SAN JOSE – Nick Gialdini could only save the San Jose Sharks so many times on Thursday night against the Minnesota Wild.
Gialdini, the Sharks’ video coach, saw that the Wild was offside before two of its goals in the second period and alerted the Sharks’ coaching staff. This, of course, helped Sharks head coach Ryan Warsofsky successfully challenge both plays.
But the Sharks could only hold out for so long, as a deep and talented Wild team scored two other perfectly legal goals in the second period and went on to earn a 5-2 victory before an announced crowd of 10,526 at SAP Center.
Macklin Celebrini scored goals at the 4:36 mark of the second period and 16:08 mark of the third, both off assists from Mikael Granlund and both on Wild goalie Marc-Andre Fleury. Celebrini, 18, is the youngest player in the NHL, and Fleury, 40, is the oldest.
But after Celebrini’s first goal, the Wild got goals from Mats Zuccarello and Matt Boldy later in the second period to take a 3-1 lead.
Fleury finished with 24 saves in yet another win over the Sharks, as San Jose finished its homestand with a 3-2-0 record.
After Celebrini’s second goal, Boldy scored an empty-netter with under two minutes to play to seal the win for Minnesota, which won for the eighth time in its last 10 games.
Zach Bogosian and Jonas Brodin also scored for the Wild, and Kirill Kaprizov had three assists.
Sharks goalie Vitek Vanecek finished with 26 saves as his record this season fell to 2-5-0. Vanecek was coming off a 49-save performance in a 2-1 overtime by the Sharks over Columbus on Tuesday.
The Sharks start a four-game road trip on Sunday against the New Jersey Devils.
Celebrini scored in his NHL debut on Oct. 10 but was placed on injured reserve two days later with a hip ailment. Celebrini returned to the Sharks’ lineup on Tuesday against the Columbus Blue Jackets after he missed 12 games but looked less rusty against the Wild.
The Sharks fell behind 1-0 on a bit of a fluky bounce in the Wild’s favor.
After Will Smith lost a faceoff to Marcus Foligno deep in the Sharks’ zone, Declan Chisholm sent a pass over to Bogosian, whose shot toward the net went off Smith’s skate and past Vanecek at the 2:22 mark. Smith was checking Foligno, who went to the Sharks’ crease right after he won the face.
The Sharks didn’t get their first shot on net until the 9:32 mark of the first period, as Wild goalie Marc-Andre Fleury blockered away a shot from Barclay Goodrow.
Still, the Sharks were only down by a goal, as they killed the two penalties they took in the first period.
Fleury is expected to retire at the end of the season, and Thursday’s game could have been his last start in San Jose.
It’s not a moment too soon for Sharks fans. Coming into Thursday, Fleury, in 27 regular season games against the Sharks, was 18-5-4 all-time vs. San Jose with a .939 save percentage.
The Sharks knew they would be tested by the Wild, one of the NHL’s stingiest teams that had only lost two games in regulation time this season.
Before its 5-1 loss to the Los Angeles Kings on Tuesday, Minnesota had won seven of eight, including an impressive 5-1 victory in Florida on Oct. 22 and recent home wins over Tampa Bay and Toronto.
Before Thursday, the Wild had only allowed an average of 2.67 goals per game, the fifth-best mark in the NHL. Minnesota was also one of the least-penalized teams in the NHL, and goalies Fleury and Filip Gustavsson had combined for an impressive .907 save percentage—the sixth-best in the NHL.
To boot, Kaprizov was, before Thursday, the NHL’s fifth-leading scorer with 21 points in 12 games.
“First and foremost is we’ve got to mentally be aware when he’s on the ice and get to our matchups, and we’ve got to take away time and space and play through him,” Sharks coach Ryan Warsofsky said Thursday morning. “I thought that was a big issue in the game against Columbus.”