SAN JOSE – The Sharks found a way to get the winner on Saturday night when Shakir Mukhamadullin s struck near the midway point of the third period, to give San Jose a 5-4 win and end an ugly five0game schneid.
“Just go into the zone, and [Eklund] gave it to me. I’m just shooting to hit the net and I scored,” Mukhamadullin said.
Yaroslav Askarov made 20 saves in the win.
“I thought we did some really good things,” San Jose coach Ryan Warsofsky said. “Like our first. Did some good things in the second. Obviously, they’re a good team, and they’re going to push, and they did that in the third period of the game. Obviously, [it] opened up a little bit too much of our liking, but we found a way to win a hockey game.”
The Oilers have lost five of their last six. The only win was an 8-1 drubbing of the Kings.
“You have a game like we did in LA and you feel really good about yourself and think you’re going to be able to do it again,” Oilers coach Kris Knoblauch said. “Think you have everything figured out. I think the first 10 minutes, they were the better team. Just too much too late.”
Macklin Celebrini hit for a goal ahead of the midway point of the first period to give the Sharks a 1-0 lead.
“Probably get it off as fast as possible,” Celebrini said. “I saw [Dmitry Orlov] out of the corner of my eye. I thought he was over, but when you look back at it, it was closer than I thought.”
Michael Misa scored off the power play about two minutes later to push the lead to 2-0.
Leon Draisaitl opened the scoring for the Oilers with a power play goal of his own to make it 2-1 to the Sharks.
“It is everyone for sure. I think everyone is making the wrong reads right now, maybe a little bit fragile on our decision-making,” Draisaitl said. “Got to find a way to fix it.”
Barclay Goodrow sent the game to the middle frame with the Sharks up 3-1 with less than three minutes left on the clock in the fist.
Evan Bouchard scored in the middle frame to cut the deficit to 3-2 for Edmonton.
Early in the third, the Oilers knotted the game at 3-3 with a strike by Trent Frederic .
The Sharks reclaimed the lead on a marker form Alexander Wennberg for a 4-3 advantage.
“It starts with us, starts with the leaders, then goes from there,” Oilers defenseman Darnell Nurse said. “Throughout the lineup, there are some guys who stepped up and made some really good plays tonight.”
Still in the first half of the third period, the Oilers tied the game, again, with a strike by Jake Walman.
Connor Ingram made 28 saves in the loss.
