The offseason has arrived for half of the league’s teams that aren’t taking part in the playoffs plus those that were eliminated early. It’s time to examine what they will need to accomplish over the coming months. Next up is a look at San Jose.
Expectations were rather low for the Sharks this season as GM Mike Grier signaled that a rebuild was on the way, highlighted by the move that saw Brent Burns go to Carolina. The team muddled their way through this season and while there were some strong individual performances, San Jose was still near the bottom of the Western Conference. With them still in teardown mode, their checklist this summer largely revolves around moving out more veterans.
Create Cap Flexibility
Typically, a lot of teams at the bottom of the standings often have cap space at their disposal. This comes as a result of jettisoning some veterans in favor of using younger players. That is quite likely the goal for San Jose as well but they’re nowhere near that point yet.
At the moment, assuming the salary cap goes up by $1MM to $83.5MM, the Sharks have about $15MM to work with, per CapFriendly. They also have upwards of seven spots to fill with that money which doesn’t give them much room to try to go after an impact free agent if they want to expedite things or get involved on the trade front to take on a contract or two while being compensated with draft picks or prospects for doing so.
Grier should also want to keep an eye on 2024-25 this summer as well. San Jose’s commitments drop to a little under $47MM for that season but that’s with only eight players signed. Spending less than that amount to sign upwards of 60% of his roster will be difficult, especially if the Upper Limit of the cap jumps that summer, sending salaries upward quicker. Creating more flexibility for that season is something that will need to be considered as well.
Buyout Decisions
Keeping 2024-25 (and beyond) in mind is likely to impact what San Jose does on the buyout front. They have several players whose performance could legitimately have them under consideration in defensemen Marc-Edouard Vlasic and Radim Simek plus winger Kevin Labanc. But doing so adds a lot of dead money to San Jose’s cap when they already have Martin Jones’ buyout on the books through 2027.
Vlasic’s contract has been a bust so far. He still has three years left on a deal that carries a $7MM AAV which is top-pairing money. However, the 36-year-old has been more of a third-pairing player in recent years. A buyout would free up over $5.5MM next season but the structure of the contract means the cap savings would only be $2.8MM in 2024-25 while overall, nearly $16MM in dead cap charges would hit San Jose’s books over six seasons. That’s a high price to pay someone not to play for you anymore and it wouldn’t be surprising to see Grier wait at least one more year to make the charges a little less drastic.
As for Simek and Labanc, both are entering the final year of their deals so there is no long-term cap consideration at play here. Simek’s buyout would save $1.3MM on the cap next season while adding $650K in 2024-25. Meanwhile, Labanc’s would free up nearly $4MM next season but add almost $2MM on the books for 2024-25. Both were scratched at times this year and could see their spots filled by someone younger and cheaper.
Individually, there’s a case to be made for all three players to be bought out but adding more dead money to the books for 2024-25 when they’re going to have so many spots to fill will have to be considered as well. Will that wind up being too much of a deterrent? They have a couple of months to figure that out.
Decide Karlsson’s Future
It’s not often that a 32-year-old player has a career year. But that’s what happened to defenseman Erik Karlsson this season. A year after managing 35 points in 50 games, his numbers took off as the veteran tallied 25 goals and 76 assists to lead all NHL blueliners in scoring while making him a contender for his third career Norris Trophy. In doing so, Karlsson’s name came up in trade speculation although no deal materialized.
Of course, there’s a very good reason for that. Karlsson has four years remaining on his deal which carries an AAV of $11.5MM, the highest given to a defenseman in NHL history. In a salary cap world, that’s a hard deal to move at any time but especially in-season. But now it’s the offseason when deals are a little easier to make. That will bring Karlsson’s future back to the forefront.
On the one hand, it’s hard to imagine Karlsson’s value getting any higher than it might be now. On the other hand, with that contract, his trade value might not be all that high. It’s a contract that Grier will have to pay down to some extent; doing so would encumber two of their three retained salary slots through the 2025-26 campaign, not to mention costing millions in actual salary dollars for a player not to play for them.
A year ago, it looked like Karlsson would have been in the mix for the most untradeable contract in the league. Now, it looks like they’ll have an opportunity to get some value for him, although if the deal winds up being like the Burns one, a good chunk of the return might wind up simply being cap space.
Goaltending Upgrade
While it might seem counter-intuitive for a rebuilding team to look for a goaltending upgrade, getting a starting netminder has been on San Jose’s to-do list for a while since Jones failed to live up to his old deal. Former GM Doug Wilson hoped he addressed the vacancy when he picked up Kaapo Kahkonen last year but the 26-year-old has played to a 3.64 GAA and a .890 SV% since being acquired. He’s under contract for next season at $2.75MM so he’ll be in the mix but as a pending UFA in 2024, Kahkonen isn’t really a long-term fixture at this point.
James Reimer has been a serviceable veteran backup but he’s set to hit the open market this summer and doesn’t appear to be a strong candidate to return. Meanwhile, veteran Aaron Dell is a serviceable third-stringer but isn’t a long-term solution at the NHL level either. He’s also a pending UFA.
In terms of their prospects, Eetu Makiniemi showed some promise with the Barracuda this season but isn’t believed to be a starter in the making. Strauss Mann held his own in his first taste of the minors but isn’t close to being NHL-ready. San Jose is hoping Magnus Chrona could be part of the solution eventually but he is only starting his pro career next season and also isn’t close to being in the mix.
If there’s an opportunity to acquire a young netminder with some upside in a trade (perhaps as part of a Karlsson swap), it wouldn’t be surprising to see Grier try to do that. Failing that, it wouldn’t be shocking to see them hand out a multi-year contract to a veteran in July to make sure they have a bit of stability at that position while continuing the search for a longer-term solution.
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