The San Jose Sharks are 3-2-0 through five games, and that’s worth noting given how their recent starts have gone. But the record hasn’t covered up the rough spots. A few early trends are already starting to stand out, and not all of them point in a good direction.
The biggest question still hanging over the club is in net. Yaroslav Askarov opened the season looking reasonably steady, even while giving up goals in his first two starts, and the hope was that his offseason adjustments would show up more clearly once he settled in.
That hasn’t really happened yet. Against Dallas and Edmonton, he simply wasn’t sharp enough.
He still flashes big saves, and his teammates clearly believe in him, but he’s been getting beat too often on chances he ought to stop.
The Edmonton game showed the problem in full. The Sharks tried to play a tight, defensive game and held the Oilers to 20 shots.
Three goals against in that kind of outing can’t be the standard. Under those circumstances, the Sharks need more from their goalie.
That’s why Alex Nedeljkovic deserves a longer look in the near future. He has only played once this season, and inconsistency has followed him before, but he was excellent against the St.
Louis Blues. Right now, he looks like the goalie giving San Jose the better chance to win, and until that changes, he should probably be getting most of the starts.
Up front, Michael Misa’s usage stands out for a different reason. He already has the second-most assists on the team behind only Macklin Celebrini, who has five.
On primary assists, he’s tied with Celebrini, and his three 5-on-5 assists lead the Sharks. That makes his current workload hard to justify.
He has the ninth-most ice time on the roster, and if the coaching staff doesn’t want to lean on him in tougher matchups yet, then the cleanest answer is to move him to the wing. Will Smith has shown he can handle center well enough for now, which would give the staff a way to keep Misa in a more natural role without forcing the issue.
That also ties into the larger chemistry puzzle. Breaking up Celebrini and Smith is not ideal, but coach Warsofsky has talked about the need to find combinations that work.
The Sharks already know Celebrini and Smith can function together. If they can discover that same kind of fit elsewhere, they’d have more than one dangerous line.
Misa on Celebrini’s wing is one obvious possibility.
The fourth line is another spot where the Sharks may need to make a decision. For most of the season, that group has been Kiefer Sherwood, Zack Ostapchuk, and Barclay Goodrow.
Sherwood has since moved up after his strong work on the checking line, and against Edmonton, Ostapchuk and Goodrow skated with Igor Chernyshov. Ty Dellandrea has barely been in the mix, aside from the game when Macklin Celebrini was injured.
Dellandrea has his flaws, but one thing he does better than anyone else on the roster this season is take faceoffs. Alexander Wennberg is the only Shark who has won more draws than he’s lost, but faceoff success has never been a long-term strength for him.
His career high is 49.2%. Dellandrea has finished above 50% twice in his career, and that matters.
There’s also a new name pressing for time. Adam Gaudette came off injured reserve on Saturday and should get at least occasional opportunities.
The issue is finding the spot for him. Sherwood and Chernyshov look like regulars.
Ostapchuk has struggled in the circle, but he’s been solid in other areas. That leaves Barclay Goodrow as the most logical player to come out.
Goodrow has the kind of reputation coaches and executives tend to trust, but that alone shouldn’t lock him into the lineup every night. If the Sharks are trying to compete for a playoff spot, performance has to carry more weight.
Goodrow can still help in the right situations, but he no longer looks like the kind of player who should be treated as an automatic everyday option on a team with bigger ambitions. Rotating him with Dellandrea and Gaudette based on matchup makes more sense.
On defense, Sam Dickinson is trending in the right direction. Last season, the NHL-CHL agreement put him in a tough spot.
He wasn’t fully NHL-ready, but he had already maxed out what he could do in junior, and the AHL wasn’t an option. This season, he didn’t stand out in preseason and began the year as a healthy scratch.
Once he got into the lineup, though, it took him a little while to find his footing. Now he looks far more comfortable.
His third period against the St. Louis Blues in his second game was encouraging, and he backed that up with another strong showing against Edmonton.
He’s not a star, and he probably never will be, but he’s starting to look like a real NHL defenseman. The projection now is pretty clear: a solid second-pairing blue liner for years to come.
The broader numbers still paint a concerning picture. The Sharks entered the season without offense looking like it would be a major issue, but so far it has been.
According to MoneyPuck, San Jose ranks last in the NHL in expected goals for at 5-on-5 with 6.4 through five games. They’ve scored seven even-strength goals, so they’ve outperformed that number a bit, but not by much.
In all situations, they sit 31st at 11.53 expected goals for, ahead of only the Los Angeles Kings in that category. The other side of the ice isn’t much better: their 18.84 expected goals against is sixth-worst in the league.
That combination is why the early results are hard to read as sustainable over a full season. The Sharks have banked some wins, but the underlying numbers say they’ll need to clean things up, especially at 5-on-5.
Still, it’s only five games. There’s a long way to go, and plenty of room for these issues to settle down. But a few of them need to start getting fixed soon.
In Other News...
Sharks Just Locked In A Young Forward Who Became Essential
Collin Graf arrived in San Jose as an undrafted college prospect, but he has worked his way into the kind of role teams do not give away lightly. After signing his entry-level deal, he broke out in 2025-26 by playing 81 games and putting up 21 goals and 25 assists, production that helped turn him into a dependable middle-six winger with real value at both ends of the ice.
The Sharks have now committed to that growth with a three-year extension that keeps Graf under contract through the 2028-29 season. His rise has been especially noticeable in the trust he earned on the penalty kill, and with that responsibility already part of his game, he looks set to remain a significant piece of San Joses forward group for the foreseeable future. [Read more 🡒]