San Jose Sharks eliminated from 2026 playoff contention

There are a lot of positives to take from what the San Jose Sharks did during the 2025-26 season, but experience in the Stanley Cup Playoffs will not be one of them.

The team that finished dead last in the NHL in the 2024-25 campaign gave it a great run, but the Los Angeles Kings‘ 5-3 win over the Seattle Kraken ensured that the Sharks did not have a path to qualify for the 2026 postseason.

It will still stand as a year to remember for Sharks fans, who saw their young team grow from basement dwellers to a legitimately interesting squad with talent in several key positions.

No story out of the Bay Area this year will top the emergence of Macklin Celebrini, as the No. 1 overall pick from the 2024 NHL Draft now stands as the unquestioned top young forward in the NHL after a season that saw him earn strong consideration for the Hart Trophy as the league’s most valuable player.

Celebrini became the sixth teenager in NHL history to register 100 points in a season, and he currently sits fourth in the league in points behind only Connor McDavid, Nikita Kucherov and Nathan MacKinnon.

While Celebrini was the story of the year for San Jose, Will Smith continued to take steps forward as his top runningmate, while Collin Graf, Michael Misa, Igor Chernyshov and Sam Dickinson showed that they are the sort of pieces that can support a star of Celebrini’s ilk as the team moves toward contending.

The Sharks appeared done after a six-game losing streak in the second half of March, but they got new life with a four-game winning streak from Mar. 28 through Apr. 2. Since then, they’ve dropped four of their last five. Three of those losses came by multiple goals, and the fourth came in a shootout against the Vancouver Canucks, who rank dead last in the league standings by a wide margin.

General manager Mike Grier will be well-positioned to add to his core in the offseason, as San Jose owns two first-round picks in the upcoming draft and will have plenty of salary cap space to make moves in the trade and free agent markets.