Team: San Jose Sharks
Last Season: 22-44-16 (82GP)
This Season: 16-41-7 (64GP)
Team Building Status: Liquidation
The San Jose Sharks attempt at a re-tool seemed to change directions when Mike Grier took over as GM in July of 2022. They started offloading big contracts to deal with a messy cap sheet, dealing Brent Burns to the Hurricanes in the offseason and Timo Meier to the Devils at the trade deadline. It’s been a rough couple of seasons that has seen them sink to the bottom of the Pacific Division. They’re now the second team officially eliminated from playoff contention this season.
Notable Recent Transactions:
| Date | In | Out | Type |
| Jun 27, 2023 | Mackenzie Blackwood | 2023 6th RD Pick | Trade w/ NJD |
| Jul 1, 2023 | Anthony Duclair | Steven Lorentz 2025 5th RD Pick | Trade w/ FLA |
| Jul 1, 2023 | Fabian Zetterlund | – | Signed RFA |
| Jul 10, 2023 | Filip Zadina | – | Signed UFA |
| Aug 6, 2023 | Mike Hoffman Mikael Granlund Jan Rutta 2024 1st RD Pick *Conditional | Erik Karlsson Dillon Hamaliuk 2026 3rd RD Pick | Trade w/ PIT, MTL |
| Nov 8, 2023 | Calen Addison | Adam Raska 2026 5th RD Pick | Trade w/ MIN |
| Mar 7, 2023 | Jack Thompson 2024 3rd RD Pick | Anthony Duclair | Trade w/ TBL |
| Mar 8, 2023 | Klim Kostin | Radim Simek | Trade w/ DET |
| Mar 8, 2023 | Vitek Vanacek 2025 7th RD Pick | Kaapo Kahkonen | Trade w/ NJD |
| Mar 8, 2023 | David Edstrom 2025 1st RD Pick | Tomas Hertl 2025 3rd RD Pick 2027 3rd RD Pick | Trade w/ VGK |
Roster Ruminations
NHL Roster Strength
The Sharks are swimming at the bottom of the Pacific right now and it’s abundantly clear that they’ll continue to occupy the deep for the next while. Their NHL squad is sorely lacking. Most of the long tenured veterans have been shipped out with only Logan Couture and Marc-Edouard Vlasic still hanging around. If moving Timo Meier out at the 2023 deadline didn’t signal a complete sell-off, trading away Erik Karlsson in the offseason and Tomas Hertl at this years deadline certainly does.
Salary Cap Management
The Sharks’ cap sheet was not in a good place when Mike Grier took over as Sharks GM. There were a lot of big contracts on the books for aging players. He’s made a big dent in that problem, which includes two blockbuster trades over the past year: Erik Karlsson to Pittsburgh and Tomas Hertl to Vegas. At this point, they have only just over 50% of next seasons cap committed to players which leaves plenty of room to sign their RFAs and fill out the roster.
The Karlsson and Hertl trades created another issue, however. The Sharks already had one retention slot occupied through the 24/25 season from their Brent Burns trade in 2022. They retained salary again in both the Karlsson and Hertl trades, filling their other two retention slots. With four seasons left on Karlsson deal at the time of the trade and six full seasons left on Hertl’s, the Sharks left themselves with no usable retention slots until the 25/26 season. We’ve seen retention become an increasingly important factor in deadline deals over the past few seasons and the Sharks simply cannot use it in a seller’s capacity at next year’s deadline.
Future Assets
Considering the sell-off of their big name players, the Sharks don’t have a very impressive stockpile of draft picks in the upcoming three drafts. They have just 21 picks in the next three years and, while their success probability is better than baseline, it’s not better by a lot.
Like their stockpile of draft picks, their prospect pool is good but not great. Their 2023 first round picks, Will Smith and Quentin Musty, headline the group and look like good bets to become impact players at the NHL level. A tier down from them is mostly older prospects, in the age 22-23 range, such as William Eklund, Thomas Bordeleau, Henry Thrun and Shakir Mukhamadullin.
What’s Next?
The teardown in San Jose may not be complete. Mike Grier has moved out one piece from the old guard with a big contract at every major period since he became GM. Brent Burns went in the 2022 offseason, Timo Meier at the 2023 trade deadline, Erik Karlsson in the 2023 offseason, and Tomas Hertl at the 2024 deadline. Logan Couture has 3 years left at an $8MM cap hit and Marc-Edouard Vlasic has 2 more years at $7MM. Based on the past 2 years of major transactions, it would be a surprise not to see one of them not appear in Sharks colors by the time the curtain drops on the 2024/2025 season.
While the Sharks have undertaken a significant teardown, it appears that their intention may not be to sit idle at the bottom of the standings for long. They’ve prioritized acquiring older prospects in their teardown period trades. Defensemen Calen Addison (23), Henry Thrun (23) and Shakir Mukhamadullin (22) were all acquired in trades and it looks like that might be what the Sharks are betting on as their future D-corps.
They’ve also been adding younger forwards like Fabian Zetterlund (24, trade) and Filip Zadina (24, UFA) that didn’t live up to expectations with their previous teams. There is little development runway left for these players though and the odds that they end up as late bloomers is fairly slim. More likely, we know what they are as NHLers at this stage (and it’s not star players).
This age 22-24 cohort the Sharks have put together will be fully in their prime years when Erik Karlsson’s salary retention comes off the books for the 27/28 season. It’s quite possible that the Sharks intend to try to return to contention with this group leading the way.
I think they’ll be sorely disappointed if that’s the plan. Who is going to lead this team back into contention? The star power is MIA. They need to find some stars and the most likely way they’ll do that is by drafting high in the first round. They’re on track to have the best odds at the first overall pick this spring but even adding Macklin Celebrini is not enough. Adding a few more top end picks over the next couple of seasons would really boost their fortunes. This is the cohort they should be focused on building, the one centered around Will Smith, Quentin Musty, and their 2024-2026 draft picks.
