{"id":10323,"date":"2025-10-17T21:23:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-17T21:23:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/10323\/"},"modified":"2025-10-17T21:23:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-17T21:23:08","slug":"san-jose-sharks-shakir-mukhamadullin-hurt-with-pittsburgh-penguins-on-deck","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/10323\/","title":{"rendered":"San Jose Sharks’ Shakir Mukhamadullin hurt with Pittsburgh Penguins on deck"},"content":{"rendered":"

An already ailing<\/a> San Jose Sharks defense corps is now dealing with another malady as Shakir Mukhamadullin<\/a> will miss Friday\u2019s road game against the Utah Mammoth and likely Saturday\u2019s home game against the Pittsburgh Penguins<\/a> with an upper-body injury.<\/p>\n

Sharks coach Ryan Warsofsky told reporters Friday<\/a> that Mukhamadaullin sustained the injury in a recent practice and is now considered day-to-day. Mukhamadullin, who has not played since the Sharks\u2019 season-opener<\/a> on Oct. 9,\u00a0participated in Thursday\u2019s practice in San Jose.<\/p>\n

After Saturday, the Sharks open a four-game road trip on Tuesday against the New York Islanders.<\/p>\n

Mukhamadullin\u2019s injury, and those to John Klingberg<\/a> (lower body) and Timothy Liljegren (upper body), will thrust Vincent Iirio into the Sharks\u2019 lineup on Friday, one day after he was claimed off waivers from the Washington Capitals. Rookie Sam Dickinson will also dress on Friday, marking his third straight game.<\/p>\n

Iorio, listed at 6-foot-4 and 220 pounds, has one assist in nine career NHL games. He spent all of last season with Hershey of the AHL, with his last NHL game coming on April 16, 2024, when the Capitals played the Flyers in Philadelphia.<\/p>\n

Liljegren and Klingberg were both injured in the Sharks\u2019 home game<\/a> on Tuesday against the Carolina Hurricanes. Liljegren was placed on injured reserve on Thursday, and Klingberg, who flew with the team to Salt Lake City, remains day-to-day.<\/p>\n

Rookie center Michael Misa is not injured but will not be in Friday\u2019s lineup, as the Sharks did not want to play him on back-to-back days. Misa could return to the lineup on Saturday.<\/p>\n

SCHEDULE QUIRK<\/p>\n

After this weekend, the Sharks play games on back-to-back nights 15 more times,<\/a> and eight of those involve some travel from one city to another. But the real issue for the Sharks is that the opponent they\u2019ll be playing on the second half of those back-to-backs, most times, will be the more rested team.<\/p>\n

Of the Sharks\u2019 16 back-to-backs, their opponent will be the more rested team 13 times, including Saturday\u2019s game with the Penguins, who played the Los Angeles Kings<\/a> on Thursday.<\/p>\n

There will, of course, be other instances this season where the Sharks will be the more rested team. The NHL is playing a somewhat compressed schedule this season, with the league pausing for three weeks in February to allow players to compete for their countries at the Winter Olympics in Milan.<\/p>\n

Starting with Tuesday\u2019s game against the Islanders, the Sharks play eight times in 13 days, as a four-game road trip is followed by a four-game homestand that starts Oct. 28 against the Los Angeles Kings.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone is dealing with it,\u201d Klingberg said recently of the busy schedule. \u201cI heard we might have one or two more back-to-backs, but it\u2019s just the way it\u2019s going to be.\u201d<\/p>\n

STARTING GOALIES<\/p>\n

Yaroslav Askarov will start Friday\u2019s game, perhaps indicating that Alex Nedeljkovic will start Saturday against the Penguins, one of his former teams.<\/p>\n

Nedeljkovic spent the past two seasons in Pittsburgh and went 32-22-12 with an .898 save percentage, but that save percentage dipped to .894 last season as the Penguins missed the playoffs for a third straight year.<\/p>\n

The Penguins traded Nedeljkovic, who had one year left on his two-year contract,<\/a> to the Sharks in July for a 2028 third-round draft pick. Like the Sharks, the Penguins appear to be in a transition phase as they begin to integrate younger players, such as defenseman Harrison Brunicke, 19, and forward Ben Kindel, 18,<\/a> into an otherwise aging lineup.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe biggest difference is just mentally staying with it, and I\u2019ve really tried to take every day by itself,\u201d Nedeljkovic said when asked about playing on teams not necessarily trying to win the Stanley Cup right away. \u201cYou don\u2019t look ahead, you don\u2019t look behind you, and you worry about what\u2019s happening today. I find generally, when I\u2019ve had success and when I\u2019ve been consistent, it\u2019s when I\u2019ve focused on just what\u2019s happening today.\u201d<\/p>\n

In four career starts against the Penguins, Nedeljkovic is 2-1-0 with an .858 save percentage. In two starts this season for the Sharks, Nedeljkovic is 0-1-1 with an .878 save percentage.<\/p>\n

MINOR LEAGUE TRADE<\/p>\n

The Sharks on Friday acquired right-shot defenseman Kyle Masters<\/a> from the Minnesota Wild in exchange for forward Oskar Olausson, who San Jose acquired in July for forward Danil Gushchin.<\/a><\/p>\n

Masters, 22, is in the final year of a three-year entry-level contract and was on the roster of the ECHL\u2019s Iowa Heartlanders. It was not immediately clear whether Masters would report to the Sharks\u2019 ECHL affiliate in Wichita or join the Barracuda of the AHL.<\/p>\n

Masters, a fourth-round pick by Minnesota in 2021, had three points in 16 games last season with the AHL\u2019s\u00a0Iowa Wild, and 13 points in 27 games with the Heartlanders.<\/p>\n

Olausson, 22, did not play in the Barracuda\u2019s season-opener last Saturday. Gushchin, the Barracuda\u2019s all-time leading scorer with 150 points in 182 regular-season games, has two goals in his first two games with the Colorado Eagles of the AHL.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An already ailing San Jose Sharks defense corps is now dealing with another malady as Shakir Mukhamadullin will…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10324,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[184,7,402,181,404,88,97,90,89,98,198,403,200,127],"class_list":{"0":"post-10323","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-jose","8":"tag-bay-area","9":"tag-california","10":"tag-inside-sports","11":"tag-latest-headlines","12":"tag-nhl","13":"tag-san-jose","14":"tag-san-jose-barracuda","15":"tag-san-jose-headlines","16":"tag-san-jose-news","17":"tag-san-jose-sharks","18":"tag-santa-clara-county","19":"tag-sharks-alert","20":"tag-south-bay","21":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10323"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10323\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}