{"id":376100,"date":"2026-06-26T18:00:06","date_gmt":"2026-06-26T18:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/376100\/"},"modified":"2026-06-26T18:00:06","modified_gmt":"2026-06-26T18:00:06","slug":"eklund-has-no-hard-feelings-for-sharks-after-trade-to-senators","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/376100\/","title":{"rendered":"Eklund has ‘no hard feelings’ for Sharks after trade to Senators"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Sharks, whose young core includes forwards Macklin Celebrini<\/a>, Will Smith<\/a> and Michael Misa<\/a>\u00a0and defenseman Sam Dickinson<\/a>, finished four points behind the Los Angeles Kings for the second wild card in the Western Conference and missed the playoffs for the seventh straight season.<\/p>\n

Th Senators have qualified for the playoffs in back-to-back seasons but were swept by the Carolina Hurricanes in the Eastern Conference First Round two months ago. Eklund could find himself playing on a line with right wing Fabian Zetterlund<\/a>, who is Eklund’s good friend and teammate in San Jose (2022-25), and center Tim Stutzle<\/a>, who led Ottawa this season with 83 points (34 goals, 49 assists) in 80 games.<\/p>\n

“Yeah, obviously a great player,” Eklund said of Stutzle. “He’s been a great player in this league for a while now, so if you get that opportunity, you just do the best you can with it. He’s been doing really good things with this organization and in this league for a while now. Whoever I play with, it’s going to be a fun journey.”<\/p>\n

Eklund said he needed three months of rehab prior to the start of this season after sustaining a wrist injury while playing for Sweden in a pre-tournament game at the 2025 IIHF World Championship. He’s currently healthy and training in preparation for the next chapter of his career.<\/p>\n

“The times I’ve played (the Senators), they’ve been really hard to play against,” Eklund said. “They’re a really well-rounded team, a deep group and I’ve heard really good things about them.<\/p>\n

“A lot of good young guys who are trying to do good things, so I’m just really excited to join that group and do the best I can.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Sharks, whose young core includes forwards Macklin Celebrini, Will Smith and Michael Misa\u00a0and defenseman Sam Dickinson, finished…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":376101,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[88,90,89],"class_list":["post-376100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-jose","tag-san-jose","tag-san-jose-headlines","tag-san-jose-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376100","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=376100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376100\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/376101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=376100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=376100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=376100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}