CALGARY \u2014 Yaroslav Askarov just had to take a breath. Literally.<\/p>\n
Much was expected from the 2020 No. 11 pick, going into the 2025-26 campaign. There were expectations that the top prospect, acquired from the Nashville Predators in the summer of 2024 for the equivalent of two first-round picks, would be ready to step in immediately as the San Jose Sharks\u2019 No. 1 goalie.<\/p>\n
Instead, veteran Alex Nedeljkovic earned the opening night nod over the 23-year-old. And Askarov struggled all month, going 1-4-1 with a 4.69 GAA and .844 Save % in October. Per Evolving Hockey, his -3.41 Goals Saved Above Expected was ninth-worst in the NHL (of 65 goalies).<\/p>\n
The young Russian looked shellshocked after a couple losses, and admitted, \u201cI was stuck with myself as well. Still no idea what\u2019s [going on] with me before. I know I wasn\u2019t playing great before.\u201d<\/p>\n
What a difference a month makes.<\/p>\n
Askarov is 4-0-0 in November with a 1.23 GAA and .963 Save %. His +11.64 GSAx leads the league (of 55 goalies).<\/p>\n
Askarov has been, so far this month, arguably the best goalie in the NHL.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s pretty nice to get that feeling back,\u201d Askarov told San Jose Hockey Now.<\/p>\n
So what\u2019s helped Askarov find his game? The answer might just be as simple as taking a deep breath.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CALGARY \u2014 Yaroslav Askarov just had to take a breath. Literally. Much was expected from the 2020 No.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":51470,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[32927,7974,93,1036,88,90,89,98,4254,17611,3516],"class_list":{"0":"post-51469","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-jose","8":"tag-breathing","9":"tag-classical-music","10":"tag-featured","11":"tag-ryan-warsofsky","12":"tag-san-jose","13":"tag-san-jose-headlines","14":"tag-san-jose-news","15":"tag-san-jose-sharks","16":"tag-sjhn","17":"tag-thomas-speer","18":"tag-yaroslav-askarov"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51469","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=51469"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51469\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}