{"id":537928,"date":"2026-04-03T05:07:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-03T05:07:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/537928\/"},"modified":"2026-04-03T05:07:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-03T05:07:11","slug":"sharks-win-again-defeat-maple-leafs-to-move-into-2nd-wild-card-in-west","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/537928\/","title":{"rendered":"Sharks win again, defeat Maple Leafs to move into 2nd wild card in West"},"content":{"rendered":"

Zack Ostapchuk<\/a> and William Eklund<\/a> each had a goal and an assist, Collin Graf<\/a> and Adam Gaudette<\/a> each scored, and Alex Nedeljkovic<\/a>\u00a0made 18 saves for the Sharks (36-31-7), who have won the first three games of a six game homestand and have points in their past five (4-0-1). Alexander Wennberg<\/a>\u00a0had an assist to extend his point streak to five games (four goals, three assists).<\/p>\n

John Tavares scored, and Anthony Stolarz made 21 saves for the Maple Leafs (32-31-13), who are 3-2-0 in their past five games and have officially been eliminated from playoff contention.<\/p>\n

Ostapchuk put the Sharks up 1-0 at 3:27 of the first period. He got the puck off a stretch pass from Barclay Goodrow and got a wrist shot from the right circle under Toronto defenseman Simon Benoit’s stick and over Stolarz’s glove.<\/p>\n

Graf pushed the Sharks’ lead to 2-0 at 17:43. After the Sharks created a turnover, Michael Misa backhanded it to Graf behind him in the left face-off circle, who put the puck into the top right corner over Stolarz’ glove. The goal marks Graf’s 20th of the season, the first time he has reached that milestone in his NHL career.<\/p>\n

Eklund put the Sharks up 3-0 at 1:42 of the second period. Eklund took a pass from Wennberg at the top of the right face-off circle, and despite his shot going wide of the net, the puck bounced back off the end boards and hit Stolarz’s left pad to cross the goal line.<\/p>\n

Tavares scored a power-play goal at 6:43 to cut it 3-1. While on a three-on-two, Easton Cowan passed to Tavares at the left dot, and his snap shot beat Nedeljkovic over the blocker.<\/p>\n

Gaudette scored an empty-net goal at 19:03 of the third period for the 4-1 final.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Zack Ostapchuk and William Eklund each had a goal and an assist, Collin Graf and Adam Gaudette each…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":537929,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5127],"tags":[5,4,519,168,5306,5305,1780],"class_list":{"0":"post-537928","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-jose-sharks","8":"tag-hockey","9":"tag-nhl","10":"tag-san-jose","11":"tag-san-jose-sharks","12":"tag-sanjose","13":"tag-sanjosesharks","14":"tag-sharks"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116339044864900396","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=537928"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537928\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/537929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=537928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=537928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=537928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}