- There remains no date set for the resumption of Evander Kane’s grievance hearing, relays Curtis Pashelka of the Bay Area News Group (Twitter link). The Sharks terminated Kane’s deal last season citing a breach of contract, permitting him to become an unrestricted free agent. He signed with the Oilers for the stretch run and then inked a four-year, $20.5MM deal before free agency began to stay there but it remains to be seen what would happen if his original contract (which still had three years left at a $7MM AAV) was to be reinstated as a result of the grievance.
- In a separate tweet, Pashelka notes that discussions are ongoing between the team and RFA forward Jonah Gadjovich. The 23-year-old is San Jose’s last restricted free agent and is coming off a year that saw him pick up just three points in 43 games. The Sharks tendered him a two-way qualifying offer worth just under $875K last month but Gadjovich might be willing to sign for less than that in exchange for a one-way contract.
Sharks Rumors
San Jose Sharks Announce ECHL Affiliation
Another NHL team has revealed their ECHL affiliation for next season. The San Jose Sharks announced today that they have reached an ECHL affiliation agreement with the Wichita Thunder. Sharks assistant GM Joe Will gave the following statement as part of the announcement:
We’re looking forward to working with the Wichita Thunder, including Head Coach Bruce Ramsay and General Manager Joel T. Lomurno. Having a solid affiliation in the ECHL is important to our player development plan and the ECHL has a solid track record with preparing prospects for their NHL and AHL careers.
The Thunder were previously the affiliate of the Edmonton Oilers, serving in that role from 2017-2022. The Sharks have not had an ECHL affiliate since 2018, when they were in an agreement with the Allen Americans, a partnership that ran from 2015-2018.
The Sharks currently have three goalies on their projected NHL roster and four goalies that figure to be in contention for AHL minutes, meaning it’s entirely possible that a Sharks goalie prospect could spend time in Wichita next season. The Thunder went 27-36-9 and will hope that this change in NHL affiliate will help turn around the team’s fortunes for next season.
Latest On Timo Meier
There are few players as important to the San Jose Sharks as Timo Meier. The Swiss forward led the Sharks in scoring last year, setting career highs in goals (35), assists (41), and points (76). He’s a spectacular scoring winger without many weak spots in his game, and he would be expected to lead the Sharks into their next period of contention alongside Tomas Hertl.
But speaking today at the NHL’s European Player Media Tour, Meier said he’s had no discussions yet on a contract extension with the Sharks, aside from an introductory phone call with new general manager Mike Grier on July 5. Meier is entering the final season of a four-year, $24MM contract signed in 2019.
He will again be a restricted free agent with arbitration rights next summer, meaning he’s due a qualifying offer. Meier’s actual salary in 2022-23 is $10MM, which should raise some eyebrows about the value of that qualifying offer, and rightfully so. But a change to the qualifying offer rules in the 2020 Collective Bargaining Agreement extension means that Meier can’t receive a qualifying offer greater than 120% of his previous deal’s cap hit, meaning he’s only owned a one-year, $7.2MM deal as compared to a one-year, $10MM deal from the Sharks.
Financially, for Meier, this is the most important season of his NHL career. At 26 years old next summer, he’ll undoubtedly sign a long-term deal that should take him well into his 30s, whether it’s with the Sharks or someone else. If his production takes a step back next season, though, the Sharks may very well want to settle for a one-year contract awarded through arbitration.
The Sharks, in any event, will likely need to make a cap-clearing move next summer as they turn the corner back toward competitiveness. The anchor contracts of Logan Couture ($8MM), Erik Karlsson ($11.5MM), and Marc-Edouard Vlasic ($7MM) don’t expire until 2026 and 2027, so relief from those deals won’t come for quite a while.
Carolina Hurricanes Name Brock Sheahan AHL Head Coach
Per a team release, the Carolina Hurricanes have named Brock Sheahan the head coach of their AHL affiliate, the Chicago Wolves.
Sheahan, 38, becomes a professional hockey coach for the first time. He got his coaching start with Notre Dame in 2013-14 as an assistant coach, serving just one season. For four seasons from 2014 to 2018, he spent time as an assistant and associate coach for the College of the Holy Cross before getting a job with the USHL’s Chicago Steel for 2018-19.
The Steel promoted him to their head coaching role during the 2019-20 season and he never looked back. Sheahan guided the 2020-21 Chicago Steel to a Clark Cup championship, working with current NHL prospects such as Sean Farrell, Matt Coronato, Mackie Samoskevich, and Josh Doan.
The Wolves themselves are coming off a Calder Cup-winning season, spearheaded by high-end veteran firepower and elite goaltending. It was enough to get their previous head coach, Ryan Warsofsky, an assistant job with the San Jose Sharks. Sheahan will need to keep the team’s structure intact after an offseason that’s seen a lot of turnover at all spots in the Hurricanes organization.
San Jose Sharks Re-Sign Noah Gregor
4:00 PM: The Sharks have now officially announced the signing of Gregor.
3:25 PM: The San Jose Sharks have reached an extension with one of their remaining restricted free agents, signing Noah Gregor to a one-year, one-way $950K deal. The deal was reported by The Nation Network’s Jason Gregor, who happens to be the Sharks forward’s uncle.
As noted by PuckPedia, the Gregor signing leaves Sharks with just $225k in cap space on their full 23-man roster, and the team still has one RFA player left to sign to a new contract: forward Jonah Gadjovich.
Gregor, 24, established himself as an NHLer last season. He got into 63 games for the Sharks, scoring 8 goals and 23 points. A 2016 fourth-round pick, Gregor has been a bit of a development success story for San Jose, slowly growing from mid-round pick and WHL star to strong AHL contributor to useful NHLer.
Gregor is an offensively-oriented player who got a look on the Sharks’ power play last season and brought a combination of skill and grit to their lineup. Gregor’s overall profile is sure to be appreciated by new coach David Quinn, and armed with this one-way deal Gregor will enter training camp on stronger footing than ever before in his career. This deal will likely allow Gregor to focus his energy in training camp on building chemistry with his teammates and earning a greater role in the Sharks’ lineup, rather than simply attempting to earn a roster spot, as has been his focus in prior years.
The Sharks’ situation on the wings is decently unsettled, and Gregor will be competing for a role on a scoring-line role against other wingers such as Oskar Lindblom, Steven Lorentz, Luke Kunin, and Kevin Labanc. If he can find a way to hold down a spot next to one of the Sharks’ top two centers, Gregor could quickly outperform this contract’s $950K cap hit.
San Jose Sharks Announce Several Hires
After Brian Wiseman was originally announced as an assistant coach with the New York Islanders for the upcoming season, the team eventually decided that he would not be joining the team. Now, the veteran coach has found a new gig, as he will join David Quinn’s staff with the San Jose Sharks as an assistant.
He isn’t the only one joining the Sharks today though. The team has also named Stephane Leblanc its director of CHL scouting, and added Tommy Wingels and Luca Sbisa as development coaches.
Wingels, 34, played parts of seven seasons with the Sharks to start his NHL career, after working his way up from the sixth round of the 2008 draft. The hard-working forward managed to set a career-high with 16 goals and 38 points in 2013-14, though that kind of production wouldn’t last long. His last season in the NHL was 2017-18, before playing a pair of years overseas.
Sbisa meanwhile never did play for the Sharks, but he certainly faced them many times. A veteran of 549 regular season games, most of them in the Pacific Division, the 32-year-old saw just one game in the 2020-21 season before failing to play at all in 2021-22. Retirement will bring him to the Sharks staff, where he can pass on some of the tricks that made him a first-round pick in 2008.
Sharks Seeking Second-Round Pick For James Reimer
The annual goalie carousel at the beginning of free agency has come and gone but there still could be some trade activity involving netminders. San Jose still has three NHL goalies and while they’ve said they’d be comfortable keeping all three to start the season, that’s usually not an ideal scenario.
That hasn’t stopped GM Mike Grier from placing a high asking price for James Reimer, however, as Sheng Peng reports in his latest column for NBC Sports Bay Area that the Sharks are asking for a second-round pick to move the veteran. If Reimer was the one to go, that would then have San Jose enter next season with a tandem of Kaapo Kahkonen and Adin Hill who has been cleared for training camp after missing most of the last three months of 2021-22.
In a vacuum, a second-round pick for a capable backup like Reimer isn’t crazy. The 34-year-old is coming off a year that saw him post a .911 SV% in 48 games, a mark that was above the NHL average despite the fact he was on a team that came up well short of making the playoffs. He’d represent an upgrade for several teams and with a $2.25MM AAV, he’s one of the cheaper veteran backups compared to deals that have been handed out over the past year or so.
But with most goalie situations settled, Grier will be hard-pressed to get that type of value for Reimer. Sure, Vegas could use a goalie with Robin Lehner out but if they do look to make a move, it stands to reason that they’d look for more of a proven starter and Reimer isn’t that type of player. The Flyers could need a backup with Ivan Fedotov’s uncertain short-term future but fitting him in on the cap would be tricky. Arizona needs a second-stringer but with them not really focused on winning, their preference might be to look on waivers for a cheaper option over trading a good draft pick for a player they’d ultimately look to flip a few months later at the trade deadline.
With that in mind, it’s difficult to see Grier being able to find a taker for Reimer at that asking price. The safer play for the new GM might be to see how things go in training camp and see if an injury or two shakes up the landscape a little bit. Again, it’s rarely ideal for a team to enter a season with three capable netminders but in this case, it might be the right call for the Sharks if they can’t get their desired trade return for Reimer.
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.
Yevgeni Kashnikov Signs In KHL
The San Jose Sharks will have to wait to see Yevgeni Kashnikov in North America again. The 2021 draft pick has signed a two-year contract with Neftekhimik Nizhnekamsk of the KHL, ending his time in the QMJHL.
Kashnikov, selected 199th overall last year, was already an overage prospect who will turn 20 in December. He recorded 13 goals and 32 points in 62 games for the Gatineau Olympiques last season, playing both defense and forward. His 6’6″ frame and love of physical hockey made him a feared opponent (especially at the junior level), as Jacob Mathieu found out in March, when the two dropped the gloves.
With his return to Russia, Kashnikov’s exclusive draft rights will now be held indefinitely, meaning the Sharks can wait and see if he turns into something worthy of an NHL contract. For a seventh-round pick that is nothing more than a lottery ticket, this is actually sort of a beneficial thing for the team. Had he stayed in North America, Kashnikov’s rights would have expired next June as a player drafted out of the CHL.
Now, he’ll get to use that size in the KHL and see if he can develop a bit more, while the Olympiques gain another import slot to fill. Marcel Marcel, who they selected 42nd overall in this year’s import draft, arrived yesterday.
Nikolai Knyzhov Undergoes Surgery, Out For Six Months
Sharks defenseman Nikolai Knyzhov has had nothing but bad luck on the injury front lately. He missed all of last season due to a core muscle injury and now the start of 2022-23 will be delayed as well as the team announced that the blueliner tore his right Achilles tendon in offseason training and underwent surgery on Wednesday. The procedure carries an estimated recovery time of six months.
Back in 2020-21, the 24-year-old established himself as a full-timer on San Jose’s back end as he played in all 56 games, picking up 10 points while logging a little under 17 minutes of playing time. Those numbers aren’t eye-popping by any stretch but for a team that was tight to the salary cap, having a regular player under contract for less than $800K was ideal from a cap management perspective.
The Sharks signed Knyzhov to a one-year, $850K one-way deal back in April with the hopes that he’d be able to reclaim his spot on the third pairing. Clearly, that won’t be the case now as he’ll be out for at least the first half of the season and probably longer. San Jose will be able to put Knyzhov on LTIR which will give them a little bit of extra cap flexibility, especially with the team already carrying some extra depth in goal, up front, and on the back end,
San Jose Sharks Announce 2022-23 Coaching Staff
Today, the San Jose Sharks announced their full coaching staff for the 2022-23 season via a team release. In addition to the previously announced or reported hirings of David Quinn as head coach and Ryan Warsofsky as an assistant coach, the team has hired Scott Gordon as an assistant coach, Thomas Speer as their NHL goaltending coach, and Nick Gialdini as video coach.
Quinn spoke on the hires today:
I am thrilled to announce our coaching staff for the upcoming season. Scott brings an immeasurable amount of experience and knowledge of the game to our staff, and Ryan is a passionate individual who has proven himself as an up-and-coming head coach, winning the Calder Cup with the Chicago Wolves this past season. Thomas has a great track record with each of the goalies he has worked with, and Nick has earned the opportunity at the NHL level after having been with the Sharks organization for the last several years. We are excited to have each of them with us.
Gordon, 59, is a former AHL Coach of the Year winner in 2008 with the Providence Bruins. After that, he served as the head coach for the New York Islanders from 2008-09 before being replaced midseason in 2010-11 by Jack Capuano. Most recently, Gordon was the head coach of the AHL’s Lehigh Valley Phantoms from 2015 to 2021, including a stint as interim head coach of the Philadelphia Flyers in 2018-19.
Speer, 35, is a decorated goalie coach in the North American minors. Speer won back-to-back Kelly Cup championships with the ECHL’s Allen Americans in 2016 and 2017, and won a silver medal at the 2018 U18 World Junior Championship with the United States. For the past three seasons, Speer has been the goalie coach for the AHL’s Stockton Heat. He replaces Sharks legend Evgeni Nabokov in that role, who the Sharks noted has been promoted to Director of Goaltending.
Gialdini gets his first NHL job after spending the last six seasons as the video coach for San Jose’s AHL affiliate, the Barracuda. He’d also served as the team manager since 2019.