The San Jose Sharks are making a habit of winning games with late goals.
It doesn’t matter to the Sharks how they are winning. They have high hopes that the next victory will come Thursday night when they host the Toronto Maple Leafs.
The Sharks (35-31-7, 77 points) came up with another rally in a 4-3 victory over the Anaheim Ducks on Wednesday. San Jose is riding a three-game winning streak and resides one point behind the Los Angeles Kings in the chase for the Western Conference’s second wild-card spot.
San Jose’s rising star Macklin Celebrini scored his second goal of the game — and 40th of the season — with the goalie pulled for the extra attacker to tie the game with 99 seconds remaining in regulation. Alex Wennberg scored with 31 seconds left to complete the comeback.
In the past week, the Sharks have won three games with goals in the final two minutes.
“At the end of the day, all that matters is getting that win,” Wennberg said. “This time of year, this is the kind of hockey you want to play. You want to be fighting for playoffs. It’s great.”
While Wennberg was the hero, the star definitely was Celebrini, who set up the winning tally to boost his point total to 105.
“I could talk about him all day,” Wennberg said. “He’s unbelievable. He’s a game changer.”
Now the Sharks will try to post another victory and climb into a playoff position. San Jose has claimed the last three meetings with Toronto, all in extra time, including a 3-2 overtime clash on Dec. 11.
“We’ll enjoy this one, but at 12:01, it’s a new day,” Sharks coach Ryan Warsofsky said. “And we’ve got to get ready for Toronto.”
The Maple Leafs (32-30-13, 77 points) are all but mathematically eliminated but have won three of their past four games.
The Leafs are coming off a 5-4 overtime win over the Anaheim Ducks on Monday in the second contest of a four-game road trip, but that has become secondary to the future.
Toronto took a big step in firing general manager Brad Treliving just before the Anaheim game, which reverberated through the room.
“We don’t take that lightly,” forward John Tavares said after Wednesday’s practice. “We know how much he cares about every single one of us, how much he believed in the group. Our job is to go out there, play for the crest and push things along … move things in the right direction.”
The Maple Leafs, who finished atop the Atlantic Division last season, have had a disastrous campaign on so many levels, but the goal now is to finish strong.
That said, everybody is wondering what the future holds for coach Craig Berube.
“We all came up short this year. That’s on us as players,” forward Max Domi said. “We definitely owe it to him to be better in the last seven games. He’s a great coach and a second-to-none human being.”
For his part, Berube is doing his best to ignore the off-ice noise as his club plays out the string.
“I’m focused on coaching the team,” he said. “We’ve got a game; that’s the only thing that I can control. Whatever happens, happens, but I’m the coach here now and my focus is the team. That’s it.”
