It\u2019s been seven years since the last time that the San Jose Sharks weren\u2019t obvious Trade Deadline sellers.<\/p>\n
That was 2019, and a loaded Sharks squad, led by Joe Pavelski and Logan Couture and Erik Karlsson and Brent Burns, all in their primes, were eyeing a run to the Stanley Cup.<\/p>\n
The Sharks aren\u2019t back like that, just yet.<\/p>\n
Heading into Thursday, San Jose\u2019s first post-Olympic break game against the Calgary Flames, the Sharks are five points out of the Western Conference\u2019s last wild card spot.<\/p>\n
It will be, honestly, an uphill climb for the Sharks to make the post-season: Beyond newly-minted \u201cgenerational\u201d superstar Macklin Celebrini, the roster is seriously flawed.<\/p>\n
That said, the talent is there, besides Celebrini, for a surprise playoff berth. So what\u2019s got to go right for the San Jose Sharks to make the post-season for the first time since 2019?<\/p>\n
Celebrini Must Stay Healthy<\/p>\n
There\u2019s arguably no player in the NHL more important to his team than Celebrini.<\/p>\n
Celebrini has 81 points, 28 goals and 53 assists, meaning that he\u2019s been involved in 47.9 percent of the San Jose Sharks\u2019 169 goals. Only Connor McDavid and his 98 points, directly part of 48.3 percent of the Edmonton Oilers\u2019 offense, has had a greater impact on his team than Celebrini.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s been seven years since the last time that the San Jose Sharks weren\u2019t obvious Trade Deadline sellers.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":493655,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[6514,831,226092,4272,385,226093,4052,168904,835,99,6538],"class_list":{"0":"post-493654","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-alex-nedeljkovic","9":"tag-featured","10":"tag-goaltending","11":"tag-macklin-celebrini","12":"tag-nhl","13":"tag-penalty-kill","14":"tag-playoffs","15":"tag-power-play","16":"tag-san-jose-sharks","17":"tag-sports","18":"tag-yaroslav-askarov"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/493654","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=493654"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/493654\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/493655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=493654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=493654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=493654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}