Macklin Celebrini supplied the milestone and the comeback, but San Jose could not supply the finish. The Sharks erased a 2-0 deficit against Pittsburgh on Wednesday at SAP Center, then failed to score during a 43-second 4-on-3 power play in overtime before losing 3-2 in the shootout.
The score had been rescued; the extra point was still there to be won. Celebrini reached 200 career points, Marchment reached 100 goals for his career, and Yaroslav Askarov kept San Jose close enough for both milestones to matter. That is substantial work to leave unfinished.
The Bay Area’s Sharks got back into a game that had threatened to escape, then let their best late opportunity pass.
Celebrini’s milestone came in the middle of a third-period revival rather than as a decorative footnote. His wrist shot at 11:32 of the period cut Pittsburgh’s advantage to 2-1. The goal was his 200th career point, and it changed the game’s shape: San Jose no longer needed a perfect comeback, only one more goal to force overtime.
Marchment provided that goal at 15:49. Celebrini moved the puck from the right faceoff circle across to Marchment near the opposite post, and Marchment finished to tie the score. The goal also gave Marchment his 100th career goal. Celebrini therefore handled both sides of the rescue, scoring the first response and setting up the equalizer.
That sequence deserves more credit than a simple milestone headline. San Jose had generated enough offense to make the comeback possible, but Pittsburgh’s Sergei Murashov made the Sharks work for every opening. He stopped 34 of 36 shots through overtime and denied all nine shots he faced while San Jose had the man advantage.
A goalie who gives up two goals on 36 shots is a large reason a two-goal lead survives long enough to become a tense finish.
Askarov was just as important to San Jose’s recovery. He made 33 saves on 35 shots before the shootout, with Samuel Girard’s first-period goal and Ben Kindel’s third-period power-play goal the only Pittsburgh scores in regulation. Without that work, Celebrini’s landmark moment would have arrived inside a routine loss rather than a game the Sharks had a chance to win.
The deciding missed chance came after Kris Letang was penalized for holding the stick at 4:17 of overtime. San Jose received a 4-on-3 power play for 43 seconds, an advantage that creates more room than a standard man advantage and puts extra pressure on a penalty-killing group. The Sharks did not convert. They finished 0-for-5 on the power play, while Pittsburgh went 1-for-3.
The overtime opportunity should not be treated as an automatic goal. Murashov had already established himself as the game’s most difficult obstacle, and a 4-on-3 lasting less than a minute can disappear with one blocked shot, one missed pass or one hurried decision. But the setting still carried unusual weight.