San Jose Sharks 2023-24 season preview: Playoff chances, projected points, roster rankings ·

21 May 2024, 00:00

By Dom Luszczyszyn, Shayna Goldman and Sean Gentille

Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this article incorrectly projected the Sharks’ point total. That chart is updated to project 66 points instead of 68.

In the immediate aftermath of the Erik Karlsson trade, one thing was clear: The San Jose Sharks were going to be a baaaaaaaad hockey team in 2023-24.

That was already true with Karlsson in town — the team only earned 60 points last season despite his Norris-winning campaign — but without him things are as dire as can be. No team has less going for it this season than San Jose, so it should come as no surprise that the Sharks start the year projected to be the league’s worst team.

Let the rebuild truly begin.

The projection

Projected to be the worst doesn’t mean a last place finish is guaranteed. After almost a decade of running these projections you probably know that by now, but it’s always an important point to bold, highlight and underline.

For San Jose, a spot in the bottom 10 is a near guarantee at 97 percent and a bottom-five finish is almost a lock at 80 percent. But last place? That’s only a one-in-four chance. It’s a more decisive chance than the league’s best team has at winning the Stanley Cup — a testament to how dire the Sharks roster is — but it’s still more likely than not that the Sharks don’t finish last.

In hockey, there’s a wide range of outcomes that can happen, and surprise seasons are all too frequent. For a team this bad, the point of the designed roster is to minimize just how good that surprise can be (and maximize a “bad” season surprise). San Jose has done that to great effect here.

The only numbers that matter in a lost season for the Sharks are the numbers in the bottom right corner. The lower the Sharks finish, the stronger their future outlook becomes. No team is in a better position to finish as low as possible than San Jose.

Percentiles with the bar graphs are based on each player’s Offensive, Defensive and Net Rating relative to their time-on-ice slot, i.e. the first forward is compared to other first forwards only.

The strengths

In some spots, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all,” is decent advice. Sadly, it doesn’t apply to NHL season previews. We’ve got to find something here, challenging as it may be.

First off, the minimal areas in which San Jose was decent last year probably aren’t going to repeat themselves. The Sharks were better than the average NHL team at generating shots off the forecheck, according to Corey Sznjader’s tracked data, but a decent chunk of that was due to Karlsson and Timo Meier who, as you’re aware, are no longer on the roster.

If there’s a bright side here — and if we grade on a curve — it’s that the bottom of the Sharks roster for this season has a couple interesting spots. Players like Nico Sturm, Fabian Zetterlund and Mike Hoffman all bring a bit more offensive pop than boilerplate fourth-liners. It’s not impossible to imagine the former two, thanks to their low salaries, showing enough to net Mike Grier a low draft pick come deadline time. They’re not good enough to help the Sharks win games, but hey, maybe they’ll be worth a scratch-off ticket.

Anthony Duclair, acquired from the Panthers in a necessary cap-clearing move earlier this summer, should be worth more, despite an Achilles tendon injury that kept him out for most of last season. In 2021-22, he had 31 goals for the Panthers (22 at even strength) and looked the part of a capable second-liner on a good team, particularly on the rush. If he can regain some of that production on a line with Hertl or Logan Couture, Grier will be able to flip him for a worthwhile future asset. Duclair only makes $3 million, and his deal expires after the season. Acquiring him for a fifth-rounder and Steven Lorentz, and plugging him into a roster that can certainly accommodate a top-six rehab project, was a solid bit of work by Grier in his first offseason on the job.

The brightest spot here, period, is an improved prospect pool. Corey Pronman places San Jose at No. 13 in the league, up eight spots from last fall, owing largely to the addition of No. 4 pick Will Smith and defenseman Shakir Mukhamadullin, part of the Meier deal with New Jersey. They join William Eklund as potential high-end pieces. Of course, San Jose will look to continue adding to the coffers, and Eklund (No. 35 on Scott Wheeler’s drafted player list) is the only one likely to start the season in the NHL. He got his development back on track last season, leading the Sharks’ AHL affiliate in points per game (0.76) and adding weight to what Wheeler called a “clever” skill set. Assuming Smith doesn’t make the leap as an 18-year-old and that Mukhamadullin requires more seasoning, no player in the lineup should matter more than Eklund. Fans can watch him and daydream about a few years down the road, when he’s riding shotgun with Smith, leading a young core capable of winning meaningful games. That’s a healthy bit of projection, but it’s the best we can do.

The weaknesses

There’s a decent chance that you read the preceding section and thought, “Hey, they didn’t mention Tomas Hertl or Logan Couture.” That’s true.

What’s also true: Hertl and Couture, though still good players (Hertl particularly), can’t qualify as positives — at least not in the way we’ve defined the term. It’s not their fault; put them in different situations, farther down the lineup and with better support, and they’d add plenty to the lineup. Imagine either of them in Boston, for example, or any team with strong wingers and a hole or two down the middle. They’d play, and they’d play well. As San Jose’s best forwards, though, they set the tone for a profoundly overmatched roster.

The average No. 1 forward, league-wide, carries a plus-14 Net Rating. Hertl, owing largely to some brutal defensive impacts, is a plus-8. He’s still productive — 2.48 points per 60 — but turns 30 in November and is in the second season of an eight-year, $65.1 million contract that was agreed upon before San Jose hired Grier as Doug Wilson’s replacement. Valuable as Hertl would be to a contending team, and though $8.0 million a year isn’t much of an overpay for an elite second-line center, his contract tamps down the market value he’d otherwise hold. He’d be better off elsewhere, and the Sharks, in a vacuum, could use that trade to rocket-power the rebuild. Reality, though, seems to have conspired against both sides. The end result is a classic case of Good Player, Bad Team.

The average No. 2 forward carries a plus-10 Net Rating. Couture is a plus-5, even after last season’s bounce-back (2.56 points/60, his best mark since 2018-19). One of the best playoff performers of his generation, Couture, 34, has four seasons left at an $8.0 million AAV.

Both, in short, remain net-positive players but don’t generate the value necessary to compensate for the mess that surrounds them. Neither are particularly movable, thanks to the years and money remaining on their contracts, Both, cruelly, are just good enough to actively impede the quest for lottery balls. Beyond them, things devolve. Once you get past aforementioned potential bright spots like Duclair and Eklund, the bulk of the forward group isn’t good enough period, let alone to make up for a blue line as bad as any we’ve seen in recent history.

GO DEEPER

Sharks' big question: Is this the worst blue line in recent memory?

There, Mario Ferraro continued showing capability as a minutes-eater and a bit of potential as a puck-mover — though not much. Jan Rutta, acquired as part of the Karlsson deal with Pittsburgh, should have some value for contenders looking for depth on their right side; he won big in Tampa as Victor Hedman’s partner. Overall, though, it’s a group almost completely devoid of offensive value. The rationale behind plenty of Karlsson’s Norris support was, essentially, “look at what he was working with” — and it was successful for a reason. He put up an Offensive Rating of nearly 22 last season. No other Shark defenseman broke 0.0 — the departed Derrick Pouliot came closest at minus-0.7 — and none is projected to do so in 2023-24. Grim.

In net, they could theoretically be worse. Kaapo Kahkonen was dreadful in his first full season with the Sharks (.883 save percentage, -21.58 Goals Saved Above Expected), but showed enough potential in 2021 with Minnesota and San Jose to keep him around. Mackenzie Blackwood, acquired for a sixth-round pick from the Devils, still carries some intrigue. Now, has he largely trended downward since 2018-19 (.918 save percentage)? Has he struggled with injuries? Was it time for both he and the Devils to move on? Yes, yes and yes. Still, he’s just 26, with some decent stretches over the years. So, he’ll either a) positively contribute to the tank or b) show himself to be at least some sort of medium-term option in net.

Nothing wrong with that, but the Sharks are here partially because of how much likelier Plan A is. From top to bottom, forward to goal, the team’s weaknesses are overwhelming.

The wild card

Can Filip Zadina get back on track in San Jose?

Filip Zadina carries a lot of intrigue this season as a reclamation project. On a team where opportunity won’t be difficult to come by, Zadina has a chance to finally deliver on the promise of being the sixth pick in 2018.

Zadina hasn’t found that yet. Over the last three years, he’s sandwiched between Casey Cizikas and Sean Kuraly in five-on-five points per 60 — two fourth-liners. It makes sense why Zadina continued to slide down the Red Wings depth chart, and eventually out of favor.

The model isn’t too keen on him either, but under the hood there are signs of life. For the first time in his career, his poor results looked to be outside his control. His finishing problems continue to persist, but he’s turning into a play-driver with some decent play-making instincts. According to data tracked by Corey Sznajder, Zadina was well above average at creating chances last season, especially off the forecheck. It’s hard to actually deliver the goods though when your primary linemates are Joe Veleno and Pius Suter.

With the help of improved play without the puck, he earned a 53.7 percent expected goals rate, three percentage points clear of the next-best Red Wing forward last season.

Still, you need to actually put the puck in the net and Detroit only managed 40 percent of the goals with Zadina on the ice. In his first few seasons, it would be easy to blame that on Zadina’s own offensive inability, but last year he showed real growth. The problems had more to do with who he played with.

That won’t necessarily be fixed on San Jose, but it does feel like he’ll have more opportunity with the Sharks to show he can turn a strong underlying process into tangible results. And that Detroit cut bait too soon on a still promising 23-year-old.

The best case

The Sharks put together a watchable season that lands them the first pick next season.

The worst case

Multiple career renaissances from the team’s veteran group of former stars thwart the tank and place San Jose outside the league’s bottom five.

The bottom line

It’s not going to be a good year in San Jose. It can’t be in the standings, and the Sharks shouldn’t want it to be. But it can still be a season of progress that focuses fully on the future, now that the noise of last year’s trades is behind them if they play their cards right.

If young talent develops and reclamation projects rebound, with veterans helping facilitate it all, the Sharks will move in the right direction. Anything else will only elongate what’s already been a painful process.