Zack Ostapchuk started last season with the San Jose Barracuda. After being traded to the San Jose Sharks from the Ottawa Senators at the previous Trade Deadline, he said it was beneficial.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cComing in last year, starting in the minors, I think it was almost good for me,\u201d Ostapchuk said. \u201cGet some confidence back, and when I came back up (to the Sharks) I got an opportunity. I tried to do my best to run with that, set myself up for this year, and build on my game.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
A testament to how far that Ostapchuk has come from last camp, head coach Ryan Warsofsky named the 23-year-old an alternate captain in the San Jose Sharks\u2019 pre-season debut on Sept. 20. <\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s grown a lot. Played most of the year last year in the National Hockey League, and he\u2019s really earned what he\u2019s gotten from the way he\u2019s worked, on and off the ice,\u201d Warsofsky said post-game. \u201cSo he\u2019s a leader by example, and he\u2019s a good guy to look up to if you\u2019re a younger guy coming into the league of just keep pushing, pushing and put your head down and go to work.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ostapchuk spoke about the Sharks\u2019 deep forward group, replacing Ryan Reaves, his summer, and more.\u00a0<\/p>\n
On what he worked on over the summer\u2026\u00a0<\/p>\n
A big focus for me was my conditioning. I wanted to be able to have a motor where I can go forecheck for 40 seconds and be on the puck for a long period of time. Every offseason, try and get bigger, stronger. Little skills like when I turn over pucks on the forecheck, I can actually hang on to it and make plays was something that I worked on a lot.\u00a0<\/p>\n
On wanting to win more faceoffs\u2026\u00a0<\/p>\n
Whenever you start with the puck, it\u2019s good. I want to be a big part of our PK, and when you win that first draw in the PK, you kill 20 seconds. It\u2019s huge. We have a lot of guys here that work on it with me, like Delly (Ty Dellandrea) and Mack (Macklin Celebrini), and we take a lot of face-offs. It\u2019s something our group wants to take a lot of pride in.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
On the San Jose Sharks having a deep forward group at Training Camp\u2026\u00a0<\/p>\n
It raises everybody\u2019s game. We\u2019ve got 15 forwards that can come in and play. You\u2019ve got to bring it every day to the rink if you want to be in the lineup. I think it\u2019s good for everybody though. It pushes you to your limit every day, and you want to be better than the next guy, but it\u2019s a healthy competition.\u00a0<\/p>\n
On filling the tough guy role that Ryan Reaves filled last season\u2026\u00a0<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not only me. He\u2019s a presence out there, Reavo. We\u2019re going to miss him a lot, but it\u2019s a collective thing. We brought in some guys too that added to our team toughness. Marchment and Nurse and Trouba and all those guys. I don\u2019t think anybody\u2019s going to be pushing us around this year.\u00a0<\/p>\n
On 7-foot-1 Alexander Karmanov\u2026\u00a0<\/p>\n
The first time I saw him, I was in the lounge and he walked right by Nursey (6-foot-4 Darnell Nurse). Nursey\u2019s huge, and he looked tiny. It was actually shocking to see.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Zack Ostapchuk started last season with the San Jose Barracuda. After being traded to the San Jose Sharks…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":476874,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[152862,6522,90987,2993,88,90,89,98,9084,26194],"class_list":["post-476873","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-jose","tag-alexander-karmanov","tag-culture","tag-darnell-nurse","tag-ryan-reaves","tag-san-jose","tag-san-jose-headlines","tag-san-jose-news","tag-san-jose-sharks","tag-training-camp","tag-zack-ostapchuk"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476873","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=476873"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476873\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/476874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=476873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=476873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=476873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}