William Eklund scored with 4.3 seconds left in overtime to cap a dramatic comeback by the San Jose Sharks, who scored four unanswered goals in the final 13-plus minutes of the game to stun the New York Islanders 5-4 in Elmont, N.Y., on Tuesday night.
Islanders defenseman Noah Dobson rang a shot off the post before the Sharks built their winning end-to-end surge, which concluded when Eklund took a drop pass from Mikael Granlund and fired a shot past Ilya Sorokin.
Tomas Hertl had a hat trick, scoring the first goal of the game for the Sharks before adding a pair of extra-skater tallies late in the third. Kevin Labanc scored with 8:05 left in regulation to begin the comeback for San Jose, which has won four of its past six games (4-2-0) since a 3-15-2 start.
The Sharks have scored 16 goals in their past three games after scoring just 36 in their first 23 games.
San Jose goalie Kaapo Kahkonen made 33 saves.
Julien Gauthier, Brock Nelson, Mike Reilly and Ryan Pulock scored for the Islanders, whose third-period struggles continued even as they collected a point for the ninth time in 10 games (5-1-4). New York has been outscored 34-17 in the third period this season.
Sorokin recorded 32 saves.
Gauthier and Hertl traded goals during a three-minute span around the midway point of the first before the Islanders scored three straight special-teams goals bridging the second and third.
Nelson put New York ahead with a power-play goal 5:27 into the second, and Reilly extended the lead with a short-handed tally 5:17 into the third. Pulock then scored on the power play at 8:27 of the third, but his turnover deep in the Islanders’ zone led to Labanc’s redirection of a shot by Nikita Okhotiuk.
Hertl collected his second goal by finishing off a flurry in the crease with 3:11 left in the third, and polished off his first hat trick since Jan. 8, 2022, by putting back a rebound into a wide-open corner of the net with 1:30 remaining.
–Field Level Media
