![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/BNG-L-SHARKS-0104_351716.jpg\")
A fight breaks out between the Tampa Bay Lightning and San Jose Sharks during the second period of an NHL hockey game Saturday, Jan. 3, 2026, in San Jose, Calif. (AP Photo\/Thien-An Truong)\u00a0<\/p>\nSAN JOSE \u2014 The up-and-coming San Jose Sharks expected to take a step forward this year. Halfway through the season, the rest of the NHL is starting to take notice.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think teams are starting to realize that we\u2019re dangerous,\u201d second-year coach Ryan Warsofsky said before Saturday\u2019s home game against the Tampa Bay Lightning.<\/p>\n
The perennial contenders, on track to make their ninth straight playoff appearance with the top goal margin in the Eastern Conference, provided the young team one of its toughest tests yet. After climbing into the Western Conference\u2019s final playoff spot with their last win, the Sharks (20-18-3) also got a reminder of the distance between them and teams such as Tampa Bay, which has made three Stanley Cups since the last playoff game in San Jose.<\/p>\n
Barely six minutes expired Saturday afternoon inside the SAP Center before the Sharks were trailing by three goals and had switched goaltenders. Boos began to be heard from the capacity crowd of 17,435 after the Lightning (25-13-3) scored their sixth goal midway through the second period in an eventual 7-3 defeat.<\/p>\n
Pavol Regenda recorded a hat trick, Timothy Lilljegren assisted a pair of goals and Macklin Celebrini extended his points streak to 10 games, but the Sharks\u2019 three-game winning streak came to an end. Tampa Bay improved to 7-0 since Dec. 20 and 14-4-3 overall away from home.<\/p>\n
A fight breaks out between the Tampa Bay Lightning and San Jose Sharks during the second period of an NHL hockey game Saturday, Jan. 3, 2026, in San Jose, Calif. (AP Photo\/Thien-An Truong)\u00a0<\/p>\n
The chippy, physical contest devolved into a brawl that paused the game with 4:21 to go in the second period and resulted in more players in the penalty box than were left on the ice by the time it had subsided. Four Sharks and three Lightning players were penalized for a fight that involved every player on the ice except the goaltenders. Barclay Goodrow was given a 10-minute major, resulting in a 5-on-4 power play that Tampa Bay converted into a 7-2 advantage.<\/p>\n
Brayden Point opened an early 1-0 lead with his 10th goal of the season, corralling a pass from Max Crozier and flicking a wrist shot over the left shoulder of Yaroslav Askarov. Nikita Kucherov controlled the puck in the Sharks\u2019 zone and passed ahead to Crozier, who found Point for the game\u2019s first score 2:37 into the first period.<\/p>\n
Darren Raddyish sent a slap shot past Askarov to make it 2-0 less than two minutes later and Brandon Hagel found the back of the net on a breakaway attempt that put the Sharks in a 3-0 hole with 13:14 still to play in the opening period. Warsofsky had seen enough.<\/p>\n
Askarov, who led the Sharks to a 3-2 record while starting the past five games, took a seat on the bench and Alex Nedeljkovic put his pads on. The Lightning had put 10 shots on goal by the time Warsofsky switched goalies, and Nedeljkovic stopped 12 of their 16 shots the rest of the way.<\/p>\n
Andrei Vasilevskiy blocked 19 of the Sharks\u2019 22 shots on goal, including a sensational save on a point-blank slap shot from Regenda after a tripping penalty put San Jose on the first power play of the game. The backup left wing got the last laugh and snuck a second-chance shot across the red line to cut the deficit to 3-1, converting the 5-on-4 opportunity, and later added his fourth goal of the season to make it 5-2 with 10:10 to play in the second period.<\/p>\n
Regenda, who had three goals in 23 career games entering the afternoon, completed his first career hat trick with a putback goal with 3:49 to play.<\/p>\n
Lilljegren, in his first ice time since Dec. 18, was credited with assists on the Sharks\u2019 first two goals, and Celebrini also helped set up the power-play score. The 19-year-old superstar has recorded points in his past 10 games, becoming the fourth teenager in the past decade with a double-digit points streak.<\/p>\n
It was only fitting that Celebrini factored into the game against the Lightning and coach Jon Cooper, who also leads the Canadian national team and this week named Celebrini to its Olympic roster. Prior to puck drop, Cooper said he hadn\u2019t gotten a chance to speak with Celebrini since finalizing the roster, knowing that they would get to connect in-person in San Jose, and praised him as a \u201cgenerational\u201d talent.<\/p>\n
Celebrini\u2019s assist increased his point total this season to 63, trailing only Colorado\u2019s Nathan MacKinnon and Edmonton\u2019s Connor McDavid for the most in the NHL. The next Sharks player on the list is Will Smith, with 29 points, which the two-time Stanley Cup champion coach described as \u201ceye-opening.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s a massive gap. And he\u2019s plus-13,\u201d Cooper said, praising the team for finding its way into the playoff picture after finishing last in the league last year. \u201cThey\u2019ve really come a long way. Their staff has done a phenomenal job with this team.\u201d<\/p>\n
Klingberg \u2018day-to-day\u2019<\/p>\n
John Klingberg, the Sharks\u2019 highest-scoring defenseman with nine goals this season, was questionable with a lower-body injury and eventually ruled out. The Sharks were down another defenseman by the end of the game after Shakir Mukhamadullin left with an undisclosed injury and did not return.<\/p>\n
Warsofsky, however, wasn\u2019t concerned with Klingberg\u2019s long-term outlook, describing his status as \u201cday-to-day.\u201d<\/p>\n
In his place, San Jose activated Liljegren, who had missed the past five games with an upper-body injury.<\/p>\n
\u201cBefore he got injured, his game was trending in the right direction,\u201d Warsofsky said of Liljegren. \u201cLooking to get back in there and use his legs to defend, move pucks out of our backend. We\u2019ve obviously seen it at times. We\u2019d like to see it more.\u201d<\/p>\n
Misa takes \u2018step in the right direction\u2019 at World Juniors<\/p>\n
Michael Misa scored his second goal of the World Juniors for Canada in a 7-1 rout of Slovakia on Friday to advance to the semifinals.<\/p>\n
Misa, the Sharks\u2019 No. 2 overall selection in the 2025 NHL draft, has totaled six points through five games. Warsofsky has been keeping tabs and called his effort in the quarterfinals the 18-year-old\u2019s \u201cbest game\u201d of the tournament and a \u201cstep in the right direction for him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Canada faces Czechia on Saturday in the semifinals. The winner of Sweden and Finland\u2019s semifinal awaits the winner in the gold medal game.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think these next two games will probably be the toughest of the tournament, so those will be good tests for him,\u201d said Warsofsky, who has liked what he\u2019s seen from the 18-year-old so far. \u201cHe\u2019s holding onto pucks. He\u2019s making plays. The game is slowing down for him a little bit.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN JOSE \u2014 The up-and-coming San Jose Sharks expected to take a step forward this year. Halfway through…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":119195,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[401,402,181,404,88,90,89,98,127],"class_list":{"0":"post-119194","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-jose","8":"tag-hockey","9":"tag-inside-sports","10":"tag-latest-headlines","11":"tag-nhl","12":"tag-san-jose","13":"tag-san-jose-headlines","14":"tag-san-jose-news","15":"tag-san-jose-sharks","16":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119194","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=119194"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119194\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/119195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}