The best player on the ice in Edmonton on Saturday wasn’t Connor McDavid or Leon Draisaitl, which might sound like heresy given McDavid assisted on all three of the Oilers’ goals, including Draisaitl’s overtime winner to beat the San Jose Sharks.
Not surprisingly, McDavid was named the game’s first star and Draisaitl was picked as the third star. But the best player was Yaroslav Askarov, the Sharks’ goaltender. Askarov received second-star honors, but his spectacular performance was the story in his first time facing the almost impossible challenge of stopping those two superstars.
It didn’t keep the Sharks from taking a 3-2 loss. But the 39-save showcase, in the spotlight of a passionate sellout Canadian hockey crowd, was the reason they didn’t suffer a worse fate, the reason they scratched out a point and came within 17.3 seconds of grabbing two against the team that reached Game 7 of last season’s Stanley Cup Final.
Sharks coach Ryan Warsofsky called the 22-year-old’s effort “outstanding,” as Askarov continually fended off the Oilers, who turned up their game a few notches after a sluggish opening period.
“He was seeing the puck really well,” Warsofsky said. “Quick. Made some really big saves.”
“That was awesome,” Sharks defenseman Cody Ceci told reporters. “Happy for him. He kept us in that game the whole way. It was great to see, especially from a young guy. To have that much composure and play against some high-end talent and do as well as he did, it’s awesome for us.”
Saturday was Askarov’s sixth NHL game and his third with San Jose since general manager Mike Grier packaged center prospect David Edstrom, a first-round pick in the 2025 draft and goaltending Magnus Chrona in a trade with Nashville, after Askarov made it clear he didn’t want to sit for years behind Juuse Saros after Nashville committed to Saros for eight years.
Askarov’s sample size is small since his path to becoming a No. 1 goalie has been blocked, originally by Saros and then by Mackenzie Blackwood, Vitek Vaněček and now Alexandar Georgiev with the Sharks. But that sample size has been impressive, and Askarov’s stock steadily has been on the rise since Nashville made him the No. 11 pick in the 2020 draft.
This month, San Jose acquired Georgiev from Colorado and sent away Blackwood. The trade also created diverging paths for the Sharks, with two veteran goalies on expiring contracts. But if the mission is to win games right now, Askarov gives them their best shot. That point was made emphatically, time and time again, on Saturday.
Winning too often could work against the Sharks. They are 11-19-6 heading into Monday’s game at Vancouver, with losses in seven of their last eight, including four straight in which third-period leads have disappeared. Only Chicago and Buffalo have a worse points percentage than San Jose’s .389. The chances of landing another top-five draft pick are strong. A chance to win the lottery for a second consecutive season is in play.
Playing Georgiev or Vaněček increases those odds. It’s nothing against those two, who are capable of winning games, but Georgiev was dealt away because Colorado had deemed him unreliable when it came to achieving its Stanley Cup aspirations, and Vaněček had fallen to the No. 2 role in San Jose behind Blackwood. Vaněček is now on the shelf, after he was struck in the head by an errant deflected puck while watching from the Sharks’ bench against Winnipeg last week.
That has given Askarov his opportunity, and neither Georgiev nor Vaněček have his kind of game-stealing ability. On Saturday, he stoned McDavid and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins in the first period and robbed a wide-open Adam Henrique in the second. The Oilers did help Askarov when Draisaitl failed to bury multiple tap-in tries. But Askarov did his part in stopping all 23 of Edmonton’s shots during a withering middle period.
The storybook ending was ruined when Mattias Ekholm tied the game in the final minute, after the Oilers pulled goalie Calvin Pickard for a sixth attacker. Then McDavid and Draisaitl teamed up to end the game 18 seconds into overtime. Even though Draisaitl’s shot snuck through his attempt to lock down the post, Askarov couldn’t stop beaming afterward.
That was the sight of a young goalie bent on being a No. 1 embracing the challenge of stopping the best.
“This was crazy,” Askarov told reporters. “That was fun to play against (McDavid), absolutely. Against him and Draisaitl.”
Would either Georgiev or Vaněček have gotten the Sharks to the point of stealing that game? Unlikely. But there is reason to play Georgiev, and also Vaněček once he is recovered. Especially in Georgiev’s case, the Sharks can continue efforts to rehabilitate him after his game often went astray with the Avalanche — and attempt to rebuild his trade value. If a playoff-bound club is in urgent need of solidifying its net before the deadline, Georgiev could become an option.
But it’s already been proven Georgiev won’t put the Sharks on his back. Askarov has that look about him. In his three San Jose games, he was great in a shootout loss to St. Louis, sharp in a blowout win over Los Angeles and utterly fantastic in a near-victory on Saturday. That’s just three games, but all could have gone in San Jose’s direction. The Sharks are still in learning-how-to-win mode. Askarov could make a big difference in that area.
The big picture isn’t lost in San Jose, but the guess is the Sharks and Warsofsky will lean toward the win-now side given that a) Warsofsky is an NHL head coach, so winning always matters, and b) the admittedly emotional coach recently had to fork over $25,000 to the league for “inappropriate conduct” toward the officials in a loss to Utah. He’s clearly invested in winning.
Winning more games also would give the Sharks more conviction that they’re on the right track in their rebuilding plan. Grier and his front office have thus far nailed their share of trades and draft picks — we’re talking beyond the obvious, such as drafting Macklin Celebrini. If Askarov becomes their backbone in goal for years and the Sharks return to making playoff appearances, the trade for him will look like a masterstroke.
Askarov has spent most of this season in the AHL, where he has nothing left to prove but stayed dialed in with a .938 save percentage. He hasn’t been that far off during his smattering of NHL starts. If Warsofsky puts him back in net for Celebrini’s homecoming in Vancouver on Monday, that’ll be a sign of how the Sharks want to proceed this season. Either way, the future of the San Jose crease is in young, assured hands.
“Looks like he’s having fun too,” said Ceci, who witnessed the full power of “McDrai” in his three seasons with Edmonton before joining the Sharks this year. “He’s always smiling, making big saves and having fun out there. And I think that’s huge as a young guy to have that confidence. Allows you to play as well as he did.”
(Photo of Yaroslav Askarov: David Gonzales / Imagn Images)
