San Jose Sharks and Macklin Celebrini lose to Utah Hockey Club

SAN JOSE – Clayton Keller scored with 43.8 seconds left in regulation to give the Utah Hockey Club a powerful 4-3 victory over the San Jose Sharks on Saturday night at SAP Center.

While Cody Ceci was serving a major penalty, Keller took a pass from Mikhail Sergachev and beat Sharks goaltender Vitek Vanecek for his 10th goal of the season.

Vanecek gave the Sharks a chance Saturday with 36 saves, but San Jose lost for the fourth time in five games and got off to a poor start in three home games.

The two teams combined for 26 penalty minutes, but the Sharks perhaps felt there should have been more calls, including a boarding call on Kevin Stenlund for tackling Macklin Celebrini from behind midway through the game.

The Sharks traded goals in the third period.

After Fabian Zetterlund’s power play goal at the 5:00 mark, Utah tied the score 4:49 later on an equalized goal from Michael Carcone, who scored a tap-in goal after Stenlund found him open next to the Sharks’ net .

The Sharks’ first homestand game went back and forth all night.

The Sharks took a 2-1 lead on a goal from Mikael Granlund at 14:11 of the second period. But four minutes later they converted their fourth penalty of the game when Nico Sturm left the pitch with a hook at 18:40.

Just 12 seconds later, Nick Schmaltz took a pass from Logan Cooley and beat Vanecek from close range for his fifth goal of the season.

The Sharks allowed Dylan Guenther a goal at 7:27 of the first period, but got that goal back 5:02 before halftime.

Wennberg, who had just finished a shift in which he took advantage of a Class A chance, received a pass from Barclay Goodrow and fired a shot that gave Utah goaltender Karel Vejmelka his eighth goal of the season and his NHL’s 99th -Career pushed aside.

Guenther’s goal was his 13th of the season when he created some space, received a pass from Logan Cooley and fired a shot past Vanecek.

Utah had scored 38 goals in its last 10 games before Saturday and was 6-2-2.

“This lineup has an elite skill level, so you can pay for it,” Sharks coach Ryan Warsofsky said before the game. “Obviously the Guenthers and the (Clayton) Kellers have the skill, so we’re going to have to be extremely physical in the defensive zone tonight. We have to take away time and space.”

The Sharks earned a 4-3 win over the St. Louis Blues on Thursday when they were outscored 16-2 in the third period, according to Natural Stat Trick.

“If you look back at the game in St. Louis, we wasted far too much time, space and movement, especially in the third period,” said Warsofsky. “(The Blues) got their (defenders) going and we’ll see that tonight with (defender Mikhail) Sergachev.”

“The most important thing tonight is that we defend. We have to commit to it, we have to continue to get pucks out, and when we do those two things we have great success, and we’re going to continue to persevere and continue to preach that and be more consistent about it.”

Originally published: December 14, 2024 at 9:49 pm PST