EDMONTON — Everybody’s frustrated.

Head coach Ryan Warsofsky after the San Jose Sharks’ 5-3 loss to the Edmonton Oilers on Tuesday.

Surely, the players, who came up without a point in back-to-back winnable games, in the middle of a tight playoff race.

No doubt, the fanbase, after line-up decisions today that perplexed them.

What’s my takeaway from Warsofsky’s personnel calls?

To name a few, inserting a cold Nick Leddy into the line-up for Shakir Mukhamadullin, rotating three wingers around Macklin Celebrini for two periods, yanking Michael Misa from the middle to be one of those aforementioned wingers, and leaving Will Smith and Tyler Toffoli on the bench during a late-game 6-on-5?

Big picture, I think this is a head coach who doesn’t have a lot of high-end options at his disposal. Basically, his roster isn’t very deep. So if it felt like an exasperated Warsofsky was throwing some things at the wall to see what would stick…well, I think there’s a reason for that.

Leddy, as it turns out, was far from the problem tonight, but the truth that needs to be faced is that Mukhamadullin isn’t seizing a job on the blueline that is right there for the taking.

The San Jose coaching staff, especially considering how shallow this defense is, has every reason in the world to play Mukhamadullin or prospects like Luca Cagnoni or Nolan Allan on a nightly basis, if they’re believed to be definitively better than the likes of Leddy, John Klingberg, and when he was here, Timothy Liljegren.

Clearly, the organization — which includes the front office — doesn’t believe that. And as we’ve seen with young Collin Graf and Zack Ostapchuk, who took jobs from veteran forwards, and on a much deeper forward corps, the opportunity is there.

Personally, I’d like to see Mukhamadullin in there, sink or swim, he’s youngish and exciting. There’s an argument, too, that it could go a long way for Mukhamadullin’s confidence if he knows that he’s in the line-up every night. But the Sharks are, for the first time in seven years, in the business of winning games in March, too.

Let me put it another way: Instead of asking why Mukhamadullin and other youngsters aren’t playing, ask why they can’t take the jobs of Klingberg and company, once and for all?

Believe me, the San Jose organization would like nothing more than that.

The Smith debate is far more nuanced than the Mukhamadullin one, at least in my mind.

On one hand, Smith is just 21, in his sophomore season, and is averaging close to a point per game. He flashes, at times, legitimate world-class talent. All this is truly praiseworthy.

On the other hand, and he’s just 21, he has lots to iron out in his overall game, besides pure production. He’s not a winning NHL player, not quite yet.

That’s not a real criticism of Smith, by the way, considering his age, but what talent evaluators around the league think about his game right now.

There’s an argument with Smith, just leave him out there pretty much no matter what. He’s the type of game-breaker, he can be quiet all game, then all of a sudden, pull something breathtaking off.

The other argument, if you want Smith to become an all-around impact player, you need to give him some tough love at times.

I think there’s a middle ground to both those arguments. You probably give Smith a little more rope than other offense-first prospects, which I actually think the Sharks have. But you also have to pull him back, from time to time. For what it’s worth, my perception of Smith is he’s supremely confident, I don’t think a benching or two really rattles him, and if anything, it ought to motivate him.

How it relates to tonight?

Well, it’s fitting that the Sharks were playing the Oilers.

Celebrini struggled at times tonight, too, in a best-on-best match-up with Connor McDavid — per Natural Stat Trick, the Oilers hard-matched McDavid versus Macklin — but he also wasn’t getting much help from his wingers.

When McDavid, the Sharks’ Celebrini, is off or getting bottled up? Edmonton, when healthy, has truly elite talent to free up McDavid, whether that’s the injured Leon Draisaitl or Evan Bouchard or Zach Hyman.

The Sharks don’t have any of that, yet. They’ve got more good players than they’ve had in years, especially up in front, but besides Celebrini, they don’t have any other elite skaters yet.

So if Celebrini isn’t going, it’s not as simple as Kris Knoblauch has it, to some degree, put McDavid and Draisaitl together and profit. Or hope for a power play, where Edmonton is still NHL-best despite their issues elsewhere.

Celebrini is too important to the nightly success of the Sharks — again, they’re just a point out of a playoff spot — you’ve got to figure out what’s the combination to get him going on an off-night. If anything, Warsofsky could’ve put Celebrini with Kiefer Sherwood and Pavol Regenda from the second period on, because those were the Sharks’ best forwards tonight. Or kept Sherwood-Celebrini-Misa together, that short-lived second period line might’ve been Celebrini’s best shifts tonight.

These aren’t every night solutions, by any stretch — Celebrini and Smith have always ended up together this season, because they’ve generally been this very flawed team’s most potent duo — but breaking them up every once in a while is far from a catastrophe, too.

Anyway, it all comes back to the San Jose Sharks just aren’t very deep yet, which isn’t a swipe at GM Mike Grier either, by the way.

The rebuild is going just fine, between the ascension of Celebrini, and the gains that Smith, William Eklund, Graf, Misa, Igor Chernyshov, Ostapchuk, Sam Dickinson, and company have made this season.

But there’s going to be nights like this, where Celebrini and your other future stars aren’t quite going, and you try to make something work with what you’ve got.

I’ll get to the Misa stuff in another article.

In summary, Celebrini and Smith weren’t going tonight, you move parts around Celebrini to try to spark him, and Smith will be fine in the long run. Mukhamadullin, I’m not so sure about, to be honest.

Ryan Warsofsky

Warsofsky didn’t say much post-game, but this was a statement: “For four years, we’ve worked on development and getting guys better, kind of handing some things to some players. You got to earn your ice from hereonout.”#SJSharks are 1 point out of the playoffs right now

— Sheng Peng (@Sheng_Peng) March 18, 2026

Warsofsky, on moving Misa off of center: “I’m just trying to get someone to play with Mack.”

That was also basically his explanation for rotating 3 wingers, Misa, Graf & Smith with Celebrini from the second period on

— Sheng Peng (@Sheng_Peng) March 18, 2026

Dmitry Orlov

Orlov, on the Max Jones GWG:

I think I need to win the battle there. For me, I can make a better play, I kind of missed the puck, I tried to catch it, and then the guy beat me. They win the forecheck, basically. It cost the game. It’s a tough one. We need to be better as a team in all aspects of the game.

Alex Nedeljkovic

Nedeljkovic, on the big picture message for the San Jose Sharks:

From here, the big picture message, every game is a playoff game.

We need to be at our best, close to our best, every single night as we can here. If we’re not picking up points, somebody else is. Tonight was a four-point game. So this was a huge, huge game for them in terms of getting the result.

We got to stay with it. We’re not out of it. We’ve still got some games in hand. We play them again. A few divisional games coming our way. So a couple more four-point games. I think the big picture message is every game is a playoff game for us.