The Sharks have spent the offseason reshaping the roster, but the biggest questions in San Jose still hang over the same three spots: the blue line, the crease, and the young core that has to carry the whole thing.
That tension is already showing up in how people around the team talk about 2026-27. Players are looking straight at the postseason, especially after April ended with five losses in seven games and a missed playoff berth by four points.
General manager Mike Grier is taking a cooler line, saying, “We’re just trying to get better. (Media members) are the ones who are always trying to put the finish line and goals on things.
It’s to get the team better and improve.”
Both views make sense after a summer that brought major change. The Sharks added winger Mason Marchment and defensemen Jacob Trouba, Darnell Nurse, and Michael Kesselring.
They also moved on from forwards William Eklund and Ryan Reaves, plus defensemen Mario Ferraro and Vincent Desharnais, among others. Macklin Celebrini remains the centerpiece, and he may not be far from looking like the NHL’s best player.
Still, the roster changes only matter if they solve the problems that kept San Jose from finishing the job last season. The Sharks ended up fifth in the Pacific Division, and now the real test is whether this group can climb past the Edmonton Oilers, the Los Angeles Kings and their new coaches, or even the Anaheim Ducks, whose roster is still unsettled. There’s also the bigger question of whether the Sharks can get back to being a real thorn in the side of the Vegas Golden Knights.
The defense is the clearest place where San Jose tried to change the equation. Ferraro, Desharnais, John Klingberg and Nick Leddy were allowed to leave in free agency, and Shakir Mukhamadullin was sent to Edmonton in the deal that brought Nurse to the Sharks. The hope is that Nurse, Trouba and Kesselring bring more size and length, making life harder around the net and helping the Sharks kill plays faster.
That said, the group still has work to do. Dmitry Orlov is going to be leaned on for minutes, Sam Dickinson needs to keep growing, and the bottom pair can’t become a problem.
The Sharks also need to find a shutdown duo that can handle the other team’s top line on a regular basis. Nurse doesn’t really fit that assignment, and Kesselring may not have enough experience for it yet, which leaves Trouba and Orlov as the strongest candidates.
There’s reason to think the back end could look more mobile than it did a year ago. The Sharks should be better at moving the puck and jumping into the rush, and Nurse and Kesselring both needed new starts. The bigger question is simple: can this group keep the puck out of San Jose’s net more consistently than last year’s defense did?
Goaltending is just as important, and Yaroslav Askarov is the name that matters most. He and Alex Nedeljkovic are back as the tandem, with Eric Comrie added as insurance after Nedeljkovic signed a two-year, $6 million extension in March. Nedeljkovic was steady for much of last season, while Askarov’s first full NHL year had its highs and lows and faded late.
Askarov finished 21-20-4 and won only two of his last nine starts, with an .871 save percentage over that stretch. Over his last 20 games, per moneypuck.com, he posted a goals saved above expected per 60 mark of -0.710, third-worst among the 65 NHL goalies who played at least 20 games this past season. He finished the year with an .883 save percentage in 47 games, and the Sharks need more from him if he’s going to grow into the No. 1 they believe he can be.
The skaters in front of him will matter, too. Better puck management would help every goalie on the roster. But San Jose knows it can’t get below-average work in net and expect a playoff push.
Up front, the Sharks have a different kind of pressure. Celebrini already did enough to show what the ceiling can look like, finishing fourth in the NHL with 115 points in 82 games.
The team was 37-18-5 when he recorded a point and 2-17-3 when he didn’t. That’s the kind of split that tells you everything about how central he is.
The rest of the young group has to keep moving too. The questions now are about Will Smith’s next step, whether Michael Misa and Igor Chernyshov can handle bigger minutes over an 84-game season, whether Dickinson can become a top-four defenseman in his second year, and how much can realistically be expected from Stenberg, even with his advanced skill set.
Veterans like Alexander Wennberg, Marchment, Tyler Toffoli, Kiefer Sherwood and Barclay Goodrow should help shelter those players. But the Sharks still need their young talent to take real steps if they want to get where they say they’re going.
“Playoffs are non-negotiable,” Sherwood told ABC7 last month. “We want to take the next step. We want to continue to develop our group, add to our identity that we’ve been building, and we want to make the Tank a hard place to play.”
In Other News...
Sharks Front Office Just Sent A Big Signal On Celebrini
Macklin Celebrini is already on the clock for a new deal, and the early sense around the league is that San Jose would rather get ahead of the process than let it drag into a headline-making summer. Elliotte Friedman said the Sharks are likely to work toward an extension before the July 1 deadline, a move that would help them avoid the kind of offer-sheet drama that has started to hover around other young stars.
There is also a bigger-picture layer to the conversation, because any Celebrini extension would set the tone for how aggressively the Sharks want to build around him. Friedman noted the club has been tied to other roster upgrades as well, including the kind of defense help that can change a power play and stabilize a young core, so this is about more than just one contract. For San Jose, the next few months could say plenty about how fast it intends to turn its most important prospect into the face of the franchise. [Read more 🡒]
Sharks Decision Just Changed The Darnell Nurse Conversation
San Joses blue-line search took a telling turn when the club settled on Darnell Nurse, a move that says plenty about what the Sharks wanted out of their next defenseman. Nurse brings the kind of physical, veteran profile that can handle top-pair minutes, while Morgan Rielly would have offered a more natural offensive fit, so the preference was less about flash and more about the type of presence the Sharks believe they need.
General manager Mike Grier has already pointed to the upside Nurse can bring, even as the defensemans previous market came with its own complications. For Rielly, the ripple effect matters too, because the list of realistic trade destinations appears to be getting smaller, which leaves his situation hanging a little longer than it might have otherwise. [Read more 🡒]