Last-minute goal gives Sharks thrilling win over St. Louis Blues

Curtis Pashelka, The Mercury News on Mar 31, 2026

Published in Hockey

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SAN JOSE – The importance of the Sharks’ game against the St. Louis Blues on Monday didn’t need to be reiterated to Macklin Celebrini, Alex Wennberg, or anyone else in a San Jose uniform.

Wennberg and Celebrini each had three points, and Adam Gaudette scored a go-ahead goal with 21 seconds left in the third period as the Sharks earned a thrilling 5-4 win over the Blues before an announced crowd of 16,031 at SAP Center.

Gaudette came down the left wing and fired a wrist shot that crept through the pads of Blues goalie Joel Hofer and over the goal line as the Sharks began a six-game homestand on a positive note.

The Sharks had a two-goal lead late in the second period before they allowed power play goals to Philip Broberg and Cam Fowler, with Fowler’s goal at the 12:53 mark of the third period — after a tripping penalty on goalie Yaroslav Askarov — tying the game 4-4.

All three of Wennberg’s points, including both of his goals, came on the power play, and Celebrini’s three points gave him 101 on the season, as he became just the third player in the 35-year history of the Sharks organization to reach 100 points.

Joe Thornton had 114 points in 2006-07, and Erik Karlsson had 101 points in 2022-23, when he won his third Norris Trophy as the NHL’s best defenseman.

Celebrini joins Wayne Gretzky, Dale Hawerchuk, Mario Lemieux, Jimmy Carson, and Sidney Crosby as the only teenagers in NHL history to record 100 points in a single season.

Chants of “MVP, MVP” echoed throughout SAP Center after both of Celebrini’s goals, his 37th and 38th of the season.

Most importantly for the Sharks, Monday’s win gave them 75 points, two more than the Blues and now two fewer than the Nashville Predators for the second wild card spot in the Western Conference, with two games in hand.

The Sharks are now tied for 10th place in the West with the Seattle Kraken, both one point behind the Los Angeles Kings.

The rest of the homestand will go a long way in determining whether the Sharks make the playoffs. The Sharks play the Anaheim Ducks on Wednesday, the Toronto Maple Leafs on Thursday, the Predators on Saturday, the Chicago Blackhawks next Monday, and the Edmonton Oilers on April 8.

Celebrini assisted on Wennberg’s power play goal at the 8:25 mark of the first period and scored his own goal on the man advantage 4:55 later to give him 100 points on the season and the Sharks an early 2-1 lead over the St. Louis Blues at SAP Center.

Celebrini, who entered Monday with 98 points in 71 games, then scored his second goal with 56 seconds left in the first period off a nice assist from Nick Leddy, giving the second-year forward a three-point first period and the Sharks a 3-2 lead.

Celebrini, 19, entered Monday as the NHL’s fourth-leading scorer, trailing only Edmonton Oilers captain Connor McDavid (124 points), Tampa Bay Lightning winger Nikita Kucherov (121 points), and Colorado Avalanche center Nathan MacKinnon (117 points).

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