Two third-period collapses to start the season have San Jose Sharks fans frustrated and wondering what is going wrong.
Top Sharks center Macklin Celebrini, who had three assists against the Anaheim Ducks, is just as frustrated with the results. Celebrini understood that his overtime turnover was costly, but he also tried to explain what had gone wrong in the third period.
“I think we just need to kind of relax. I think part of it is we want it so bad that maybe we’re overthinking,” Celebrini said postgame. “Maybe we just kind of panic sometimes, and it’s just frustrating when you’re that close.”
San Jose Sharks head coach referred that his team is young and that he will work with the core to develop winning habits. Other than Celebrini’s mistake in overtime, much of the Sharks’ faults could be pointed towards the veterans.
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#SJSharks Warsofsky on creating winning habits: “[Our] winning habits are not good. Our whole game wasn’t great, let’s be honest. So we got to keep working with these young guys and our team here to have an understanding of what that looks like.”— Max Miller (@Real_Max_Miller) October 12, 2025
After a strong first game, the defense pairing of John Klingberg and Nick Leddy struggled. Per Natural Stat Trick, Leddy finished with a team-worst 3.08 expected goals against (xGA). Klingberg was second-worst with a 2.83 xGA.
While Leddy and Klingberg weren’t the best, they can’t be the only scapegoats from Saturday’s performance. The only Sharks players to finish with a positive expected goals were Adam Gaudette (0.53xGF – 0.07xGA), Ryan Reaves (0.12-0.04), and Jeff Skinner (0.69-0.56).
Celebrini mentioned that the Sharks’ struggle and panic could be a feeling of metaphorically gripping their sticks too tightly.
“I think we’re just giving way too many shots up. It’s tough. I mean, they funnelled everything to the net,” Celebrini said. “We did a pretty good job of playing how we wanted to keep them to the outside. A lot of those were nothing shots, but still, [that’s] a lot of volume and leaving to chance.”
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The Sharks were outshot 43-23 on Saturday.
Celebrini’s thought on how to get better is to forget it and move forward. He still wants his Sharks team to take valuable lessons from the first two games.
“I think we just need to forget about it. I mean, learn from it, but forget about it,” Celebrini said. “That’s two good hockey teams that we’re up one goal within a minute left in the game. We know we’re there. We know we can win those games. It’s going to come. Like any team, we’re still learning; we just got to be better.”
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