SAN JOSE, Calif. — The good news is the Minnesota Wild once again rallied from a two-goal deficit in the third period to salvage a point against the San Jose Sharks on Wednesday.

The other good news? The Wild won’t have to face those pesky Sharks again this regular season.

Macklin Celebrini and the young group from Silicon Valley could be thorns in the side of the Wild — and every NHL team, for that matter — for many years to come as the hard-working, well-structured group completed a 3-0 season series sweep of Minnesota with a 4-3 shootout win at the Shark Tank.

The Wild finished the series 0-0-3 after Celebrini and Collin Graf scored in overtime in two meetings earlier this season in Minnesota. And on Saturday, hours after earning a Hockey Canada spot on what could be many Olympic teams in the future, Celebrini scored a goal, an assist and the shootout deciding goal to lift the Sharks to their 20th win of the season.

In his 40th game, Celebrini became the third-fastest teenager to 40 assists in a season in NHL history. The others? Sidney Crosby in 34 games in 2006-07 and Wayne Gretzky in 36 games in 1980-81. It was also his 18th multi-point game of the season, tied with Nikita Kucherov for third-most among all players. Nathan MacKinnon has 22 and Connor McDavid has 21.

And in six career games against the Wild, Celebrini has seven goals and 15 points.

“They’re a couple moves away, and (with) a little bit more experience in that lineup, I think (it’ll go) a long way,” Wild veteran Marcus Foligno said. “They got finally some goaltending and obviously a future Hall of Famer. So I think if you build around that, that kind of escalates the whole process of rebuilding pretty quick. So, give kudos to them. They’re a team that’s definitely on the rise.

“They beat us. They beat some other teams in this league and they’re not a team you take for granted. We knew coming in here it was going to be hard, especially in their home rink. It’s getting back to those days of (Patrick) Marleau, (Joe) Thornton and (Joe) Pavelski days, right? But … we’re done with them now. That’s a good thing.”

Macklin Celebrini on what will be his first of MANY Olympics (you may hear Ryan Reaves walk by and yell, “Best player on the world. No big deal.” pic.twitter.com/FPmAG9LgQ8

— Michael Russo (@RussoHockey) January 1, 2026

The Wild jumped out to a 1-0 first-period lead on a goal by Vladimir Tarasenko, but the Sharks rallied in the second on goals by Igor Chernyshov and Jeff Skinner before Celebrini provided a two-goal lead early in the third. But the Wild rallied on goals by Foligno and Mats Zuccarello 2:07 apart before Celebrini and William Eklund beat Jesper Wallstedt in the shootout for the rookie goalie’s first career shootout loss.

But the Wild will take the point.

“That’s what we do, right?” said defenseman Jake Middleton, who assisted on Foligno’s goal. “We’re down, we’re never out.”

After the game, the Wild flew to Southern California, where they planned a New Year’s Eve party Wednesday night and a golf outing Thursday before a Friday night date with the Anaheim Ducks.

Foligno finally scores

It’s been a rough go offensively for Foligno, who triggered the Wild’s third-period comeback with his first goal in 31 games this season.

It made amends for his previous shift, where he twice couldn’t advance the puck before Joel Eriksson Ek was pressured by Celebrini and turned the puck over to Chernyshov en route to Celebrini’s 22nd goal.

“It’s obviously nice to do that, but it was a weird game,” Foligno said. “I thought we had a lot of possession but didn’t get a lot to the net when we should have. But still good way to battle back and show resilience and get a point.”

But he added of Celebrini, “They play loose and they have an unbelievable kid on that team that is just having a great year. So, a lot of offense comes through him and a lot of momentum comes from him. He’s had our number, like many teams in this league.”

Celebrini did show he was human on Zuccarello’s tying goal. He intercepted a pass intended for Kirill Kaprizov but then passed it right to Zuccarello in the right circle.

“It was lucky,” Zuccarello said.

Way too cute

The Wild seemed to be looking for style points in the second period, where they gave up two goals and only registered six shots. One of the goals came with three seconds left on a power play after Middleton had his clearing attempt picked off by Dmitry Orlov. Skinner’s goal was only the sixth power-play goal allowed by the Wild on the road this season.

The most egregious example of not putting the puck on net came late in the second period, mere minutes after Skinner gave the Sharks a 2-1 lead.

Marcus Johansson bulled his way into a breakaway, deked Askarov to the ice, but instead of shooting into a cage that was halfway open, he attempted to cross a backhanded pass to the other side of the net for Eriksson Ek. The center missed that open side of the cage with a shot that went wide.

“I thought in the first we did actually a pretty good job of (getting pucks on net),” coach John Hynes said. “I would agree in the second, I felt that we forced some plays. We had some zone time, but it wasn’t threatening enough. And I thought we turned some pucks over and gave them a little bit of momentum. But I thought in the third, we did a better job. So I’d say one and three was more of what we want. I think in the second we were a little bit too cute.”

Latest Wallstedt-Askarov showdown

Get ready for years of Wallstedt and Yaroslav Askarov comparisons. Each first-round picks, they’ve played internationally against each other since Wallstedt was 15.

With 20 saves, Askarov improved to 3-0 against the Wild this season — 2-0 against Wallstedt (who had 25 saves).

“This is probably my 20th game against him and maybe like the second in the NHL,” Wallstedt said. “So it’s always fun playing those games.”

Wallstedt, who entered 3-0 in shootouts with nine stops on 10 attempts, wasn’t happy with how he played the shots by Celebrini and Eklund after Graf started things off by missing the net.

“I think I overthought a little bit what they were going to try to do instead of what’s made me successful in shootouts is just reading the play and then making my reads or making my moves out of my reads,” he said. “I think somehow from the last time we played them, I think in my back of my head, I thought they were going to do different things than what they did and that kind of gave them the advantage over me today.”