The Sharks are expected to once again be sellers in advance of March 7th’s trade deadline with the team well out of the playoff picture. This is around the time of year where teams will often start talking about extensions with players they want to keep. That doesn’t appear to be the case at the moment for San Jose as GM Mike Grier told reporters including Curtis Pashelka of The Mercury News that while he has a sense of what his pending free agents are looking for, there haven’t been any negotiations with them and is unsure if there will be any before the deadline.
Their UFA crop includes veteran centers Mikael Granlund and Nico Sturm, winger Luke Kunin, plus defensemen Cody Ceci and Jan Rutta. If they are going to try to move them, they won’t be able to retain any salary, however, as their three retention slots have already been used. However, Grier indicated that he’s not too worried about that as he feels interested teams will either have or be able to open up the cap room to add any of those players to the point where retention wouldn’t necessarily have been needed.
More from San Jose:
- It looks as if there won’t be much help on the horizon on the injury front. Sheng Peng of San Jose Hockey Now notes (Twitter link) that Sturm, winger Klim Kostin, and Rutta are all unlikely to play until after the break for the 4 Nations Face-Off. Speculatively, getting those players into some game action will be needed if they have any hopes of moving them before the deadline. They should, however, get center Ty Dellandrea back sooner. Peng mentions that Dellandrea skated today as he works his way back from an upper-body injury that landed him on IR last week.
- Granlund missed practice today due to illness, relays Max Miller of The Hockey News (Twitter link). He’ll accompany the team on their trip to Seattle but isn’t a lock to suit up. After putting up 60 points in 69 games last season, Granlund is scoring at a similar clip this year with 44 points in 51 games, leading the team in assists and points.
Luke Kunin has to be a trade prospect Tampa is looking at as Kunin brings secondary scoring depth, has a physicality to his game, can play wing or center, & is on a low-end contract. It’s also beneficial he’s only 28 years old & would be someone Tampa would potentially re-sign him to an extension.
Kunin has only 18 points this season, And let’s not forget the Tanner Jeannot dumpster fire in Tampa, Thanks to BriseBois.
Kunin is playing on a bad team & 18 points is not bad for a bottom six player at all as he would have the second most points in Tampa’s bottom six behind only Nick Paul’s 28 points. Kunin’s points would improve playing on a better team.
Also, the Jeannot situation is rather different compared to Kunin’s situation. BriseBois missed with Jeannot (yes, badly) but BriseBois’s track record shows he has far more hits than misses in his decisions especially compared to a lot of GMs in the league.