The San Jose Sharks made a push in the third period but could not overcome a pair of puck-handling miscues in a 4-1 loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning on Tuesday to finish off a four-game road trip.<\/p>\n
Sharks winger Tyler Toffoli scored the opening goal at the 14:37 mark of the first period off assists from William Eklund and Alexander Wennberg. But the Lightning responded with four straight goals, including one just 33 seconds after Toffoli scored, as winger Nikita Kucherov pounced on a turnover by defenseman Sam Dickinson and fed Anthony Cirelli, who found Brandon Hagel with a diagonal seam pass for a tap-in.<\/p>\n
With the Lightning leading 2-1 on a goal by Cirelli at the 1:49 mark of the second period, Sharks goalie Yaroslav Askarov couldn\u2019t connect on a short pass to defenseman Vincent Desharnais from behind the net. Gage Goncalves got the loose puck to Dominic James, who found an open Jake Guentzel in front of the net. He beat Askarov for his 22nd goal of the season at the 3:17 mark.<\/p>\n
Hagel added an empty net goal with 2:19 left in regulation as the Sharks (25-21-3) lost for the third time in five games.<\/p>\n
Askarov finished with 16 saves and now has just one win in his last five starts. His counterpart, Andrei Vasilevskiy, had 22 saves for the Lightning, including nine in the third period. Kucherov had three assists on Tuesday and eight points in two games against the Sharks this season. Tampa Bay pounded the Sharks 7-3 in San Jose on Jan. 3.<\/p>\n
Macklin Celebrini, the Sharks\u2019 leading scorer with 72 points, had five shots on net and was held without a point for the second straight game.<\/p>\n
The only other time this season Celebrini has been held without a point in consecutive games was on Dec. 3 and 5 when the Sharks lost to both the Washington Capitals and Dallas Stars. For the year, the Sharks are 1-9-2 in games when Celebrini does not have a point.<\/p>\n
Still, the Sharks\u2019 road trip went about as expected. They beat the teams (Washington, Florida) that are around or below them in the NHL\u2019s overall standings and lost to two of the best teams (Detroit, Tampa Bay) in the Eastern Conference.<\/p>\n
The 4-2 loss to the Red Wings and Tuesday\u2019s result came in the second half of a back-to-back. The Sharks have now lost three straight games in the second half of back-to-backs and are 3-6-1 in such situations on the year.<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, holding serve with a 2-2-0 record on a challenging four-game trip isn\u2019t the end of the world for the Sharks, who entered Tuesday in third place in the Pacific Division.<\/p>\n
The Sharks returned to San Jose right after the game and will host the New York Rangers on Friday.<\/p>\n
The Sharks were looking for a better result against Tampa Bay after they were hammered by the Lightning in a testy affair earlier this month at SAP Center.<\/p>\n
In that game, Tampa Bay took a 3-0 lead just 6:46 into the first period as they chased Askarov from the net. Alex Nedeljkovic replaced Askarov but allowed four goals in the second period, with the Lightning scoring its seven goals on just 26 shots.<\/p>\n
The win by Tampa Bay in San Jose was its seventh in what would become an 11-game winning streak. After a 3-2 overtime loss to the St. Louis Blues on Friday and a 4-1 win over the Dallas Stars on Sunday to finish a five-game road trip, the Lightning carried a 13-game point streak into Tuesday and were tied atop the Atlantic Division with the Red Wings.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is probably the best team in the league right now, the hottest team in the league,\u201d coach Ryan Warsofsky said to the Sharks Audio Network of the Lightning. \u201cThey\u2019re dangerous in a lot of different ways. We\u2019ve got to take the game in five-minute segments, and we can\u2019t get too high or too low.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust stay within ourselves and play for each other like we\u2019ve been doing.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Sharks were coming off one of their most memorable wins of the season on Monday when they beat the two-time defending Stanley Cup champion Panthers 4-1.<\/p>\n
Although Vincent Desharnais and Mario Ferraro were among the goal scorers, the game will be remembered for the fight between goalies Nedeljkovic and Sergei Bobrovsky, who went toe-to-toe at the 6:00 mark of the third period.<\/p>\n
NOTES: Although rookie winger Igor Chernyshov had two assists in Monday\u2019s win and now has 11 points in 15 games this season, he was a healthy scratch against the Lightning. Forward Adam Gaudette, who was a healthy scratch against the Panthers, was reinserted into the lineup and began the game as the right winger on a line with center Michael Misa and left wing Pavol Regenda. Gaudette, who didn\u2019t have a point Tuesday, now has 10 goals and seven assists in 39 games this season. \u2026 Forward Jeff Skinner and defenseman Vincent Iorio were the other healthy scratches. Skinner didn\u2019t play on the road trip, and Iorio has been scratched for three straight games.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The San Jose Sharks made a push in the third period but could not overcome a pair of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":142522,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[401,402,181,404,88,90,89,98,403,127],"class_list":{"0":"post-142549","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-sharks-alert","17":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142549","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=142549"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142549\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/142522"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}