Kiefer Sherwood is getting his first taste of the San Jose Sharks locker room.<\/p>\n
And so far, it seems like he\u2019s going to fit in well. His aggressive playing style has the Sharks excited for his arrival.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s a dawg. Just the way he compete, the way he battles,\u201d Macklin Celebrini said of Sherwood. \u201cHe\u2019s hard to play against, and that\u2019s something that I respected playing against [him]. Anytime you\u2019re matched up against him, it\u2019s not going to be easy. I\u2019m happy to have that on our team.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sherwood, by the way, returned the compliment, unprompted, about Celebrini\u2019s game.<\/p>\n
Goaltender Yaroslav Askarov called Sherwood a \u201crat\u201d, in playing style, and compared him to the Florida Panthers\u2019 Brad Marchand.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hate him to play [against],\u201d Askarov said. \u201c[He\u2019s] like one of the worst players to play against and probably one of the best to play on the same team.\u201d<\/p>\n
Askarov is familiar with Sherwood from mostly the 2022-23 season, when they both played for the Milwaukee Admirals.<\/p>\n
Another San Jose Sharks player with ties to Sherwood, Vincent Desharnais, said he immediately told Sherwood he\u2019d fit right in with the Sharks locker room.<\/p>\n
\u201cI texted him to welcome him, and the first thing he said was, \u2018I can\u2019t wait to stir some stuff up on the ice to start,\u2019 which I think is going to fit right in,\u201d Desharnais said.<\/p>\n
Sherwood hopes to bring exactly that to the San Jose Sharks.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to make it hard to play against us and try to complement some of the identity that I know that the team is building,\u201d Sherwood said. \u201cTry to stir things up, occasionally, but at the same time too, I want to be a glue guy and just bring the energy and try to help guys bring in the fight.\u201d<\/p>\n
Head coach Ryan Warsofsky echoed that he wants Sherwood to bring a style that he called \u201cnasty.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI think I heard Rick Bowness say you need nasty. And you look around the league, the team that wins the Stanley Cup will play with nasty, and they\u2019ll play with jam and you need more types of players [like that],\u201d Warsofsky said. \u201cThe rest of the guys, get guys to drag [them] into the fight. So I think he brings that nasty.\u201d<\/p>\n
While he\u2019s currently injured and won\u2019t play immediately, Warsofsky said he\u2019s optimistic that Sherwood will be able to play ahead of the Olympic break, so by Feb. 4.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s what I\u2019m hoping. So I\u2019m trying to push it,\u201d Sherwood said. \u201cI don\u2019t know when, I\u2019m just trying to make progress every day. And hopefully, at some point on the road trip, I\u2019ll be good to go.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sherwood already has one notable tie to Northern California: He and his wife got married in Carmel in July.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s weird how things work. Me and my wife got married out in Carmel this year,\u201d Sherwood said. \u201cNow it\u2019s kind of full circle, and we\u2019re just looking forward to it and starting this next chapter.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now his wife, Ariel, is pregnant, due in April.<\/p>\n
Sherwood said he\u2019s looking forward to exploring San Jose.<\/p>\n
\u201cPlaying on the west my whole career, so I\u2019ve obviously been in San Jose and seen the good spots,\u201d Sherwood. \u201cBut now I\u2019m looking forward to visiting the neighborhoods and the suburbs. And even yesterday, I was driving around just trying to get to know everything that it has to offer, and it\u2019s beautiful.\u201d<\/p>\n
So while there are reports that Sherwood and the San Jose Sharks are far apart in contract negotiations, it certainly sounds like the pending UFA is excited to be here, and wouldn\u2019t be opposed to staying.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s so many great things about Northern Cali and what it has to offer. And obviously the players, there\u2019s some special players brewing. It\u2019s an exciting time to be part of that. They\u2019re building a great culture moving forward,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m just getting excited to get to know everyone and ruffle some feathers when I can.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kiefer Sherwood is getting his first taste of the San Jose Sharks locker room. And so far, it…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":146012,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[11690,93,11200,41681,1035,88,90,89,98,3236,62644,20226,4218,3516],"class_list":["post-146011","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-jose","tag-brad-marchand","tag-featured","tag-free-agent","tag-kiefer-sherwood","tag-macklin-celebrini","tag-san-jose","tag-san-jose-headlines","tag-san-jose-news","tag-san-jose-sharks","tag-trade","tag-ufa","tag-vancouver-canucks","tag-vincent-desharnais","tag-yaroslav-askarov"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146011","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=146011"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146011\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/146012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}