The Anaheim Ducks will be going for a season sweep of the visiting San Jose Sharks when two of the youngest teams in the league meet for the final time of the season on Tuesday night.

This is the third meeting between the Ducks and Sharks, but the first in more than five months. The Pacific Division rivals met twice in the first two weeks of 2024-25 with the Ducks winning 2-0 on Oct. 12 in San Jose and then again 3-1 at home 10 days later.

Several of the league’s young guns will be in the spotlight as the Sharks (20-44-9, 49 points) are the second-youngest team in the league, and the Ducks (32-33-8, 72 points) are the sixth-youngest.

Both teams are coming off losses on Sunday, with the Toronto Maple Leafs edging the Ducks 3-2 and the Los Angeles Kings crushing the Sharks 8-1.

The Ducks lost a franchise-record 50 games last season and missed the playoffs for the sixth straight season but are on pace for a 20-point improvement this season. Anaheim sits sixth in the Western Conference wild-card race with nine games remaining.

Anaheim battled back from a two-goal deficit in the final period against Toronto, but the Leafs held on.

Leo Carlsson and Sam Colangelo scored for the Ducks, with Colangelo getting the equalizer 2:16 into the third.

Cutter Gauthier, Trevor Zegras and defensemen Olen Zellweger and Jackson LaCombe earned assists, as all six Ducks to get on the scoresheet were age 24 or younger. Lukas Dostal made 20 stops for the Ducks, who have won two of their last three as they wrap up a five-game homestand.

“We battled hard the whole game,” LaCombe said. “They’re a really good team and we stuck with it the whole time. They got a good bounce with the tip at the end and we just couldn’t get one back.”

Head coach Greg Cronin said they need to pay closer attention to the small things.

“It’s really good for our players to go through this, but the little details like faceoffs end up being a big part of games like this,” Cronin said. “We’re going to have to learn from this.”

The Sharks head into Tuesday’s game having already been eliminated from the playoff picture.

Once again, they are last in the league, but optimism is returning to the franchise thanks to a blue-chip corps of talent led by the 2024 first overall draft pick Macklin Celebrini.

Along with fellow former first-round picks Will Smith and William Eklund, Celebrini has the Sharks moving in the right direction. But there is still a lot of work to do judging by their dismal performance against the Kings.

“With this young group we are going to go through learning stretches,” coach Ryan Warsofsky said before the Kings game. “Setting the foundation of how to win hockey games in the future has been the pressing need.”

Warsofsky thinks Celebrini is deserving of winning the Calder Trophy as Rookie of the Year. Heading into Tuesday’s game, the Vancouver native has 21 goals and 53 points in 61 contests.

“He is a very self-driven kid. He drags guys into the fight with how competitive he is,” Warsofsky said.

“He is very reliable defensively and extremely coachable. He learns from his mistakes and picks up things really quickly. He wants to be the solution to getting this team back to winning.”

Anaheim is hoping they will have their leading scorer Troy Terry in the lineup against the Sharks. He left Sunday’s game late in the third period after colliding with teammate Frank Vatrano. The Ducks did not release details about the injury.

–Field Level Media