MONTREAL – Longtime San Jose Sharks defenseman Marc-Edouard Vlasic said his playing career is over after 19 NHL seasons.

Judging by how happy and relaxed he appeared on Tuesday night at the Bell Centre, he doesn’t seem to miss the grind.

Vlasic, roughly 18 months after what turned out to be his final NHL game, is busy with girlfriend Frédérique Guay raising a now 10-month-old daughter, Samuelle, who has just started standing on her own.

“I’m loving it a lot more,” Vlasic said of fatherhood. “I’ve been with her all day, every day. It’s cool to see the evolution of it. Starting to crawl, starting to motor quite a bit now, so I’ve got my hands full. But it’s been really cool.”

Vlasic, 39, also seems at peace with how his Sharks career abruptly ended.

Two months after the end of a trying 2024-25 season for the Sharks, in which they finished in last place in the NHL standings for a second straight year, Vlasic was placed on unconditional waivers for the purpose of a contract buyout by general manager Mike Grier, who wanted to free up cap space and a roster spot as part of an overhaul to his defense corps.

Vlasic was set to enter the final year of an eight-year, $56 million contract that carried an average annual value of $7 million. He came off a season in which, due to an upper-body injury at the start of the season and several healthy scratches, he played just 27 games and averaged a career-low 14:38 in ice time.

Vlasic, though, believed after exit interviews in San Jose that he would return for a 20th year with the team. Speaking at a charity event in Quebec City in Aug. 2025, Vlasic said he didn’t appreciate how everything was handled.

“It would have been honest of them to tell me right after the season, ‘By the way, we may (buy out your contract), so prepare your house.’ Instead, they did it (in late June),” Vlasic said that summer. “Now, I have a lot of things to think about.”

Asked about Vlasic’s remarks at the start of training camp for the 2025-26 season, Grier said, “I don’t want to get into a he said, she said-type situation. I’ll just say, I’m fine with how I ended the meeting with him. I thought I was pretty clear about the possibilities of things.

“If he kind of mistook some words from myself or the coaches, that was never our intention to not be upfront with him.”

Vlasic said Tuesday that he holds no resentment toward Grier, and the two caught up during the Sharks’ game against the Montreal Canadiens. Grier played for the Sharks early in Vlasic’s NHL career.

“It’s been over a year and a half from that,” Vlasic said of the buyout. “I saw (Grier), asked him how he was doing. I have no hard feelings. I love the city. I love the team. I love the organization. I’m 10 months in, hands full with a newborn. I’m there in fatherhood. The Sharks are moving on. I keep going back (to San Jose).

“(It’s) water way under the bridge.”

With this being the final year of his buyout, Vlasic hasn’t officially retired yet. He trained for the start of the 2025-26 season hoping to play one more year, but another offer didn’t materialize.

Asked if his conversation with Grier led him to believe the door was open to reconnecting with the Sharks’ organization, Vlasic said, “I don’t know. Maybe, maybe not. I just saw him here, and he’s like, ‘Hey, what are you doing here?’ I asked him how he was doing. He asked me how I was doing, how’s the newborn. We just caught up.”

Vlasic was a second-round draft pick by the Sharks in 2005 and is second on the team’s all-time games played list with 1,323, only behind Patrick Marleau’s 1,607. Vlasic is also sixth in team history with 295 assists, and seventh with 379 points.

An Olympic gold medal winner with Team Canada in 2014, Vlasic was for several years one of the NHL’s best shutdown defensemen and a key member of the Sharks teams that reached the Western Conference Finals in 2010, 2011, 2016 and 2019. The Sharks reached their only Stanley Cup Final in 2016 before losing to the Pittsburgh Penguins in six games.

“The dream is to win a Cup, but throughout my 19 years there, I feel like we accomplished quite a bit,” Vlasic said. “It’s hard to win. Not every team wins, but I feel like most of my career there, we had an outstanding team, a chance to win every year.

“So I’m happy with playing my whole career in San Jose; I loved it there. I didn’t know anything about the city before I went, and now it’s one of my favorite places to be. The people, the weather, the area, the neighborhood I’m in — everything’s fantastic.”

Vlasic said being a dad of a newborn means he’s usually in bed by 9 p.m. or so, too early to watch many Sharks games when he’s in Montreal

“I’ve moved on,” Vlasic said. “I’m a dad now, loving it, having fun. I loved my time in San Jose. The fans and city were outstanding. I loved playing there, and hopefully it gets back to what I know it can be.”