The San Jose Sharks might not be good enough to make the NHL playoffs, or bad enough to have an excellent chance at drafting a generational type of player next year.
That seems to be – at least on the surface – where the Sharks are headed as they begin the regular season later this week with two games against the Nashville Predators at O2 Arena in Prague.
“We don’t like talking about there is no chance,” Sharks center Tomas Hertl said last month. “You want to make it to the playoffs. I think we’re strong enough. If everybody plays their role we can step it up and be there.
“But at the same time, it won’t be easy.”
It doesn’t appear as if the Sharks are trying to tank – or at least not as blatantly as some other NHL organizations.
The Sharks gave Hertl an eight-year, $65.1 million contract extension in March, and bolstered the team’s depth up front this summer with the additions of forwards like Oskar Lindblom and Luke Kunin. They still have tentpole players like Erik Karlsson, Logan Couture, and Timo Meier, and rookies like Thomas Bordeleau and William Eklund are showing promise.
The goalie tandem of Kaapo Kahkonen and James Reimer also might be a bit underrated.
Put it all together and the Sharks likely won’t be at the bottom of the NHL standings where teams like the rebuilding Chicago Blackhawks, Arizona Coyotes, and Montreal Canadiens are expected to reside.
The teams with the worst records will have the best chance of winning the 2023 draft lottery and selecting teenage wunderkind Connor Bedard, believed to be the NHL’s next superstar.
“We’re not going to ask a guy who’s only scored five goals in a season to score 40 goals this year,” Sharks coach David Quinn said. “This is guys that can just be a little bit better. If we can get that throughout our lineup, there’s a difference in being a team that is in the bottom five of the league and give you a chance to be in the top 10 of the league.”
“Going into the season, everybody believes they’re going to have an opportunity to maybe surprise some people,” said NHL Network analyst Ken Daneyko, who had a 20-year NHL career with the New Jersey Devils. “I don’t think anybody thinks the Sharks are going to make the playoffs, but that’s why you play the games.”
General manager Mike Grier has been refreshingly realistic about where the Sharks are at right now as an organization. He wants to win, but for him, this season is more about building a foundation and putting the Sharks in a better position for future success.
“Just for them to be competitive and play hard every night and be good teammates, and I think that’s where it all starts,” Grier said last month about his expectations for the Sharks. “If we do that, I think we’ll have some success on the ice and we’ll have something to build on.”
One of the biggest reasons why Grier was selected to replace Doug Wilson as the Sharks’ general manager three months ago was because of his commitment to building the right culture around the organization. Just recently, he provided an example of what that meant.
With Czech government officials in September threatening to keep Russian players out of the country for this week’s Global Series games, Grier took a unifying stance, saying, “We’re a team, so if they say some guys can’t go, either we all go or no one goes.”
“We stand with them, and we’re all together as one in here.”
It was a response that resonated with the Sharks players.
“We’ve talked a lot about our culture as a team and how we want to be as a group,” Sharks winger Matt Nieto said. “I think these first (few) days, we’re off to a good start with all of that.”
Still, scoring goals is expected to remain a major issue for the Sharks, a problem only exacerbated when Grier traded Brent Burns to the Carolina Hurricanes for forward Steven Lorentz, goalie prospect Eetu Mäkiniemi and a conditional 2023 third-round draft pick.
Burns led the Sharks in scoring over the last 11 seasons and was 12th among all NHL defensemen last season with 54 points. He played more minutes than any other skater in the regular season as he and center Hertl were the only Sharks players to dress for all 82 games.
Karlsson, who led all NHL defensemen with 585 points through the 2010s, will have to do his part, but the Sharks will need everybody to help eat those minutes, including newcomers Matt Benning and for now, Scott Harrington. Markus Nutivaara, signed as a free agent in the offseason, is out with a lower-body injury.
“When you lose big personalities and people that have been in one organization for a long time, you’re going to feel like you missed that person and there’s a void,” Couture said. “But I feel like guys that we have in here are going to step up and take those minutes.”
The Sharks play Eisbären Berlin in an exhibition game Tuesday at Mercedes-Benz Arena, then begin the regular season with games against the Nashville Predators on Friday and Saturday in Prague.
“You always want to make the playoffs but I don’t have anything firm in my head to say what a successful season is,” Grier said. “I just want to see progress. I want to see the players getting better, the players developing and I want to see the culture in the room coming around and being the way that (Quinn) and I would like it to be.”
