Yaroslav Askarov's .883 Averages One Elite Month With Six Below-Average Ones

In November 2025, Yaroslav Askarov was third in the NHL in save percentage among the 37 goaltenders who made six or more starts that month. He made ten of them, faced 319 shots, allowed 18 and went 8-2. San Jose went 9-5-1 in November after opening 0-4-2, and climbed into a wild-card race on the back of it.

The two men ahead of him, Minnesota's Jesper Wallstedt and Colorado's Scott Wedgewood, made six starts and seven. Nobody in the group made more than Askarov's ten.

Now take November out of his season. The other 37 starts: 1,022 shots, 139 goals, a .864 save percentage, a 4.12 goals-against average, and a record of 13-18-4.

Both are the same 23-year-old, in the same sweater, behind mostly the same skaters. The .883 on his season line is those two things averaged together, which is the least useful thing anybody can do with them.

Which shots#

MoneyPuck sorts every unblocked attempt a goaltender faced into low, medium and high danger and prices each against what an average goaltender allows. Askarov faced 1,988 of them and finished 18.91 goals worse than the model expected, the second-worst figure in goals saved above expected among the 27 goaltenders who started 40 or more games.

The split inside that number runs the opposite way to the excuse. On high-danger attempts he was 12.76 goals better than expected, which put him in the middle of the same 27. On low-danger attempts he was 23.12 goals worse, which was third-worst. Medium danger cost another 8.55. Twenty-three goals from the soft ice in one season is the number San Jose is asking to come back.

A second reading agrees. Professor Hockey, working from a different source in May, put Askarov's high-danger save percentage around the NHL median and his low-danger mark in the bottom eighth of the league.

What does survive as an excuse#

Askarov faced 30.99 shots per 60 minutes, the highest shots-against rate of any goaltender who started 40 or more games, against a median of 27.78 in that group. San Jose allowed 290 goals, third-most in the NHL, and killed penalties at 76.42 percent, 26th of 32 clubs. He was behind a bad team, bad in the way that lands in a goaltender's column.

On the kill, though, he was half a goal better than expected across 227 minutes of four-on-five. The special-teams problem was not his. At five-on-five he was 15.11 goals worse than expected, and five-on-five held 81 percent of his ice time.

Fatigue does not carry it either. Of San Jose's 16 back-to-back sets, Ryan Warsofsky gave Askarov the second night of nine and Alex Nedeljkovic the second night of six, which is an unusual way around, and Askarov saved .899 in those nine starts against .879 in his other 38.

The contract, and today#

Askarov is 24, in the last year of a deal paying $2,000,000, and a restricted free agent next summer. The collective bargaining agreement expires today, and from tomorrow the longest contract a club may offer its own player is seven years rather than eight. CapWages' reading of the memorandum puts exactly two Sharks inside that window, Will Smith and Askarov. No outlet has reported a negotiation with either.

That makes five goaltenders on NHL contracts, and the youngest of them is the starter. San Jose is one of eight clubs with nobody in the crease under contract aged 23 or younger.

Best case for San Jose#

The low-danger number is the part of a goaltending season that moves most, and it moves toward the middle. Askarov holds the high-danger work, gives back most of the 23 soft goals and finishes at .900 or better, which 13 of last season's 27 forty-start goaltenders managed, across the 48 starts that his share of last season projects to on an 84-game schedule.

The club's version is simpler than the goaltender's. San Jose does not need a Vezina season. It needs the crease to stop being the variable, so the blue line it committed $17,500,000 a year to is judged on its own work, and so a club seven seasons removed from a playoff berth spends March arguing about its fourth line.

Worst case for San Jose#

Askarov repeats the .864 and San Jose is slow to say so, because the alternative is a 30-year-old backup signed through 2027-28. The crease splits down the middle again, the way it did across the last 31 games of last season, when Nedeljkovic and Askarov started 15 apiece, and neither man takes the job. The Sharks reach next summer having to pay a restricted free agent on two below-average seasons, or walk away from the goaltender they traded for and start the position again.

The damage is not one bad year from a 24-year-old. It is a rebuild that has answered center, answered the top of the draft and spent heavily on defense arriving at an eighth season out of the playoffs with the one position it cannot buy cheaply still open.

What to watch in October#

Who starts on October 1 against Florida, and who starts the three games after it.

Last season San Jose alternated its goaltenders exactly through the first eight games. Nedeljkovic started the opener against Vegas on October 9 and played all 61 minutes and 24 seconds of it, Askarov started game two, and the two traded off to game eight. Askarov did not hold the crease until games nine and ten, and he had 12 of the first 20.

A club that believes it has a starter does not alternate. If Askarov takes the opener and three of the first four, San Jose has made a decision it did not make last year. If October looks like last October, the Sharks are still auditioning, and the 13 back-to-back sets on an 84-game schedule will decide the split for them.

The stakes#

This desk has open calls that Nedeljkovic makes 30 or more starts and that San Jose allows fewer than 3.54 goals a game across its first 20. Both resolve on the question Askarov's season does, which is whether the Sharks have a starting goaltender or a tandem they have not admitted to.

Last season he carried them for one month, and that month is most of the distance between an 0-4-2 start and 86 points, four short of the last playoff place in the West. That is the size of the lever, and it is why a .944 November proves nothing by itself while the 37 starts either side of it prove a good deal.

Previously in this series: No. 4, Michael Misa.

Sources: The NHL's own statistics API, read 2026-09-15, for every save percentage, shot total, start, goals-against figure and game log here, including Askarov's and Nedeljkovic's 2025-26 logs, the league-wide goaltender population, San Jose's 2025-26 and 2026-27 schedules, the final Western Conference standings and the team goals-against and penalty-kill tables. MoneyPuck's 2025-26 season summary file for goaltenders for expected goals, goals saved above expected and the danger splits. PuckPedia and CapWages for contract terms, ages and roster status, and CapWages' memorandum-of-understanding explainer for the September 15 contract-term deadline. Professor Hockey, May 23, 2026, for the danger-zone reading cited as a second source.