{"id":71678,"date":"2025-08-16T02:30:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-16T02:30:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/71678\/"},"modified":"2025-08-16T02:30:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-16T02:30:07","slug":"marc-edouard-vlasic-intends-to-play-this-season-comments-on-san-jose-buyout","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/71678\/","title":{"rendered":"Marc-Edouard Vlasic Intends To Play This Season, Comments On San Jose Buyout"},"content":{"rendered":"

With training camps now around a month away, there should start to be an uptick in signings relatively soon as veterans look to find places to play for the upcoming season.\u00a0 Veteran blueliner Marc-Edouard Vlasic<\/a> was a late entrant to the free agent market and indicated to Stephane Cadorette of Le Journal de Quebec<\/a> that he fully intends to play in the NHL in 2025-26.<\/p>\n

The 38-year-old was a core piece on San Jose\u2019s back end for the better part of a decade and a half before his role started to diminish significantly in recent years.\u00a0 Last season, he spent time both on injured reserve and as a healthy scratch, limiting him to just a goal and two assists in 27 games with his average ice time dropping to 14:38, the lowest of his career.<\/p>\n

In his prime, Vlasic was one of the top defensive blueliners in the NHL.\u00a0 In particular, he has been quite adept at blocking shots as he\u2019s the all-time league leader in that regard, per QuantHockey<\/a> although it should be noted that the statistic has only been tracked for around the last two decades.<\/p>\n

Vlasic had one year left on his deal before free agency opened up with the Sharks apparently deciding very last minute to execute the buyout.\u00a0 The veteran voiced some frustration about how that came about, noting that in the exit interview back in April that they wanted him to continue to provide the veteran leadership they were seeking.\u00a0 Then, a few days before the end of June, they informed him that they\u2019d be buying out the final year of his deal after 19 seasons.<\/p>\n

From the outside, the move could have been reasonably foreseeable given his $7MM AAV and the very limited role he had been filling.\u00a0 Rather than string along a player who was once a franchise pillar with minimal ice time for yet another year, they opted to pay his $2MM signing bonus plus two-thirds of his $3.5MM salary over the next two seasons to move on.<\/p>\n

GM Mike Grier wasted little time filling Vlasic\u2019s spot on the roster.\u00a0 He brought in Dmitry Orlov<\/a> in free agency while claiming fellow lefty Nick Leddy<\/a> off waivers while John Klingberg<\/a> adds some depth to their group of right-shot options as well.\u00a0 With what they had planned, there was clearly no room to keep Vlasic around.<\/p>\n

As for Vlasic, given how limited his role was last season, it would be surprising to see him land a contract of any significance on the open market as it\u2019s likely teams will envision him as a depth option similar to how he was deployed in San Jose rather than a full-time player.\u00a0 Several of those players will be signing tryout agreement in the weeks to come and it wouldn\u2019t be shocking to see Vlasic need to go that route as well as he looks to extend his NHL career to a 20th season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With training camps now around a month away, there should start to be an uptick in signings relatively…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":71679,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,36787,575,7527,85],"class_list":["post-71678","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-marc-edouard-vlasic","tag-nhl","tag-san-jose-sharks","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71678","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71678"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71678\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}