SAN JOSE \u2013 William Eklund and Macklin Celebrini both scored in the shootout to lead the San Jose Sharks to a 4-3 win over the Minnesota Wild on Wednesday before a sellout crowd of 17,435 at SAP Center.<\/p>\n
Yaroslav Askarov finished with 20 saves, including three in overtime. He also stopped both shots he faced in the shootout.<\/p>\n
It is the Sharks\u2019 third straight win, as they ended 2025 with a bang despite losing a two-goal lead in the third period.<\/p>\n
The Sharks took a 3-1 lead at the 4:16 mark of the third period as Celebrini took a nifty pass from Igor Chernyshov and fired a shot past Jesper Wallstedt for his 22nd goal of the season.<\/p>\n
But after the Wild\u2019s Marcus Foligno cut the Sharks lead to one with his first goal of the season at the 6:40 mark, a giveaway by Celebrini led to the tying goal by Minnesota.<\/p>\n
Celebrini corralled a loose puck behind the Sharks\u2019 net but his clearing attempt was intercepted by Mats Zuccarello, who fired a shot past goalie Yaroslav Askarov to tie the game 3-3 with 11:13 left in regulation time.<\/p>\n
Chernyshov and Jeff Skinner both scored in the second period, with Chernyshov\u2019s goal at the 1:14 mark coming off an assist from Celebrini, and Skinner\u2019s power play goal, his fifth of the season, coming at 16:47.<\/p>\n
The Sharks were looking for a season-sweep of the Wild after beating Minnesota in overtime in their first two meetings in St. Paul. Celebrini scored the winner in San Jose\u2019s 6-5 thrilling victory on Oct. 26, then assisted on Collin Graf\u2019s overtime goal in the Sharks\u2019 2-1 win on Nov. 11.<\/p>\n
It was a different looking Minnesota team on Wednesday, though. Since that November loss to the Sharks, the Wild have been nearly unbeatable with a record of 17-3-2, including an impressive 5-2 win over the Vegas Golden Knights on Monday.<\/p>\n
On Dec. 12, Minnesota acquired the NHL\u2019s second-best defenseman, Quinn Hughes, from the Vancouver Canucks. With Hughes in the lineup, the Wild were 6-1-1 in the lineup before Wednesday.<\/p>\n
The Sharks had a slow start to Wednesday\u2019s game and allowed the first goal.<\/p>\n
Sharks defenseman Dmitry Orlov tried to break up a pass intended for Wild winger Vinnie Hinostroza as he pinched inside the blue line, but Ryan Hartman chipped the puck past Orlov and Celebrini to start a Wild 2-on-1. Tarasenko kept the puck and fired a rocket past Askarov for his eighth goal of the season at the 10:38 mark.<\/p>\n
The Sharks entered Wednesday with a 7-6-0 record in December and in a playoff spot as the Western Conference\u2019s second wild card team.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN JOSE \u2013 William Eklund and Macklin Celebrini both scored in the shootout to lead the San Jose…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":112714,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[402,181,1035,404,88,90,89,98,403,127],"class_list":{"0":"post-115588","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-jose","8":"tag-inside-sports","9":"tag-latest-headlines","10":"tag-macklin-celebrini","11":"tag-nhl","12":"tag-san-jose","13":"tag-san-jose-headlines","14":"tag-san-jose-news","15":"tag-san-jose-sharks","16":"tag-sharks-alert","17":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115588","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=115588"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115588\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/112714"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}