The San Jose Sharks are hanging on to their hopes for the playoffs, but we’re going to take an early look at how they should get better this off-season with NHL Network star and friend of the show Jason Demers.
(2:32) Demers discusses his off-season plan to improve the right side of the Sharks’ defense, sign Darren Raddysh, trade for Michael Kesselring, and re-sign Vincent Desharnais and John Klingberg.
(7:06) What about Eric Pohlkamp?
(14:42) San Jose Sharks legend Dan Boyle discusses Sam Dickinson’s development…Dan would love to work with Sam for a day!
(25:45) What about taking on a bad contract, like Darnell Nurse or Morgan Rielly or Brady Skjei or Dougie Hamilton? What is Sheng hearing from the scouts about Nurse and Rielly?
(33:30) Why will the pressure on San Jose Sharks GM Mike Grier be greater this summer?
(37:19) What are our expectations for the Sharks next year? What’s a good season next year?
Demers offered his thoughts about Simon Nemec.
(45:40) Boyle and Demers discuss Macklin Celebrini’s usage. Is he getting burnt out?
(1:01:11) Finally, Keegan McNally and Zubair Jeewanjee talk about their favorite 2026 Draft defensemen!
20 Comments
Defense accountability is #1 priority.
Seeing Boiler and JD is awesome!
If they can get Raddysh, the team will be 10 points better
Alex Huang from the Preds prospect pool. 1 for 1.
I don’t see Klingberg being anything more than a liability. He was a liability this year, and maybe that’s because he’s on top pair, but I don’t know how much value he truly brings at 3rd pairing when we can lock up Desharnais for bottom pair and he provides valuable PK
Tony DeAngelo, pick up for next season?
kids will be a year older.
misa with a full runway to the 2C. cherny/graf full time (top-6?). dickinson better deployment, give cags an opportunity for once
not against flipping eks for a young defenseman. don’t force it tho, his value won’t evaporate overnight.
pohlkamp will be interesting. knowing the sharks he’ll be with the cuda for a year+ to round out the edges, but if we’re lucky they’ll give him a shot at breaking camp
*bystedt too, prob yo-yo’s b/w bottom-6 and the cuda
cracking up at demers learning the hard way how sharks fans felt about klinger 😂😂
pretty sure they played together, and klingberg was a dawg back then. understandable bias JD 😂
14:28 mukhamadullin in his better games
Great episode. Boyler fighting the good fight as always, I appreciate him representing team tank. And apparently JD too.
-Nemec would be cool, but I'm betting NJ finds a way to keep him.
-Revisit the Hamilton trade? Clearly the FO liked the player enough the first time, maybe Dougie would be interested the 2nd time around since the optics around the Sharks is different now. Sure Dougie didn't want to be here but it was all business. It'd be petty to not reconsider. I like all those other guys JD named, if you can get them, great. But I'm expecting competition. Would you take all of Dougie's contract for EDM/NJ 1st swap and other minor pieces if needed?
-As for the expectations on the season and the next. I think this season has been a success for a long time. I think some winning streaks really had people pining for playoffs and it amped up the animosity towards Warso when we lose. I've been of the opinion that we've been stealth tanking all season which is my conspiracy for the questionable roster management that drive reddit and twitter fans crazy.
-I'm betting on the pacific still being bad next season, so the expectation may actually be playoffs. If you can push above the WC spot which I actually think is doable, then you can avoid the juggernauts of the Central Division and play someone in the Pacific. THEN you're looking at some meaningful playoff experience. Like actually taking series off pacific opponents and going deep.
boyler is so correct on dickinson
sky’s the limit for sure, dmen take longer. they’re being patient with him too, he’s learning so much in his sink-or-swim year
imo he’s gotta be the guy eventually. they’ll need to hope for that hedman type trajectory to maximize this opening window
to sheng’s point about grabbing an overpaid older defenseman, seth jones was a huge boon to florida’s cup run last year
overpaid in chicago, but with some retention and a lesser role he became a huge piece in the playoffs for the panthers
Keenan with the constantly changing lighting — sadly before my drugs kicked in.
Defense, defense, defense. Nuf said! The goalie – no matter which goalie – needs some help in front of him. Sharkies have the firepower now, now they need the bods to shut down the other guys.
Can’t max out too many contracts now, the Sharks have to save room to sign McDavid in a couple of Years!
i think smits will play in the NHL next year tbh. will he add much offense, idk tbh but he will play in the NHL regularly imo. thats always the interesting thing though,drafting on potential or drafting a player youre more certain he will be an NHL player regardless of his ceiling
It would be malpractice to not get Celebrini signed to anything other than a 8 year deal. It will be the last opportunity to get 8 years and it will look like a bargain when the team is truly ready to contend for a cup in year 3-4 of that contract. If you bridge him you, the only reason is because you want his AAV lower for a short period which only makes sense if the plan is to win now and go all in to take advantage of his cap hit in the next 2-4 years because after his bridge is up the next contract is going to cost way more, and let’s be honest the Sharks are no where close to being true cup contenders with no blue line and the Avs/Stars will still be around in that time frame. The obvious play is to sign him to 8 years, the teams true window won’t be until year 3-4 of that contract and now we will have 3-5 good cracks at the cup with Celebrini at a reasonable cap hit. In the meantime talking about this offseason it is still too early to make risky acquisitions, talking long term commitments to aging players (30+) as we still have a lot of unknowns in terms of what the prospects are going to develop into. I would try to add established D in the 21-27 age range where you are not afraid to commit term to them but if we are adding on the older side like a Raddysh, 5 years should be the max term handed out, with minimal trade restrictions in the final year or two. Need upgrades on the backend to see growth and improvement but the team is not in its true window yet to go crazy with risky acquisitions.
The Sharks can improve a bunch in the future by being bad for the rest of this season. There's a lot of teams very close in the standings between about 5th worst and 10th worst record. The d-man at 5th overall could be a lot better than the one at 10th overall.
A few years ago, the Sharks went on a late season 3-game win streak, and wound up with the 4th worst record and got the 4th overall pick. They got Will Smith, but might have had a chance at Leo Carlsson or Adam Fantilli or even Bedard. Don't make that mistake again!! Lose enough so they can draft the d-man they want — not the one that's left over!!
Harder to predict where EDM finishes, but there should be some potentialy good RHD in that range as well. Juho Piiparinen and Malte Gustafsson among them
draft defensive prospects is really it, unless a goaltender you cant pass on shows up, thats really all san jose needs, other than that just develop their offense, their prospect pool up front is filthy 😂
Somebody get Boyler on the ice with Dickinson for a day! Are you serious? How has that not happened yet? 22 literally just needs to show up to sharks ice on a practice day. (Bring your own Sharks shirt though, don’t want em charging you again 😂)
If Nemec doesn’t kill penalties, he doesn’t need to play 25 minutes. Slovakia had thin defense at the Olympics.
At some point, Grier needs to leverage the Sharks’ cap space and assets to bring in established defense. I’m still eyeing Adam Fox. Look at his Corsi and XGF, dear god.
But I don’t think it’s Grier’s style to call around to dangle players. When he trades assets away, it’s when those players’ values are high and they’re going to bring something back.