsuit claims panel had already approved more than $500 million in awards and paid out $330 million.One reason the numbers are so different is that the NFL is a much bigger league than the NHL, generating about three times the revenue that major league hockey does. Another is that a federal judge denied class-action status in July for the lawsuit, preventing another potential 5,000 retired players from being involved.The main reason, though, is that while the NFL attitude toward concussions softened over the years, the NHL wasn’t about to change its stance that there isn’t enough evidence to show that blows taken to the head led to brain damage.“When you have a defendant who has spent millions of dollars litigating a case for four years to prove that nothing is wrong with getting your brain bashed in, you can only get so far,” players’ attorney Stuart Davidson told The Associated Press. “I think it’s important for players who have an opportunity to settle their case with the NHL now to understand that before they get anything through a trial against the NHL, it’s going to cost millions of dollars in experts to get there, and that’s going to have to be paid for before they see a penny from any recovery Alex Killorn Jersey Kids , assuming they win.”In other words, a token settlement is better than no settlement at all.The NHL will end up spending the equivalent of the salaries of one first line over a year to get rid of a problem that could have vexed the league for many years. It did so without having to acknowledge that high-speed collisions and ubiquitous fighting could lead to brain problems later in life.Bettman’s hard-line approach paid off, and that’s no surprise.This is a commissioner, you might recall, who canceled an entire season rather than let players get paid what they’re worth. The lawsuit had already dragged on for four years, and with the NHL fighting it every step of the way, there wasn’t much appetite among attorneys and most former players to take it further.In the end, the players will get some medical testing and a few dollars. The NHL, meanwhile, will get protection from further suits at a small cost.Pretty easy to figure out the winner in this one.