When the San Jose Sharks began their rebuild, the front office stressed patience. General manager Mike Grier’s new staff was dealing with financial difficulty and a mediocre prospect group that would take several seasons to sort out. There’s still a lot of work to be done, but the franchise is heading in a positive direction on both counts, particularly with the farm system.
Reports from various media outlets rank the Sharks’ prospect pool among the five best in the NHL, such as this one from The Hockey Writers and, more recently, this one from The Athletic (from ‘San Jose Sharks are No. 4 in 2024 NHL prospect pool rankings,’ The Athletic, Feb. 27, 2023). Many factors have gone into this improvement, and it will soon be time for these prospects to make their impact on NHL ice.
Sharks’ 2023 Draft Class Leading the Way
The Sharks’ haul at the 2023 NHL Entry Draft looked good at the time, and roughly eight months later, it might be even better. Four of the team’s top eight prospects in The Athletic’s report, which ranks the franchise’s 15 best prospects, were 2023 Draft selections. First-rounders Will Smith (ranked first) and Quentin Musty (second) are dominating offensively — Smith in college, Musty in the Ontario Hockey League. Second-rounder Kasper Halttunen (seventh) and fourth-rounder Luca Cagnoni (eighth) are having similarly excellent seasons.
The players selected in the 2022 Draft also appeared in the rankings. The Hockey Writers list five players by name, and four of them were drafted by the current regime, including Musty and Smith. But Musty was chosen with a selection obtained in the Timo Meier trade, and the pick that became Cagnoni was acquired in a trade as well. Early in his tenure, Grier has shown an ability to draft well and use trades to obtain valuable draft capital and utilize those picks productively and efficiently.
Sharks Prospects Slowly Creeping Onto NHL Roster
While The Hockey Writers focused on players who hadn’t yet earned a callup at the time of publication, The Athletic’s list includes a few Sharks who have already made NHL appearances. These players are creating a better understanding of what the future might look like for those who haven’t made it to the big club yet.
Shakir Mukhamadullin, Henry Thrun, Thomas Bordeleau and Danil Gushchin have all shown promise and potential in their various amounts of time with the Sharks. But the San Jose front office is also very willing to shuttle players back and forth between the NHL and the American Hockey League (AHL). Grier, his fellow excutives and the coaching staff see value in letting players maximize their playing time in the AHL, working with coaches who specialize in development, learning and growing their games.
They might come up to the NHL for a few games to see what they can offer or to fill in for an injured player, but the Sharks won’t hesitate to send them back down. There’s often more value for a young player being a top contributor on a minor league team than having a lesser role at the highest level, and San Jose uses that theory to full effect.
The Sharks’ top prospects who haven’t reached the NHL should prepare to move around a fair amount once they do get to the big leagues. But all four of these players have proven they can contribute and justify Grier’s decision to call them up, and will likely take on bigger roles soon. The other prospects on the list can look at those four and get excited about their NHL futures.
Sharks Prospects Will Need to Translate
It’s easy to get excited about what’s next. The players in the pipeline represent what might be coming for this era of Sharks hockey. It’s not here yet, but it seems to be getting closer every day. Then, a look at the product the Sharks are currently putting on the ice snaps everything back to reality.
They hold the league’s second-worst points percentage, and on the same day The Athletic’s report came out, they took a dismal 7-2 home loss against Meier’s New Jersey Devils. They’ve had their moments this season, but the current roster is nowhere near playoff contention.
What this means is that the Sharks’ prospects will need to live up to their number-four ranking. Scouting reports and lists are great in theory, but at a certain point, they will need to be put into practice. This season was an inflection point for a handful of young San Jose players — most notably William Eklund, who has generally delivered on expectations. The coming seasons will see the same for more players, some of whom are already in the pipeline and some of whom will be drafted this year when the Sharks are almost guaranteed to have another top-five pick.
The Sharks are building a tremendously promising prospect pool. But there’s still a long way to go before the team can consider the job to be done. Part of the work has been done, but some of it hasn’t even started.
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