The Sharks made a quick move on Tuesday, recalling defenseman Eric Pohlkamp and bringing the 22-year-old into the NHL mix just seven months after he turned pro.
Pohlkamp is joining San Jose for a three-game road trip that starts Wednesday night against the Kings in Los Angeles, then continues Friday against the Minnesota Wild and Saturday against the Dallas Stars. The stop in Minnesota carries a personal twist for the Baxter native, whose hometown is about a three-hour drive from the Twin Cities.
A fifth-round pick in the 2023 NHL Draft, Pohlkamp has already put together a strong start with the Barracuda. He leads the team’s defensemen in scoring with seven assists in 10 games this season, and he also showed well in the preseason, recording a goal and an assist in three games with the Sharks.
His rise has been steady. Pohlkamp played the 2023-24 season at Bemidji State, then spent the last two seasons at Denver, where he piled up 74 points in 77 games. He helped the Pioneers win an NCAA Division I championship in the spring and was a finalist for the Hobey Baker Award after last season, when he posted 39 points in 43 games.
Pohlkamp signed a two-year entry-level contract with the Sharks on April 16. He won’t be the only former Hobey Baker name in the organization’s recent orbit, either: Macklin Celebrini won the award in 2024 after one season at Boston University, and Adam Gaudette won it in 2018 after his junior season at Northeastern.
San Jose enters the trip at 7-8-1 and has dropped four of its last five. The Sharks finished a 1-3-0 homestand on Monday with a 2-1 loss to the Calgary Flames.
In Other News...
Sharks Road Trip Opener Raised A Brutal Question About Their Progress
The Sharks road trip opener in Los Angeles was supposed to offer a cleaner read on where the rebuild stands, but the first period made the night feel familiar in the worst way. San Jose fell 7-2 to the Kings at Crypto.com Arena, with the home side piling up three goals before the opening frame was over and adding two more in the second while Adrian Kempe, Quinton Byfield and Erik Haula all found the net.
There were a couple of small bright spots buried in the loss, with Macklin Celebrini and Ivar Stenberg scoring for San Jose and Yaroslav Askarov stopping 20 shots in goal. Eric Pohlkamp also made his NHL debut, which gave the Sharks at least one fresh look on a night when the bigger question was whether the team is making enough progress to keep pace when the game turns fast and the margin disappears early. [Read more 🡒]
Mike Grier Faces Mounting Pressure As Sharks Search For A Response
Mike Grier has spent much of this season framing the Sharks progress around growth rather than the playoff race, but the on-ice picture has gotten harder to ignore. A 7-2 loss to the Kings only added to a rough stretch, and San Jose has now gone seven straight games without scoring first, a trend that has put the team in chase mode before it can even settle in.
Inside the room, the players have already held a meeting to sort through the issues, a sign the frustration is real even if a coaching change still does not look likely. With the standings slipping and the pressure building around the front office, the next question is whether Grier decides to shake up the roster, especially with trade buzz beginning to follow defenseman Simon Edvinsson. [Read more 🡒]
Sharks Early Slide Is Putting Ryan Warsofsky Under Real Pressure
The early-season stumble has started to put real heat on Ryan Warsofsky, with the Sharks dropping four of their last five and managing only five goals in that stretch. For a young team still trying to find its footing, the results alone are bad enough, but the bigger concern is how quickly the conversation has shifted from growing pains to whether the group is fully aligned with its coach.
There is also a visible disconnect in how the problem is being described inside the room. Warsofsky has pointed to the teams buy-in, while Macklin Celebrini has framed it more as an issue of energy and connection, and the injuries to Alexander Wennberg and Igor Chernyshov have only made it harder to run the kind of defensive system the staff wants. With the Sharks already searching for traction, the next few games figure to say a lot about whether this is a temporary dip or a deeper concern. [Read more 🡒]