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Quick bites: Celebrini’s welcome to the NHL moment

Posted on by Erika Towne

The San Jose Sharks lost to the Vegas Golden Knights (again) at SAP Center, but this time by a much more respectable 4-2 score. The Sharks battled back through deficits throughout the night and kept the game close until the waning minutes, when an empty net goal sealed the game for Vegas. It was a play that young Macklin Celebrini will learn a lot from.

While Celebrini makes the initial play to do just enough to prevent Jack Eichel from scoring on the empty net, when he goes back to retrieve the puck, he makes the mistake of believing that he can outmaneuver Vegas’ Mark Stone the same way that he’s outmaneuvered about 90% of the league so far. The trouble for Celebrini is that Stone is much better at taking the puck away from players than most of the league.

Young Celebrini loses the puck, and it leads to an easy empty netter for the Golden Knights.

Against the top team in the league, Celebrini had some difficulties. When you look at Hockey Stat Cards’ postgame performance evaluation of all the Sharks players, you can see that Celebrini is in the bottom third of the Sharks players on ice.

This isn’t a place in the rankings that the forward has been many times. While Celebrini was even on scoring chances during his 18 minutes of ice time last night, he was outshot 6-17. Celebrini’s expected goals was a negative-two.

It was a tough night for Celebrini.

Georgiev had his moments

The first ten minutes of the game were shaky for Alexandar Georgiev in the Sharks’ net. The goaltender allowed two goals, both of which were quick but not particularly threatening. This first one by Mark Stone was on a breakaway.

Then there was this shot by Zach Whitecloud that Georgiev seemed to see.

That said, Georgiev settled down and stopped 38 of the 41 shots he faced including all 12 of the high-danger chances by the Golden Knights. He still finished the night with a .927 save percentage and only allowed three goals when the expected goals against according to Natural Stat Trick was 4.25.

Timothy Liljegren upgrades the Sharks blueline

When the Sharks traded for Timothy Liljegren a few months ago, the team was taking a chance on a player who didn’t have a place in the Toronto Maple Leafs lineup. It wasn’t that he was a particularly bad player, but that he simply wasn’t good enough to push someone out of the Stanley Cup contending lineup.

That said, Liljegren was young and there was some thought that with more responsibility, he might develop into a better player. He’s getting that opportunity with the Sharks and last night, he showed that he could be a servicable defenseman for the Sharks moving forward.

Liljegren was one of the best players on the ice for the Sharks last night. Not only did he score one of the goals while quarterbacking the power play, but it was done with an offensive prowess that the Sharks could use more from on the blueline.

The way that Liljegren moves to make the screen work for him and then picks a spot, and hits it, bodes well for the Sharks that were lacking offensive upside from their defensemen last season. His ability to move with the puck on his stick has also been an asset.

That said, last night, he did some of the other little things that the Sharks need from a defenseman. He played physical, defensively responsible hockey.

When you look at Liljegren’s event map from last night, you can see that he had three shot attempts blocked in addition to the shot he made for his power play goal. What’s more, in the defensive end of the ice, he was hitting players and blocking shots.

Will Liljegren be a top pairing offensive defenseman? No. But he could give the Sharks the defensive depth they will need in the future.

Scoring summary Vegas Golden Knights at San Jose Sharks Jan. 7, 2025

First Period
8:39 VGK Mark Stone from Shea Theodore and William Karlsson
10:08 VGK Zach Whitecloud from Brett Howden and Keegan Kolesar

Second Period
9:49 SJS William Eklund from Collin Graf and Alex Wennberg on the power play

Third Period
1:10 VGK Victor Olofsson from Jack Eichel and Shea Theodore on the power play
10:41 SJS Timothy Liljegren from William Eklund and Fabian Zetterlund on the power play
18:40 VGK Tomas Hertl from Mark Stone into the empty net

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