Sharks general manager Mike Grier is on fire.
The Sharks are looking hot, too.
The Sharks’ vision of what they can become is undeniable. We saw it manifest in arguably the team’s two best wins of the season: back-to-back victories in Toronto and Buffalo on Monday and Tuesday.
Against a Stanley Cup contender in the Maple Leafs, the Sharks came back from a 2-0 third-period deficit to win in a shootout. They followed that performance with a 6-2 trouncing of the Sabres, leaving Buffalo — which had high expectations coming into the season — re-evaluating things going into Friday’s trade deadline.
“So it’s tough. You never go into a game thinking that’s how it’s gonna go,” Sabres defenseman Bowen Byram said. “It’s embarrassing for all of us.”
That’s precisely what Grier and the Sharks want to hear. It means that while expectations around the Sharks are still low, their play is elevating.
In other words: The rebuild — as brutal as it has been up to this point — is finally shifting. The Sharks have played a near-perfect season in a macro sense — lots of close losses, ensuring another high draft pick, and plenty of positive development of their young players in the process.
Friday afternoon, the Sharks will enter a new stage:
The end of the tear-down period, the proper start of the rise.
Grier isn’t hiding from it: he’s been wheeling and dealing all season. Since the NHL Draft in July, he’s made seven trades, including landing top goalie prospect Yaroslav Askarov, Timothy Liljegren (a five point-share player), and two early draft picks for July.
On Wednesday morning, Grier made another outstanding move, trading goalie Vítek Vaněček to the Panthers for power forward Patrick Giles. At 6-foot-4 and 200 pounds, Giles’ only sin was being a late bloomer at Boston College — oh, and signing with the defending Stanley Cup champions, who tried to find a top-four line job for him this season but couldn’t make the room.
He’ll start his Sharks career with the AHL Barracuda, but don’t be surprised if the Sharks try to make room for him on the NHL roster by Friday.
Perhaps that will come from a move of Luke Kunin or Nico Sturm, two bottom-six forwards on expiring deals. A mid-round draft pick would be enough for an enterprising team to land either.
Dealing either would be a nice finishing touch on what has been a rebuilding masterclass from Grier.
Of course, the general manager could go bigger before Friday, moving the team’s most valuable (and viable) trade piece, Marco Ferraro, despite the defenseman still having a year remaining on his contract.
Grier has made it clear around the league that Ferraro, a team leader, won’t come cheap. As such, trade talk around him has cooled in recent weeks.
But there’s plenty of time for that to change.
The Sharks could also move goalie Alexandar Georgiev, who was acquired in December, but there’s unlikely to be a market for him right now.
Wither Giles is the team’s final acquisition of the season or not, the deadline stands as a point of demarcation.
There have been glimmers of something special developing in San Jose throughout the season. Macklin Celebrini is too young to be this good—he looks like a future Hart Trophy winner. William Eklund has taken a big step forward in his age-22 season. Will Smith fought through some growing pains and looks like he not only belongs but can thrive at the NHL level at age 19.
This team has a Big Three at forward going forward.
They have the goalie of the future, too.
And the system is absolutely loaded.
Igor Chernyshov, pick No. 33 in the 2024 draft, is dominating the Ontario Hockey League with 38 points in 15 games. If he were in the 2025 draft, he’d be a top-10 pick. Defenseman Sam Dickinson has 76 points in 48 games for the London Knights in the OHL, and power forward Quentin Musty has 44 points in 28 games for Sudbury. There’s a lot to like at the AHL level with Filip Bystedt, Luca Cagnoni, and 2025 promotion Collin Graf (who has found his footing in recent games with the big-league club.)
The Sharks are a right-handed shot defense prospect away from something close to a perfect prospect pool. With the two first-round picks and plenty of ammunition in later rounds, the Sharks can afford to take the best available player with their top pick (perhaps another No. 1 overall) at the draft, and then position themselves for that righty with their second first-rounder — Logan Hensler of Wisconsin, Radim Mrtka of Seattle (WHL), and Blake Fiddler of Edmonton (WHL) are all viable middle-to-late first-round options.
The final pieces of this challenging Sharks puzzle won’t be added in the hours preceding the deadline, but the Sharks can better position themselves to acquire them with a few moves on the periphery this week.
But whether Grier continues to wheel-and-deal or not, the mandate is the same:
At the end of this campaign, losses are no longer a good thing for the Sharks.
After missing the playoffs only twice in 20 seasons, the Sharks haven’t been in the postseason since 2019.
The talent is already in place to expect that to change. But sooner would be better than later. And anything Grier can do to expedite that process this week should be well-received.