{"id":379008,"date":"2025-12-31T02:53:11","date_gmt":"2025-12-31T02:53:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/379008\/"},"modified":"2025-12-31T02:53:11","modified_gmt":"2025-12-31T02:53:11","slug":"the-sj-sharks-are-biting-again-that-puts-gm-mike-grier-in-a-tricky-spot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/379008\/","title":{"rendered":"The SJ Sharks are biting again; that puts GM Mike Grier in a tricky spot"},"content":{"rendered":"

Success<\/a> is a funny thing in the NHL. You spend years begging for it, scraping the bottom of the standings to accumulate the draft capital necessary to build it, and praying to the lottery gods<\/a> to bless it.<\/p>\n

Then, when it finally arrives<\/a>, it brings a headache.<\/p>\n

For the first time in six years, the San Jose Sharks aren\u2019t looking at mock drafts in December. They are firmly, undeniably in the hunt for a playoff spot. The Tank is getting loud again, and there is an undeniable buzz and excitement for all things teal in the Bay.<\/p>\n

And with that comes a miserable, complicated, and ironically unenviable predicament for general manager Mike Grier.<\/p>\n

The hardest part of any rebuild \u2014 much less one as scorched-earth comprehensive as the project Grier has overseen \u2014 isn\u2019t starting it; it\u2019s deciding when it is over.<\/p>\n

While the Sharks still have immense room to grow, the true goal of this process wasn\u2019t to pop champagne for the privilege of getting swept in the first round. The goal is winning multiple Stanley Cups.<\/p>\n

Up until this point, that north star was always easy to follow. The organization didn\u2019t have a \u201cnow\u201d to balance against the goals of \u201clater.\u201d<\/p>\n

They do now.<\/p>\n

And let\u2019s be specific about what that means: It means that Grier has some truly tough decisions on who is \u2014\u00a0or who is not \u2014 traded before the NHL\u2019s deadline in March.<\/p>\n

Because of the league\u2019s obsession with mediocrity \u2014 sorry, they call it \u201cparity\u201d \u2014 we\u2019re already seeing big deals being made. Everyone wants a leg up as early as possible.<\/p>\n

This, folks, is a serious seller\u2019s market.<\/p>\n

And in a vacuum, a team in the Sharks\u2019 position \u2014 middle of the pack, rising but flawed \u2014 should be selling high.<\/p>\n

But we\u2019re not in a vacuum, are we?<\/p>\n

In fact, it might be most prudent for them to do the one thing that feels counterintuitive: keep the band together, keep the vibes high, keep pushing for the playoffs, and take the risk of losing good players to free agency when you re-open the roster in the summer.<\/p>\n

The blueline is the specific area of focus, and it is a mess of contradictions.<\/p>\n

Looking at the books, only Dmitry Orlov and Sam Dickinson are signed for next season. Everyone else is playing for a contract, be it in San Jose or somewhere else.<\/p>\n

Again, in any prior Shark season under Grier, San Jose would have throwing plenty of chum into the trade waters.<\/p>\n

And give Grier truth serum, and he\u2019d probably tell you that back in September, he fully expected to be shopping \u2014 and selling \u2014 veteran defensemen John Klingberg and Nick Leddy in the coming weeks.<\/p>\n

That was the script. Sign vets, rehabilitate their value, and flip them for more picks and young players.<\/p>\n

Why else would the Sharks be carrying all these defensemen if they didn\u2019t plan on moving a couple of them?<\/p>\n

The problem? Macklin Celebrini and friends rewrote the script.<\/p>\n

Leddy, picked up off waivers this summer, hasn\u2019t played enough or well enough to create much of a market. His value is minimal, even in a league where GMs hoard defensemen like canned goods during an apocalypse.<\/p>\n

Klingberg, on the other hand \u2014 pun intended \u2014 presents the real dilemma.<\/p>\n

He has played up-and-down hockey, but he\u2019s found some balance lately. And look at the stat sheet: He is fifth in the NHL in goals by a defenseman. He\u2019s also that deeply coveted, right-handed blueline shot that quarterbacks a power play.<\/p>\n

He could land a pretty sweet pick. There will be a market for Klingberg. There is a market for him.<\/p>\n

The problem? Well, he\u2019s a right-handed shot defenseman who has proven to be the only viable power-play quarterback, and he\u2019s also a respected veteran leader in a room full of kids.<\/p>\n

His value to a playoff contender is his value to the Sharks.<\/p>\n

And the Sharks have no obvious replacement for him \u2014 no young whippersnapper in the pipeline ready for his moment. Sorry, but Dickinson isn\u2019t that guy yet.<\/p>\n

If Grier trades Klingberg for, say, a second-round pick and a prospect, he is effectively waving a white flag on the power play and \u2014 this doesn\u2019t take much extrapolation \u2014 the playoff push.<\/p>\n

The complications continue down the depth chart. Vincent Desharnais is another right-handed shot and a strong penalty killer. He\u2019s also a pending UFA and movable, but he\u2019s currently week-to-week with an upper-body injury.<\/p>\n

You can\u2019t trade a guy who can\u2019t pass a physical.<\/p>\n

Then there is Timothy Liljegren \u2014 right-handed, pending UFA. He seems like a viable option to jettison for a mid-round pick, but again, does the asset return outweigh the sacrifice of depth during a grueling stretch run?<\/p>\n

And we haven\u2019t even touched the emotional third rail: Mario Ferraro. It would feel wrong to trade Ferraro now. He survived the lean years. He bled for this team when they were losing 10-1.<\/p>\n

But his name is constantly bandied about in trade chatter, and the Sharks need to make a call on him before he hits unrestricted free agency this summer.<\/p>\n

Up front, the math is just as calculus-heavy.<\/p>\n

Every contender in hockey wants center depth. They will all want Alex Wennberg. He\u2019s a pending UFA, responsible, and steady. But if you move Wennberg, who takes the minutes? Do the Sharks really want to play rookie Michael Misa 15-plus minutes a night, down the middle, in the thick of a playoff hunt? That\u2019s how you break a prospect, not build one.<\/p>\n

Jeff Skinner? He was ostensibly acquired to be flipped, but he hasn\u2019t played enough or well enough to elicit a serious market.<\/p>\n

And Grier has to weigh the human element here, too. Don\u2019t forget that last season, with the Sharks nowhere near a playoff spot, Grier traded Mikael Granlund and Fabian Zetterlund at the deadline. On paper, those were clear wins: Asset management 101.<\/p>\n

The room didn\u2019t love it, though. There was some dragging of feet after both moves, even though the Sharks eventually played better hockey down the stretch without them.<\/p>\n

That kind of vibe should probably be avoided this season, especially when the games actually matter.<\/p>\n

The young Sharks \u2014 led by Celebrini and Will Smith \u2014 have forced their front office to make a call: Now or later? Good luck trying to thread that needle.<\/p>\n

Do you reward the boys for their overachievement by keeping the group together, or do you stick to the long-term plan and sell expiring contracts to bankroll the future, morale be damned?<\/p>\n

There might not be a clear answer at the moment \u2014 both arguments carry serious merit. But make no mistake, we\u2019ll know by the end of the season if the Sharks made the right one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Success is a funny thing in the NHL. You spend years begging for it, scraping the bottom of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":379009,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[3805,2356,3802,6755,10831,3803,2558,385,3804,28512,835,10840,59683,10843,99,362],"class_list":["post-379008","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-bay-area","tag-california","tag-editors-picks","tag-hockey","tag-inside-sports","tag-keywee","tag-latest-headlines","tag-nhl","tag-pm-report","tag-san-jose","tag-san-jose-sharks","tag-santa-clara-county","tag-sharks-alert","tag-south-bay","tag-sports","tag-sports-columnists"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379008","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=379008"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379008\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/379009"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=379008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=379008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=379008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}