San Jose Sharks, behind Celebrini, gaining confidence after tough start

SAN JOSE – The San Jose Sharks are playing with a little more confidence right now after a difficult start to the season.

Forwards Alexander Wennberg and Philipp Kurashev each had a goal and an assist, and goalie Alex Nedeljkovic made 29 saves in his best performance of the season to help lead the Sharks to a 5-2 win over the New Jersey Devils at SAP Center.

Macklin Celebrini assisted on Will Smith’s big second-period goal and now has five goals and seven assists in a career-long six-game point streak, as the Sharks won for the third time in five games following a 0-4-2 start.

The Sharks’ win was their first on home ice this season.

“Just compete and just play,” Sharks coach Ryan Warsofsky said. “Get to our game. I liked our start again. We did some really good things. I liked our game in the third. It matured as it went on, something we continue to build on.”

Celebrini now had 17 points in 11 games, becoming just the fifth teenager in the past 15 years to record 17 or more points in a single calendar month. The others were Connor McDavid in February and November 2016, Clayton Keller in March 2018, Andrei Svechnikov in November 2019, and Connor Bedard in March 2024.

Celebrini and the Sharks will be severely tested in the next few days with games against the Colorado Avalanche on Saturday, the Detroit Red Wings on Sunday, and the Seattle Kraken next Wednesday. Those three teams going into Friday had a combined record of 19-6-7.

But since a 3-0 loss to the Pittsburgh Penguins, a game they controlled for the final two periods, the Sharks have gone 3-3-0, with the three losses by a combined four goals.

“I think you can see in these last couple of games, we’ve come out pretty strong, come out really fast, gotten the first goal,” Nedeljkovic said. “We’re in games. There haven’t been a lot of games this year, maybe like one or two, where we didn’t really have it that night, and we didn’t really have a shot.”

The third line of Wennberg, Kurashev, and Eklund had an impressive first period as each player scored a goal to help give the Sharks a 3-1 lead. After withstanding a Devils push in the second period, mainly with the help of Nedeljkovic, Sharks wingers Smith and Tyler Toffoli scored at even strength to push San Jose’s lead to 5-1.

Celebrini assisted on Smith’s goal at the 16:50 mark, controlling a faceoff in the Devils’ zone before getting the puck over to Smith, who scored his fourth of the season on a second effort. Toffoli’s goal was also his fourth of the year, as he redirected a shot by Dmitry Orlov past Devils goalie Jake Allen.

Nedeljkovic came into Thursday with a 1-4-1 record and an unsightly .844 save percentage. But the Sharks haven’t always played the most stout brand of defense in Nedeljkovic’s starts, or in several of Yaroslav Askarov’s appearances.

That was the case — at times — on Thursday. But Nedeljkovic made 21 saves in the final two periods, including the third when the Sharks were outshot 9-0.

The Sharks (3-6-2) were coming off a disappointing 4-3 loss to the Los Angeles Kings on Tuesday when they essentially dominated the final two periods.

“I thought we were pretty disciplined in our own end, very detailed, and we were putting our bodies on the line,” Nedeljkovic said. “Guys were blocking a lot of shots tonight. There were a couple of times pucks came from the point where I didn’t really have a good sight on it, and it ended up never getting through.”

The Sharks lost Ryan Reaves to a lower-body injury after Allen stopped him on a second-period breakaway. Reaves fought off a check from Devils winger Paul Cotter, put a backhand shot on Allen, but tripped over the goalie’s glove and fell hard on his back.  Reaves did not return for the third period.

The Sharks started this season 0-3-2 on home ice, and actually hadn’t won at the Tank since March 27 of last season when they beat the Toronto Maple Leafs 6-5 in a shootout. The Sharks then lost their last five home games, all in regulation time, as part of a year-ending 11-game losing streak that sealed their status as the NHL’s last-place team.

Rookie defenseman Sam Dickinson played his ninth game of the season on Thursday, and now the Sharks need to decide whether to keep him on the NHL roster or loan him back to his major junior team, the London Knights of the Ontario Hockey League.

Warsofsky said Dickinson and Desharnais formed a solid third defense pair but did not indicate whether Dickinson would remain in the NHL.

If the Sharks play Dickinson in a 10th game, they would burn the first year of his three-year entry-level contract, making him eligible for restricted free agency – and a likely significant pay rise — following the 2027-28 season.

Warsofsky said earlier Thursday that the team’s decision whether to keep Dickinson and rookie center Michael Misa or return them to their respective OHL teams will ultimately come down to what they feel is best for their development.

“At the end of the day, what’s best for the player and what’s best for the team?” Warsofsky said of the decision. “If they can handle it, and if we believe they can handle it, they’ll stay here. If not, then we’ll go through those processes.”

Before Thursday, Dickinson, 19, had played eight of the Sharks’ 10 games this season and averaged just over 14 minutes of ice time. While he was still looking for his first NHL point, he did have positive underlying numbers — with a Corsi-for percentage of 52.46, per Natural Stat Trick — as he played mainly on the Sharks’ third defense pair.

“We’re going to see how engaged he is,” Warsofsky said when asked what he needed to see from Dickinson. “Is he executing the breakouts. Is he executing our structure? Is the pace suitable from him from the start of the game to the (end)? How many times is there a dip in his game?

“There’s going to be mistakes, but are we seeing less and less of those mistakes?