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September 27, 2026
Preseason

Preseason finale: San Jose survived Vegas for 40 minutes, then outshot it 11-4

San Jose won 4-2 after Vegas outshot it 25-5 through two periods. The Sharks took the third 11-4 on shots and 17-5 on five-on-five attempts, with Vegas tied or chasing.

DC
Dom CahillSep 27, 20264 min read
Every call on this site goes on a public ledger and gets graded. The misses stay up.
Yaroslav Askarov in San Jose's white road sweater and a teal mask with his nickname, Asky, painted across the chin, looking up during a warmup. The photograph is from the 2024-25 season, not from Saturday's game.

Stop the clock at the second intermission, read the shot count, then read the score. Vegas had 25 shots to San Jose's five; San Jose led 2-1. The 4-2 win that followed rested on San Jose goaltender Yaroslav Askarov keeping those two numbers apart until the third period.

Give the opponent its weight, too. Thursday's 10-0 win came against Anaheim skaters with 146 NHL games in 2025-26, against San Jose's 689. NHL player records put Saturday's lineups much closer together, San Jose at 1,096 games across 18 skaters and Vegas at 1,140 across 18.

The first forty minutes#

Count the misses and blocks too and the imbalance grows. Vegas led all-situations attempts 50-15 through two periods, and the damage began before San Jose had a lead to protect. With the score 0-0, Vegas out-attempted the Sharks 23-6 over 16:29 of five-on-five.

Macklin Celebrini drew Vegas's top unit, sharing 6:48 of five-on-five with Jack Eichel. The matchup does not explain the whole deficit. Their shared minutes produced a 6-5 Vegas attempt edge. Across all his first-period five-on-five shifts, Celebrini was on the ice for one San Jose attempt and 14 Vegas attempts.

The kill#

San Jose took six minors and gave Vegas five power plays. Across 8:58 shorthanded, the Sharks allowed 17 attempts and 10 shots on goal; Askarov stopped nine, with former Shark Tomas Hertl scoring the goal.

Nolan Allan blocked five shots, and he played no NHL games last season. He also carried the most of the kill, 5:08 of San Jose's 8:58 shorthanded, ahead of Jacob Trouba's 4:57.

The third#

Advance to Nic Dowd's tying goal at 3:18. Between that goal and Mason Marchment's winner at 9:47, San Jose took every five-on-five attempt, seven to none over 4:29. After the winner, the Sharks out-attempted Vegas 10-4 over 8:06 of five-on-five, with Michael Misa adding the fourth goal.

By period, San Jose's five-on-five attempts ran six against 23, then seven against 12, then 17 against five. The best period was the last one.

A trailing team usually generates more attempts than a leading team; Vegas spent the third tied or trailing and lost the all-situations shot count 11-4. Celebrini's on-ice five-on-five attempts went 4-0 in the third, and Vegas's stars were still working. Eichel's all-situations ice time by period was 6:36, 8:30 and 7:31; Marner's was 6:51, 8:03 and 9:49. Against that opposition, San Jose finished with 17 of the third period's 22 five-on-five attempts.

The arguments against#

  1. This is one exhibition. One strong period in one game establishes nothing durable.
  2. Expected-goals coverage is missing for this preseason game; the available measures are shots, attempts and distances. Five-on-five unblocked-attempt median distances were close, San Jose at 32.6 feet across 19 attempts and Vegas at 33.4 across 27.
  3. The full-game attempt count still favors Vegas. Over the complete 43:51 at five-on-five, Vegas led 40-30.

Three stars, twice#

The NHL gamecenter's order starts with Marchment, whose goal and assist included the winner. Its selections run:

  1. Mason Marchment, San Jose, goal and assist.
  2. Yaroslav Askarov, San Jose, 27 saves on 29 shots.
  3. Tomas Hertl, Vegas, power-play goal.

My order starts with the goaltender who preserved the lead through that second intermission. Then it rewards the penalty-killing workload and the productive minutes at the bottom of San Jose's deployment list:

  1. Yaroslav Askarov (SJS). Vegas had 25 shots on goal through two periods and San Jose led 2-1 at the intermission; he stopped 27 of 29 in all, including 9 of 10 while San Jose was shorthanded for 8:58.
  2. Nolan Allan (SJS). He led San Jose in penalty-kill time at 5:08 of the 8:58, blocked five shots, and was on the ice for Marchment's winning goal, a defenseman with no NHL games last season.
  3. Michael Misa (SJS). The team's smallest five-on-five workload at 7:48 and its highest on-ice attempt share, 12 of 20 (60%), plus the fourth goal.

Askarov moves from the league's second slot to my first. The lists agree on one name out of three.

Sources: NHL gamecenter landing, boxscore, play-by-play and shift charts; NHL player records; MoneyPuck (no game file available).

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Alex Nedeljkovic makes 30 or more starts for San Jose in 2026-27.

The claim is that last season's split repeats rather than resolving in the younger goaltender's favor. FOR it: Nedeljkovic started 34 of San Jose's 82 games last season, 41.5 percent, and outperformed Yaroslav Askarov on every public measure in the Hockey Reference table (.896 to .883, 2.87 to 3.63, a .618 quality-start rate to .426, and plus 0.6 goals saved above average to minus 16.9, the fifth-worst mark of the 41 goaltenders who started 30 or more games, nobody tied); his four seasons before San Jose ran .901, .895, .902 and .894, a narrow band the .896 sits inside; and PuckPedia carries him at $3,000,000 for both 2026-27 and 2027-28 against Askarov's $2,000,000 for one year, so the club has paid the backup more than the starter and signed him longer. AGAINST it: Askarov is 24 to Nedeljkovic's 30 and was acquired to be the number one, so a normal improvement curve takes starts back; San Jose gave Askarov all 47 of his appearances as starts last season while Nedeljkovic came in cold six times, which is a club still treating Askarov as the starter; and 30 starts of 82 is a low bar to clear only if the tandem stays roughly even, so any genuine Askarov step forward resolves this WRONG.

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