We won’t always do the San Jose Sharks in the NHL Saturday column, but we’re doing it again this weekend to examine the team’s remaining flaw(s): goaltending. Five games into the new season now, it’s clear this is a different team than what San Jose has put on the ice over the last handful of years, yet the same issues remain in net, really. The primary culprit is the No. 1 goaltender on the depth chart, Yaroslav Askarov. The team is 3-2 overall, without a regulation win, and in his four starts, he’s been a sieve.
Literally.
With a 3.71 goals-against average now after today’s 3-1 loss on home ice to the Edmonton Oilers, his save percentage is just .860 as well. These numbers are rotten, and even if the sample size is small, the Sharks have to be concerned about this development. At age 24 now, the former first-round draft pick (Nashville, 2020) from Russia just hasn’t shown he has what it takes to make it in the NHL long term. “Asky” has made 63 starts for the Sharks since the team acquired him in August 2024, and he’s just not very good.
He is 27-28-6 in those starts, and his numbers have gotten progressively worse, season to season. But with a 3.53 overall GAA in a San Jose sweater, it’s clear he’s not able to really be effective in the net—and worse yet, the coaching staff doesn’t seem to be able to bring out much improvement in him, if any at all. Against the Oilers today, he let in two bad goals where he must have lost sight of the puck, and that’s something an NHL goaltender just cannot do, regardless of whatever is in front of them, defensively or not.
Askarov has given up at least three goals in each of his four starts; he has blown two-goal leads in the third period twice already; and that save percentage is unacceptable at this level of professional hockey, no matter what team the Sharks are facing. We will note that none of his four starts this campaign so far qualify as “quality starts“—when the goalie achieves at least the mean save percentage (for the season) in a game, or if a goalie faces 20 or fewer shots, he only needs to get an 88.5% save percentage. Ouch!
For his overall San Jose tenure now, Asky only delivers a quality start three times every seven tries. For comparison’s sake, last season’s goalie leader in this statistical category posted a 72.4-percent QS rate. Yes, that is the elite, but it’s clear that the Sharks have a No. 1 goalie who is nowhere even remotely near that neighborhood. With significant improvements to the blue-line corps this year and a commitment to more two-way play from forwards, the San Jose roster needs to be a lot better at goal prevention.
Every other team—excluding the winless three in Calgary, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia—has at least one regulation win so far this season. And while the Sharks have surrendered 0.14 goals fewer per game this year so far than last year (again, small sample size), it’s because the backup netminder (Alex Nedeljkovic) was excellent in his single start this season: 1.97 GAA, .923 S%. Perhaps he will earn more starts soon based on Askarov’s struggles, although San Jose seems committed to riding him for now.
Last year, Asky got 47 starts to Nedeljkovic’s 34 starts; yet they both produced about the same sabermetric value overall to a team that missed the postseason by only four points. Nedeljkovic is seven years older, with 195 NHL starts under his belt to the tune of a 2.97 GAA and a .902 S%. If Askarov can’t prove he deserves more starts with the improved defensive roster and strategies, it’s going to be very important for the Sharks front office and coaching staff to realize that they need to make a change in net … soon.
We are not convinced at all that Nedeljkovic is the answer, either, because of what happened last year in the first few games. But someday soon, San Jose needs to find its No. 1 goalie if it wants to have any success in the postseason next spring.
