Joe Thornton is a perfect fit for the Sharks’ hole at 3C

SAN JOSE – Apparently, it’s Timo Time all the time in San Jose this season.

Timo Meier scored two more goals Saturday, lifting the Sharks (7-4-3) to an overtime victory against the Philadelphia Flyers (67-1) by scoring just 13 seconds into the extra session. Meier also found the back of the net at 3:15 of the first, allowing him to break Patrick Marleau’s franchise record of 10 goals in 14 games to open a season (2010, 2013).

“He’s been just so powerful,” Joe Thornton said. “When a player has confidence like that, you can see him produce at that rate, at that pace. It’s been fun to watch.”

Thornton scored a pretty-big goal himself Saturday night. More on that in a bit.

Here’s what we learned in the Sharks 4-3 win over the Flyers at SAP Center: 1. Thornton is a perfect fit for the Sharks’ hole at third line center. The Sharks started the day with a hole at third line center. By the end of the night, they found the right guy for the job.

At the start of the second period, head coach Pete Deboer solved his how-do-i-reintegrate-thornton-into-the-lineup puzzle by sliding the 39-year-old center into the one spot in the lineup that makes perfect sense: third line center.

As happy as Sharks territory is to see Thornton on the ice, his return this week threw the team’s lineup completely out of whack. First, Deboer split up his most-dynamic line, breaking Meier away from Logan Couture and Tomas Hertl to San Jose Sharks’ Joe Thornton waits for a face-off during their game against the New York Rangers in the second period at the SAP Center in San Jose on Tuesday.

skate him with Thornton and Joe Pavelski. Then, he scrapped that idea and put Evander Kane on a line with Thornton and Pavelski. That move didn’t work either.

Eventually, with the Sharks trailing 2-1 heading into the second, Deboer made the logical move. He reunited the line of Kane, Pavelski and Joonas Donskoi that propelled the Sharks into the playoffs last year and moved Thornton down to the third line with Marcus Sorensen and Kevin Labanc. It paid off. The newly-formed third line drew a penalty on its third shift together, setting the stage for Pavelski’s power play goal at 10:35 of the second.

Then, with the Sharks trailing 3-2 at 15:03 of the third, Thornton

did what he so rarely does: he shot the puck. With a 40-foot wrist shot, the veteran forward sent the puck into the top-right corner, beating goalie Calvin Pickard on his glove side, tying the game and sending the Tank into a frenzy.

“That’s my new shot,” Thornton joked. “Hopefully, you’ll see a lot of it this year.”

Thornton’s move to third line center is the right choice for several reasons. One, it allows Thornton to reintegrate himself into the Sharks lineup without disrupting the chemistry and momentum established by the Kane-pavelskidonskoi and Hertl-couture-meier lines in his absence.

Second, Thornton is 39 and coming off two major knee surgeries in the last 18 months. It’s unrealistic to expect him to jump back into a top line center role, skate for 19plus minutes a night and perform like he did in 2015-16 when the Sharks reached the Stanley Cup Final. On Saturday, he received 15:12 of ice time, which sounds just about right.

Finally, Thornton is filling a big need at third line center.

When the Sharks traded for Erik Karlsson on the eve of training camp, they parted ways with Chris Tierney, opening a hole in the middle of the third line. Antti Suomela acquitted himself well in that role over the first 10 games of the season, but it’s fair to question whether he can create third line mismatches against the deepest teams in the NHL, a key ingredient for squads that make deep runs in the playoffs.

With Pavelski, Thornton and Couture centering separate lines, the Sharks could boast the type of line depth that the Pittsburgh Penguins displayed with the threeheaded monster of Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Phil Kessel during their back-to-back runs to the cup in 2016 and 2017. This isn’t to say that Thornton can’t move back up to the top line if he regains the form that allowed him to collect 26 points in 28 games last year later in the season. But right now, things look pretty good where he is.

“When you can run up and down the lineup like that, it helps,” Pavelski said. “Jumbo still hasn’t played a ton of hockey. For as much as he’s practiced, as hard as he’s worked to get back into shape, there’s something to be said about playing some games. You can tell that some of the little plays are coming.”