Confirmed with Link: Sharks sign Alexander Wennberg 2 years 5M AAV

[Barrie22]

I wouldn't want to keep any singular prospect up for the entire year, but having the spot open so that you can rotate any one of those prospects so they can get, I dunno, 10-15 games then cycle the next guy in would be worthwhile.

But playing barely good enough prospects 10 minutes a night for 60ish games is not better then getting them 20 minutes a night for an entire season plus potential playoff games in that respective lower league.

 

[themelkman]

This ones kinda bad, it should be TDL bait but with trade protection and our inability to retain its not even that.

I think its pretty obvious a lot of our existing prospects wont be making any steps towards the NHL this year.

 

[Hodge]

This ones kinda bad, it should be TDL bait but with trade protection and our inability to retain its not even that.

I think its pretty obvious a lot of our existing prospects wont be making any steps towards the NHL this year.

Except for the only two prospects who actually matter, of course.

 

[The Nemesis]

I wouldn't want to keep any singular prospect up for the entire year, but having the spot open so that you can rotate any one of those prospects so they can get, I dunno, 10-15 games then cycle the next guy in would be worthwhile.

Cycling would be hard to do because you would have to bank on the fact that someone would be hot or producing enough at each point of turnover to be worthy of inheriting the spot. What happens if you get, say, halfway into the season and all the guys who haven't had their audition time yet are in massive funks and are in no way prepared for an NHL call-up?

Plus it's also likely better for guys to get seasons with consistency in them, where they know where they'll play and that if they go up it's because they've earned it and not because their turn came around irrespective of how they're performing. Plus it would suck to call someone up who's playing well and making strides, they flounder at the NHL level, and then they go back down dejected and out of sorts and can't recapture the groove they were on beforehand.

If someone force's the team's hand in camp, great we'll cross that bridge when we get there. And reasonably it's not like there are enough indispensable players on the roster that you couldn't punt one, or even two to make room for, say, Musty if he looks like a worldbeater and Gushchin if he's clicking. It might suck, but thanks for your service Kostin, or Dellandrea, or Grunstrom, or Afanasyev. Maybe you find some contender that wants Sturm to anchor their 4th line for a mid-round pick or lottery ticket prospect. Maybe you find Goodrow a home mid-season with a team that's willing to shoulder that cap hit when it's pro-rated for the rest of the year and can be readdressed in teh off-season. Having to fit people in because you've got too many worthwhile NHL bodies is a nice problem to have. I hardly think the team is in a spot where they're going to see someone legitimately deserving of NHL ice time and go "yeah, but if I do that then what of Luke Kunin?"

To be clear: I also don't expect this scenario to play out. Smith makes the roster for sure. Celebrini does if he signs. It would take one of the others playing absolutely out of their minds to force management's hand. Like Musty would have to be PPG and absolutely bodying people in the pre-season for him to get anything more than the cursory 9-game contract-sliding audition. Gushchin or Bordeleau or Graf would have to show they are clearly better than whatever other bottom 6 options are fighting with them, at which point why wouldn't you take the better performer. And other than that I don't really see many guys who threaten NHL playing time at this juncture. Not unless you think Dickinson waltzes into camp and is peak Pietrangelo right now.

 

[coooldude]

My point is that you are being extremely short-sighted because you want to be entertained. I don’t exactly blame you, I do too. But If Musty does not definitely outplay one of the vets who are pencilled into top-9 wing roster spots at the moment, then he doesn’t deserve to be on the roster. Partially because rookies wane over the course of an 82 game season, and partially because there’s no real harm in slow-cooking them a bit. Remember Quentin Musty is literally still 18 right now. When Tomas Hertl and Timo Meier broke camp in their D+1 seasons they were almost 20 years old and the only rookies on the team, and had the support structure of an elite hockey team.

If Musty were 21 years old and still being blocked by vets, I would totally agree with you. But as it is, guys like Musty/Bystedt are still incredibly young. There’s a ways to go before worrying about creating roster space for them.

I agree with all this, and to add onto it, the prospects who are actually getting blocked (Bords and Gushchin) need to be able to beat out someone else for a middle 6 roster spot at age 21-22, especially when it's on a bottom 3 team. Otherwise they're going to get moved for 5-7th round picks. This is the kind of "put up or shut up" timing that is real and is the right way to go about it -- but it's not time to worry about even Smith, Graf, Musty, or hell even Mukh getting held in the AHL. Let them slow cook.

And anyway, injuries will inevitably come and we'll all of a sudden be watching Graf and Bords on the second line and wishing we had a deeper team, so I'm really not worried.

Musty is a weird case and he will hopefully do the Geekie (I think? or was it Cooley) plan to get 9 games in the NHL, 15 conditioning games in the AHL, back to Juniors, over to World Juniors, and then the call-up late in the season.

 

[DG93]

Good Couture insurance and another solid 3rd line veteran who can play with Smith (either as a wing allowing Smith to be the center or taking over center duties if Smith looks better on the wing as a rookie)

 

[Hodge]

Musty is being insanely overrated. He's simply not the caliber of prospect you just gift a roster spot to at 19 years old. Very few are.

 

[Barrie22]

The solution some here want, have nobody NHL ready so we can have 6 mirco muellers on our hands this season.

 

[themelkman]

I agree with all this, and to add onto it, the prospects who are actually getting blocked (Bords and Gushchin) need to be able to beat out someone else for a middle 6 roster spot at age 21-22, especially when it's on a bottom 3 team. Otherwise they're going to get moved for 5-7th round picks. This is the kind of "put up or shut up" timing that is real and is the right way to go about it -- but it's not time to worry about even Smith, Graf, Musty, or hell even Mukh getting held in the AHL. Let them slow cook.

And anyway, injuries will inevitably come and we'll all of a sudden be watching Graf and Bords on the second line and wishing we had a deeper team, so I'm really not worried.

Musty is a weird case and he will hopefully do the Geekie (I think? or was it Cooley) plan to get 9 games in the NHL, 15 conditioning games in the AHL, back to Juniors, over to World Juniors, and then the call-up late in the season.

I think the problem is we dont trust our guys to actually choose those young guys over the established ones even if they do play better.

With someone like Goodrow, they cant do anything to get rid of him, so hes defacto going to be on the roster.

 

[Barrie22]

I think the problem is we dont trust our guys to actually choose those young guys over the established ones even if they do play better.

With someone like Goodrow, they cant do anything to get rid of him, so hes defacto going to be on the roster.

And that's what people said about vlasic until he was healthy scratched for nearly 30 games last year

 

[Star Platinum]

This ones kinda bad, it should be TDL bait but with trade protection and our inability to retain its not even that.

I think its pretty obvious a lot of our existing prospects wont be making any steps towards the NHL this year.

I think that was obvious before this deal. Musty is our next most ready prospect with no NHL experience and he has only had one dominant season in juniors. He is nowhere near ready for significant NHL minutes. There's a big gap still between a guy like Will Smith and a guy like Musty.

We can revisit at the end of the year when we see where Celebrini, Smith, and Musty are. If the first two guys are ready for a heavier load, we can more easily accommodate Musty then.

 

[weastern bias]

If you're not beating the likes of Kunin, Kostin, Goodrow, Grundstrom, G. Smith and Bailey for a roster spot you shouldn't be in the NHL

Do we all not remember the Lean Bergmanns and Danil Yurtaykins of the world? That's what happens when you mandate leaving spots open for prospects

The young players are responsible for stealing spots from veterans, not the other way around

 

[SJFanQC]

We can't have too many young pieces of our core come in at the same time so I'd focus on getting Eklund, Celebrini, Smith, Graf, Thrun and Mukh playing time this year where we can. Then, in 25-26, Musty, Edstrom, Bystedt and Dickinson can come in if they're ready. That's still half a team over the next two years, I don't think we could go much quicker than this and I'm probably forgetting players/prospects too.

 

[Hodge]

The point of a rebuild isn't to draft and develop 12 forwards, 6 defensemen and 2 goalies.

The point of a rebuild is to acquire the most productive seasons of 3-4 elite players, which is impossible outside the very top of the draft.

All the other prospects and picks accumulated along the way are trade bait to build out the rest of your roster.

The last two champions combined only had 4 total players they drafted on their rosters. Even the homegrown 2022 Avs only had 6.

Make peace with the fact that 90% of our prospect pool will not be part of the next contending Sharks team.

 

[hohosaregood]

If you're not beating the likes of Kunin, Kostin, Goodrow, Grundstrom, G. Smith and Bailey for a roster spot you shouldn't be in the NHL

Do we all not remember the Lean Bergmanns and Danil Yurtaykins of the world? That's what happens when you mandate leaving spots open for prospects

The young players are responsible for stealing spots from veterans, not the other way around

And even if they are good enough, you have to project if they can hold up for 50+ NHL games at this point in their development. If they're gonna burn out and overexert themselves into injury, then hold off until they grow a little more

 

[DG93]

The point of a rebuild isn't to draft and develop 12 forwards, 6 defensemen and 2 goalies.

The point of a rebuild is to acquire the most productive seasons of 3-4 elite players, which is impossible outside the very top of the draft.

All the other prospects and picks accumulated along the way are trade bait to build out the rest of your roster.

The last two champions combined only had 4 total players they drafted on their rosters. Even the homegrown 2022 Avs only had 6.

Make peace with the fact that 90% of our prospect pool will not be part of the next contending Sharks team.

Yeah, I agree with this. You're targeting Celebrini, Smith, Dickinson, and the 2025 top-3 pick as your cornerstones. Eklund and Zetterlund are already well on their way to establishing themselves as top-9 wingers. Then you are hoping you get a few prospects that are secondary contributors from the group consisting of Mukh, Musty, Bystedt, Chernyshov, and Edstrom. The rest from that group will be used as trade pieces. Anyone else randomly hitting like Haltunnen, Wallenius, Thrun, etc. is just gravy. So that gives you 7-8 homegrown players, which is basically what Colorado and Tampa were at.

 

[Mattb124]

My point is that you are being extremely short-sighted because you want to be entertained. I don’t exactly blame you, I do too. But If Musty does not definitely outplay one of the vets who are pencilled into top-9 wing roster spots at the moment, then he doesn’t deserve to be on the roster. Partially because rookies wane over the course of an 82 game season, and partially because there’s no real harm in slow-cooking them a bit. Remember Quentin Musty is literally still 18 right now. When Tomas Hertl and Timo Meier broke camp in their D+1 seasons they were almost 20 years old and the only rookies on the team, and had the support structure of an elite hockey team.

If Musty were 21 years old and still being blocked by vets, I would totally agree with you. But as it is, guys like Musty/Bystedt are still incredibly young. There’s a ways to go before worrying about creating roster space for them.

Not to mention most young guys can’t be effective for their entire freshmen season even if they outplay vets in camp because the NHL has a far more taxing schedule than juniors or college. Many fade as the season goes on and a team still needs someone to fill that slot on the roster.

 

[Juxtaposer]

I think the problem is we dont trust our guys to actually choose those young guys over the established ones even if they do play better.

With someone like Goodrow, they cant do anything to get rid of him, so hes defacto going to be on the roster.

Why exactly don’t we trust them not to play kids when they deserve it? Seems like an unfounded concern to me. If anything, there were stretches last season where you could have easily justified sending Eklund or Thrun to the AHL based on their play, and yet they were allowed to push through it. And it clearly paid off in Eklund’s case.

 

[hohosaregood]

Why exactly don’t we trust them not to play kids when they deserve it? Seems like an unfounded concern to me. If anything, there were stretches last season where you could have easily justified sending Eklund or Thrun to the AHL based on their play, and yet they were allowed to push through it. And it clearly paid off in Eklund’s case.

I think there was a narrative all season that one of the reasons Eklund and Thrun kept getting playing time was that they didn't dwell on their mistakes and just kept grinding. While at the opposite end of things, one of the reasons why they gave up on Okhothiuk was that he let his mistakes get to him.

 

[Juxtaposer]

I think there was a narrative all season that one of the reasons Eklund and Thrun kept getting playing time was that they didn't dwell on their mistakes and just kept grinding. While at the opposite end of things, one of the reasons why they gave up on Okhothiuk was that he let his mistakes get to him.

Sure. My point is there was no point this season where a deserving kid didn’t get to play and the team was aggressively feeding kids ice time and big roles. So it’s ridiculous to assume that they wouldn’t continue the same policy under Warsofsky.

 

[ChompChomp]

There's precedent for Warsofsky as HC playing who he feels are the best people to win games, period, even if people above him wanted him to play certain Canes prospects. (Yet another reason I'm so glad he's our HC)

https://x.com/i/web/status/1695467109218746564

 

[karltonian]

The solution some here want, have nobody NHL ready so we can have 6 mirco muellers on our hands this season.

So not to relitigate the past, but what was so bad about our handling of Mirco Mueller? In hindsight he wasn't on anywhere near as bad a team as we've had in recent years, he just didn't step up because he wasn't good enough. He was always a reach and a bad pick, a rightful "who?" that busted, predictably.

 

[gaucholoco3]

Speaking of Musty there is some value in pushing his ELC back one more year if you think he will be a top line wing. Musty, Smith, and Celebrini all bring on the same contract timeline could cause problems going forward.

 

[TheBeard]

Musty is being insanely overrated. He's simply not the caliber of prospect you just gift a roster spot to at 19 years old. Very few are.

Gift? No, but a decent enough showing in camp should afford him a 9 game stint to start the season just to see. If he's overrated then it's better to find out now than later and if he's not then let's get him some NHL-seasoning.

 

[jMoneyBrah]

So not to relitigate the past, but what was so bad about our handling of Mirco Mueller? In hindsight he wasn't on anywhere near as bad a team as we've had in recent years, he just didn't step up because he wasn't good enough. He was always a reach and a bad pick, a rightful "who?" that busted, predictably.

It wasn’t so much that Mueller wasn’t a bad pick or that the team was bad. It was that Mueller was gifted a top-4 role directly out of the draft based on… the team needing him to be a top-4 defender directly out of the draft. IMO, and purely on retrospective speculation, the Mueller situation felt like DW said to the scouting staff “I need a partner for Burns next season out of the draft, make it happen” so they ended up reaching to get the guy they felt was the most NHL ready and gifted him a spot. To me, again with the benefit of hindsight, it was the ultimate hubris to believe they could just materialize an 18 year old top-4 defender out of a mid-first pick. Wilson basically depended on hopium instead of having an actual plan. This is one of the purest examples of drafting for organizational need instead of BPA.

The contention here is that the team can’t just fill roster spots out of the draft at will, when in reality barring the top 1-3 picks, these prospects can’t be dropped into NHL rosters fresh out of the draft and be expected to be even remotely successful.

In regards to Mueller specifically, he wasn’t offered a proper opportunity to develop, but was shoved into a highly demanding role (not just top four, but partner to the wildcard Burns) he wasn’t ready for and when he inevitably failed to succeed he was quickly jettisoned. Who’s to say how he would have done if provided a proper development journey; but, as a policy, repeating the process that lead to his arrival on the Sharks seems foolish in the extreme.