Offseason Keys: San Jose Sharks

The offseason has arrived for at least seven teams that were not invited to take part in the play-in round that’s slated to begin in early August.  With that in mind, our Offseason Keys series is underway for the teams that are on the outside looking in.  Next up is a look at San Jose.

There was some cause for optimism for the Sharks heading into the season.  They were coming off an appearance in the Western Conference Final and managed to keep Erik Karlsson in the fold.  Things seemed to be looking up.  Things didn’t play out as they expected and that would be putting it lightly.  Pretty much every player struggled while an in-season coaching change didn’t move the needle and the end result was narrowly avoiding 30th overall.  And of course, they don’t have their first-rounder this year to make matters worse as that went to Ottawa in the Karlsson trade.  Their salary cap situation doesn’t give them a lot of wiggle room but here are some of the things San Jose needs to take care of this summer.

Coaching Decision

After they got off to a 15-16-2 start under Peter DeBoer, GM Doug Wilson decided to make a change behind the bench.  Bob Boughner, who had just been brought back for a second stint as an assistant coach, was promoted to the top job on an interim basis.  Things didn’t get much better on his watch as they limped to a 14-20-3 record before the pandemic scrapped the rest of the season.

Now, Wilson needs to make a decision on Boughner to either lift the interim tag or bring someone else in to take over.  Three months ago, Wilson stated that there would be a thorough review and that Boughner had the upper hand in the process at the time.  Is more than 14 weeks enough to conduct that review and make a decision?  For a moment, it seemed like they were leaning towards keeping the status quo but Wilson poured cold water on that on Thursday, telling Curtis Pashelka of The Mercury News that no decisions have been made yet.

Fortunately for the Sharks, they’re not really competing against anyone for coaches at the moment.  All other head coaching jobs are either filled or held by teams that are still playing which gives them even more time to work with.  There are several veteran candidates out there that are worthy of consideration in Gerard Gallant, Peter Laviolette, Mike Babcock, and John Stevens so there are plenty of options to choose from if they decide to go in another direction.

Is Boughner the right one for the job?  Eventually, Wilson will need to answer that question but at this point, it certainly seems like the answer is going to be yes.

Fix The Goaltending Situation

Despite getting as deep as they did in the playoffs, goaltending was a concern for San Jose for most of the year.  Martin Jones was coming off the worst season of his career as was Aaron Dell.  Nevertheless, the duo remained intact for 2019-20 and the results between the pipes weren’t much better.  Jones posted a save percentage of just .896 for the second straight season, a mark that backups need to be better than let alone starters.  Dell didn’t play at the level he had in his first two years but at least was a bit better although still below average.  This is why only a handful of teams allowed more goals before the season was shut down.

Needless to say, improvements need to be made.  The big question is how?  Jones still has five years left on his contract with a $5.75MM AAV.  At the time the deal was signed, it had a chance to be bargain but now it’s a problem.  With the flattened salary cap, finding a team to take that deal on is going to be tricky without taking another big contract back.  Unless that big contract is another goalie though, there isn’t a feasible trade option out there as a high-priced skater in return for Jones would price them out of the starting goalie market.  A buyout doesn’t seem likely either.

As for Dell, he’s slated to become an unrestricted free agent but he was only making $1.9MM on his expiring deal.  That’s enough to shop around for a veteran replacement but the top backups are going to be commanding more than that and they already have more than $66MM in commitments to just 13 players for next season, per CapFriendly.  A higher-end backup, while ideal, may be a luxury they simply can’t afford.  San Jose has high hopes for undrafted free agent Alexei Melnichuk but asking him to step in and play a big role right away would be risky despite his impressive showing in limited KHL action.

Their cap situation is going to make things tricky but if the Sharks plan on turning things around, Wilson is going to need to find a way to swap out starters or, at the very least, bring in a more prominent backup that can compete for more playing time.

Bank For Labanc

Last offseason, Labanc decided to take a team-friendly one-year, $1MM deal with the hopes that there would be more wiggle room next summer at a time where he’d have arbitration rights and ideally more leverage as a result.  For a variety of reasons, that plan hasn’t exactly worked out.

Labanc’s numbers dipped considerably this season to just 14 goals and 19 assists in 70 games.  For context, he had more assists (39) one year ago than he had points (33) in 2019-20.  Granted, pretty much everyone had a down year but that’s not a winning argument in an arbitration hearing.

The 24-year-old still should be in for a decent-sized raise but the change in salary cap projections due to the pandemic is going to hurt.  There was a case to be made that he’d be looking for a deal that might seem pricey now but more reasonable after a few more cap increases; lots of teams have done those in recent years and enough have worked out to make it a reasonable strategy.  But that’s off the table now as any increases over the next few years are going to be incremental at best.

At this point, another short-term deal (perhaps even another one-year pact) makes the most sense.  It gives Labanc a chance to rebuild his value and it would save them a bit of cap room in the interim.  The latter element was also a factor a year ago but at that time, he was looking to boost his value, not build it back up.  From San Jose’s perspective, as much as they like him, committing a long-term deal now may price them out of filling other holes so they’ll have that to consider as they map out their offseason plans.

It’s safe to say that Labanc’s plan last offseason didn’t quite work out as planned but unfortunately for him, the solution may be to try the same thing again.

Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.