Sharks Defense Notes: Thrun, Desharnais, Vlasic

If being on the cusp of losing 100 games over the last two seasons wasn’t bad enough, the San Jose Sharks are playing with a battered defensive core. Thankfully, they should get one of those defensemen back fairly shortly.

In an update from head coach Ryan Warsofsky, shared by Sheng Peng of San Jose Hockey Now, defenseman Henry Thrun has been upgraded to a day-to-day recovery timeline. Peng adds that Thrun “probably” won’t play this weekend, but his return is nevertheless on the horizon.

Thrun suffered an upper-body injury earlier in March against the New York Islanders, and he’ll have missed eight games by the end of the weekend. He wasn’t having a stellar season by any stretch of the imagination before going down with the injury. Still, he has logged the fifth-highest average ice time for any Sharks’ blue liner who’s amassed more than 20 games played and is still on the roster. Should Thrun return by the beginning of next week, he should break his single season career-high in points (11), which he set last campaign.

Other notes from the Bay Area:

• In another update on the Sharks’ blue line, Curtis Pashelka of The Mercury News reported that Vincent Desharnais is questionable for San Jose’s contests this weekend. According to Pashelka’s report, Desharnais, one of the newest Sharks’ defensive core members, is dealing with a “fairly significant upper-body injury.” Since moving to San Jose after a trade from the Pittsburgh Penguins, Desharnais hasn’t registered a point as a Shark in seven games, despite averaging 17:49 of ice time per game.
• In a separate report from Peng, the oldest defenseman on the Sharks’ blue line, Marc-Édouard Vlasic, is day-to-day with an undisclosed injury but could play this weekend. Vlasic is no stranger to missing time with injury, as he’s only featured in 17 of San Jose’s 71 games this season. Still, despite averaging his lowest ATOI since the 2021-22 campaign, the 19-year veteran has already blocked 29 shots in those 17 contests.