The Sharks start their current road trip off with a bang as they get an improbable comeback win in overtime against the Winnipeg Jets 3-2, snapping a five-game losing skid.
Despite getting outshot by a nearly 2:1 ratio, Team Teal stayed in it, remained resilient, and put on an incredible come-from-behind performance. San Jose struck first late in the first period on Steven Lorentz's seventh goal of the year, in which he kept grinding and whacking away until the puck found the back of the net. Assists on this first goal by Lorentz went to Oskar Lindblom and Kevin Labanc. This also stood for a while until around the six-minute mark of the second period, when Nino Niederreiter evened it up at one for the Jets. In addition, Jacob MacDonald had to exit the game early due to injury.
Things picked back up late in the third, as Nate Schmidt scored to put the Jets ahead 2-1. It seemed like that would be the game winner, but luckily that wasn't the case, as Tomas Hertl scored with 10.2 seconds left in regulation to tie it at two and force overtime. Erik Karlsson and Logan Couture assisted on this huge equalizer, which was Hertl's 17th goal of the season.
It only took about 1:20 into overtime for Logan Couture to score the game-winner on a breakaway, with Erik Karlsson collecting his second assist of the night on the OT GWG. What an amazing finish to this one.
The biggest factor keeping the Sharks in it the entire game was James Reimer, who recorded 36 saves on 38 shots against and received the necessary goal support to earn the win. Radim Simek didn't travel with the Sharks on their current road trip due to injury, so taking his place on defense was Nikolai Knyzhov, who was called up from the Barracuda after the completion of his rehab stint and made his season debut for the Sharks in this one.
Wins like these are always great, especially to boost this Sharks team's confidence down the stretch. They've been able to find their scoring and winning touch mainly on the road this season but not so much at home. It would be ideal for this Sharks team to try to win more games at the Tank between now and the end of the season, but it's tough to know if they ever will or not. Next up, the Sharks travel to Denver to face the Colorado Avalanche for the first time this season tonight in the second game of a back-to-back set at 6 pm PT, with Kaapo Kahkonen expected to receive the start in net.
Sources: NBC Sports Bay Area/California, NHL App, Curtis Pashelka via Twitter
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