The San Jose Sharks spent most of the 2024-25 season relying heavily on young players to make an impact. Several played an important role, but not all of them have found their place on the team yet — perhaps most notably center Zack Ostapchuk.
The offseason has arrived for half of the league’s teams that aren’t taking part in the playoffs. Accordingly, it’s now time to examine what they will need to accomplish over the coming months. First up is a look at San Jose.
The Sharks recalled winger Daniil Gushchin and defensemen Luca Cagnoni and Jimmy Schuldt from AHL San Jose ahead of their final two games of the season.
The NHL began awarding the Conn Smythe Trophy to the most valuable player of the postseason beginning in the 1965 season. How many of the past winners can you name in six minutes?
The Sharks acquired Ostapchuk in a Trade Deadline move that sent Fabian Zetterlund, Tristen Robins, and a 2025 fourth-round pick to the Ottawa Senators.
The Senators made a trio of demotions today after finishing up their pre-holiday break schedule last night with a 3-1 loss to the Oilers. They reassigned all of goaltender Leevi Merilainen, center Zack Ostapchuk and left-winger Cole Reinhardt to AHL Belleville, per the team’s communications department.
The Ottawa Senators will be without goaltender Anton Forsberg for an undisclosed period due to injury and with that, the team needed a netminder. Ottawa announced they’ve recalled goaltender Leevi Meriläinen from their AHL affiliate, the Belleville Senators, and have reassigned forward Zack Ostapchuk the other way in a corresponding roster move.
With the month of October now officially behind us, we're getting into the meat of the NHL season. You can't win the Stanley Cup in November but, as the Ottawa Senators have shown us on far too many occasions in recent years, you can lose it.
Zack Ostapchuk came into the 2023-24 season with cautiously optimistic expectations, as shown by his 15th-place ranking last year. After all, in 2022-23, he'd been decent for Team Canada at the World Juniors, with 3 points (2G 1 A) in 7 games.
As this space has touched on previously, the Ottawa Senators are open for business this offseason. With the NHL Entry Draft only three weeks away and free agency two days later, trade chatter is beginning in earnest.
Zack Ostapchuk won back-to-back gold medals as a member of Canada’s World Junior team in 2022 and ’23, but when he said his NHL debut Tuesday evening “was the coolest night in my life” during a postgame scrum, one could get a sense he truly meant it.