SAN JOSE – The San Jose Sharks preached patience last season after they traded Timo Meier to the New Jersey Devils — and are seeing some of the fruits of that approach with Fabian Zetterlund enjoying a career year and both Nikita Okhotiuk and Shakir Mukhamadullin now in the NHL.
The Sharks will likely have the same message after this year’s NHL trade deadline, now just six weeks away on March 8, with the real possibility that some of their numerous pending unrestricted free agents will be dealt for prospects and/or draft picks.
“When you make a trade like that. It’s hard to judge it right out of the gate,” Sharks coach David Quinn said. “You’ve got to give it some time.”
The Sharks, on the surface, do not have the same type of asset to deal this year that they had last year in Meier, who scored 40 goals in 2022-2023 between his time and San Jose and New Jersey.
Still, any move the Sharks make will be done with the mid or long-term future in mind, and players like Anthony Duclair, Mike Hoffman, Kaapo Kahkonen, and Kevin Labanc, on the whole, could fetch valuable draft capital or players early in their pro careers.
As a coach of a rebuilding team, Quinn knows these decisions are out of his control.
“I wouldn’t call it a challenge for a coach, but I think it’s a big part of keeping your sanity in this profession,” Quinn said. “You’ve just got to literally walk in here every day and tackle the task at hand. You have a responsibility to players to make them better and make them want to come here every day, regardless of the results.
“That’s really, at the end of the day, what our job is — to make people better individually.”
Along with Zetterlund, Okhotiuk, and Mukhamadullin, Quinn said in the fall that he also liked what he saw from Quentin Musty in the limited time he was healthy during training camp. The Sharks took Musty with the 26th overall pick in the 2023 draft that they received from the Devils as part of the Meier trade.
The Sharks also received a conditional 2024 second-round selection that will become a first-rounder if New Jersey makes the playoffs this season and reaches the Eastern Conference finals.
Early returns on the Meier trade from San Jose’s perspective were bleak considering Zetterlund had just three assists in 22 games for the Sharks last season. Now he’s tied for the team lead with 14 goals.
Meier, after signing an eight-year, $70.4 million contract with New Jersey, has battled injuries this season and has just nine goals and 18 points in 32 games.
“The picks excited us as an organization and that’s why you’ve got to be patient,” Quinn said. “Everybody would have quit it on Zetterlund and thought, ‘Oh boy, that wasn’t a good move,’ and it turned out to be a great move.
“A lot of times you have a reaction to a trade, but in my experience … you’ve got to be careful. You’ve got to wait to judge trades because it’s not the initial impact of it, it’s what does it look like a year or two from now, especially in our situation.”
ROSTER CRUNCH: With Mukhamadullin now in the NHL, the Sharks might need to place both Henry Thrun and Mario Ferraro on injured reserve to create the roster spots necessary to activate two other injured players who are nearing a return.
Quinn said Jacob MacDonald and Ty Emberson could both be activated off of injured reserve by Saturday when the Sharks host the Buffalo Sabres, looking to extend their season-long winning streak to four games.
MacDonald (undisclosed) hasn’t played since he was injured in the Sharks’ game on Dec. 23 against the Vancouver Canucks but said Thursday that he has made significant strides with his health over the last week. Emberson, whose last game was Jan. 9 in Toronto, recently saw a specialist in Minnesota that Quinn said helped speed up his recovery from an upper-body ailment.
If both players are ready to be activated by this weekend and Mukhamadullin sticks around, Thrun (upper body) and Ferraro (lower body) might need to go on IR to free up space on the 23-man roster. Ferraro was injured in the second period of Monday’s game against the Los Angeles Kings, and Thrun was hurt in the third period of Tuesday’s game against the New York Rangers.
Related Articles
San Jose Sharks recall top defensive prospect from AHL
What would the Sharks’ record be if they had healthy centers all season?
Hertl’s OT goal gives Sharks an improbable win over Rangers
Why Sharks’ Quinn doesn’t see the point in rushing injured center back
Sharks defenseman ‘out for a little bit’ with lower body injury
Ferraro’s injury is not considered serious and there appears to be an outside chance he could return to play in one of the Sharks’ last two games before the NHL All-Star break begins on Feb. 1. But the team could also take a more conservative approach and keep him out until Feb. 14 when the Sharks play the Winnipeg Jets in their first game back after the break.
Thrun, Quinn said, was going to be re-evaluated Thursday afternoon. Thrun injured himself going shoulder-first into the end boards in the Sharks’ zone as he tried to lean into an attempt to clear the puck.
The Sharks could make other moves to fit MacDonald and Emberson, but that would likely involve placing someone on waivers, something that presumably the organization does not want to do.
