Free Agent Focus: San Jose Sharks
Free agency is now two weeks away, and teams are looking ahead to when it opens. There will be several impact players set to hit the open market in July, while many teams also have key restricted free agents to re-sign. We continue our look around the NHL with an overview of the free agent situation for the Sharks.
Key Restricted Free Agents
F Nikolai Kovalenko – Kovalenko split a rocky rookie season between the Avalanche and the Sharks. San Jose acquired him in December in the Mackenzie Blackwood trade. The Colorado 2018 sixth-rounder had been an increasingly highly-touted prospect in recent years amid an emergence as a top-line winger in Russia’s Kontinental Hockey League, and he was even thrust into NHL minutes with the Avs in the 2024 Stanley Cup Playoffs. However, he only had eight points in 28 games with Colorado before the trade, making him expendable for a win-now team. The 25-year-old fared better with the Sharks, putting up a 3-9–12 scoring line in 29 contests, but only averaged 12:40 per game – not as much playing time as he hoped nor expected on a team with as thin of a forward group as San Jose was dealing with this year. That led to reports shortly after the season ended that he was eyeing a KHL return. He hasn’t signed there yet, though, indicating he remains open to returning to the Sharks. Considering his backup options overseas, Kovalenko will likely be San Jose’s most well-compensated RFA if he stays with them despite only 57 games of NHL experience, potentially a two-year deal around $2MM per season.
D Jack Thompson – A 2020 third-round pick by the Lightning, Thompson made his NHL debut with Tampa Bay one season ago before being sent to the Sharks as the principal piece of the deal that sent Anthony Duclair to the Bolts as a deadline rental. The puck-moving righty has bounced between the Sharks and the AHL’s San Jose Barracuda ever since, but has looked good in the NHL minutes he’s received. While he only averaged 15:47 of ice time per game in his 31 NHL appearances in 2024-25, he managed a 4-6–10 scoring line with a respectable minus-nine rating on a club with a -105 goal differential. His possession impacts in limited even-strength deployment, a -0.5 relative CF% and a 50.4 xGF%, were impressive. He got a handful of power-play reps, too. The 23-year-old also posted a 3-11–14 line in 27 minor-league games. He won’t necessarily command a seven-figure cap hit on a deal for 2025-26 since he’s not quite established as a full-timer, but it wouldn’t be surprising to see him land it anyway if the Sharks have him penciled into their opening-night lineup.
F Noah Gregor – Gregor returned for his second stint in the Bay Area as a result of the deadline deal that sent Fabian Zetterlund to the Senators. A fourth-round pick of the club back in 2016, the speedy depth forward hasn’t found the 10-goal/20-point production he had his first time around in San Jose. He totaled a 4-3–7 scoring line in 52 games on the year and only had one assist in 12 games with the Sharks after the move. He’s a potential non-tender candidate as they look to create flexibility for names like Thomas Bordeleau and Daniil Gushchin to compete for NHL jobs in training camp while leaving the door open for potential free-agent signings and potentially making a spot for a forward they select No. 2 overall in this year’s draft.
F Klim Kostin – Put Kostin in the potential non-tender camp as well. The 2017 first-rounder looked like he was finally getting his feet under him in San Jose last year after they acquired him from the Red Wings at the trade deadline, finishing 2023-24 with 10 points in 19 games while climbing his way into top-nine minutes. The Russian grinder didn’t receive that kind of deployment from the get-go this year, though, and spent much of the year injured or in the press box. He was limited to seven points in 35 games as a result. Now 26, the Sharks will look to replace his role with either a more established NHL option or a younger winger with more upside.
Other RFAs: F Carl Berglund, F Thomas Bordeleau, F Nolan Burke, F Brandon Coe, F Daniil Gushchin, F Mitchell Russell, G Gabriel Carriere, G Georgi Romanov
Key Unrestricted Free Agents
G Alexandar Georgiev – The Sharks already have clarity in the net next season. Top prospect Yaroslav Askarov is expected to take the reins as their starter or at least a 1A option in a tandem with a free-agent or trade acquisition. It won’t be Georgiev in the No. 2/1B role, though. The Sharks told him at the end of the regular season that they wouldn’t be offering him a new contract. Included for salary-matching/roster management purposes in the Blackwood deal, Georgiev logged a highly underwhelming .875 SV% and 3.88 GAA in 31 appearances with San Jose after the trade – “good” for -17.9 goals saved above expected on the season, including his time in Colorado, per MoneyPuck. A thin goalie market and his top-10 finish in Vezina Trophy voting two years ago could mean he gets an NHL opportunity elsewhere, but the 29-year-old Bulgarian native won’t be back in San Jose.
D Jan Rutta – The 34-year-old righty was brought in simply to serve as an NHL-experienced body on a paper-thin blue line when San Jose acquired him from the Penguins in 2023’s three-team Erik Karlsson trade. He’s historically been an above-average third-pairing option and has done well in sheltered top-four minutes as a grounding piece for a high-end partner. Neither of those situations met him in San Jose, where he had to serve as a top-four defender out of necessity. He averaged 18:38 per game over his two seasons with the Sharks and posted 28 points with a -24 rating in 123 games. The shutdown defender could still have a fit in San Jose, considering their lack of organizational depth on the right side, but it wouldn’t be surprising to see him pursue a more conservative role on a more competitive team in free agency.
Other UFAs: F Walker Duehr, F Pavol Regenda (Group VI), F Scott Sabourin, F Colin White, D Jimmy Schuldt
Projected Cap Space
This number still doesn’t mean a whole lot to the Sharks, who will have a ton of players on entry-level deals and aren’t expected to be huge players in free agency as they proceed past the nexus of their rebuild. They’ll still look to add some supporting cast pieces to the roster, though, and will have plenty of room to do so in addition to re-upping any free agents they choose. Their $41.76MM in flexibility is the most in the league, per PuckPedia.
Photo courtesy of Stan Szeto-Imagn Images (Kovalenko) and D. Ross Cameron-Imagn Images (Georgiev).
Macklin Celebrini Earns All-Rookie Nod
F Macklin Celebrini (Sharks) – As last summer’s first overall selection, expectations were high for Celebrini this season. He largely lived up to them, scoring 25 goals and 63 points in 70 games, finishing third in Calder Trophy voting. There were some significant defensive shortcomings in Celebrini’s game, but that should improve as he matures and has better teammates around him. He outscored last year’s Calder Trophy winner, Connor Bedard, by two points in two more games played.
Potential Comparables For An Eklund Extension
- In his latest piece for NBC Sports Bay Area, Sheng Peng of San Jose Hockey Now examines what a William Eklund extension could look like. The winger is eligible for a new deal as of July 1st and after a solid 58-point effort this season, the Sharks will likely want to see if an early agreement can be reached. In terms of recent comparable long-term deals, he suggests Calgary’s Matthew Coronato (seven years, $6.5MM per season) and Utah’s Dylan Guenther (eight years, $7.14MM per year) could stand as a reasonable starting point in discussions.
Sharks Sign Barracuda Coach McCarthy To Extension
- The Sharks have signed AHL head coach John McCarthy to a contract extension, reports David Pagnotta of The Fourth Period (Twitter link). The 38-year-old has been a fixture with the Sharks going back to his playing days which started back in 2009 and ended in 2018 when he retired from playing to become an assistant with the Barracuda. McCarthy has been in charge of the Barracuda for the past three seasons with the team making the playoffs for the first time in that stretch this year.
Prospect Notes: Sharks, Reschny, Verhoeff
The San Jose Sharks are retaining their exclusive negotiating rights on three players from the 2024 NHL Draft. The Sharks announced they’ve issued bona fide offers to defensemen Nate Misskey and Colton Roberts, and forward Carson Wetsch.
Wetsch was the highest-drafted of the trio, being selected with the 82nd overall pick, while Misskey and Roberts were drafted in the fifth round, respectively. Wetsch had a nearly identical statistical campaign to his draft year, scoring 33 goals and 19 assists in 68 games, with another five goals and one assist in 11 postseason contests.
Still, Misskey may have shown that he has the highest upside this season. He scored 10 goals and 47 points in 63 games for the Victoria Royals, finishing as the team’s second-highest scoring defenseman. He’s already committed to the University of Massachusetts-Lowell for the 2025-26 NCAA season.
Other prospect notes:
- The University of North Dakota Fighting Hawks got a major commitment earlier today. According to Brad Elliott Schlossman of the Grand Forks Herald, projected 2025 first-round pick Cole Reschny will play for the Hawks next year. Reschny’s offensive talents are evident, and he should help a storied program that has only won one Division Championship in the last decade. The Macklin, Saskatchewan native scored 26 goals and 92 points in 62 games as a 17-year-old for the WHL’s Victoria Royals this past season.
- Reschny wasn’t the only top commit that the University of North Dakota received today. Frank Seravalli of the Daily Faceoff reported that defenseman Keaton Verhoeff, projected to be a top-three selection in the 2026 NHL Draft, has also committed to the Fighting Hawks program. Verhoeff was Reschny’s teammate on the Royals this past year, scoring 21 goals and 45 points in 63 games as a 16-year-old, including one goal and 10 points in 11 postseason contests.
Sharks, Andrew Poturalski To Mutually Terminate Contract
The Sharks and center Andrew Poturalski are headed for a mutual contract termination, the club announced Friday (via Curtis Pashelka of the Bay Area News Group). He’s presumably been placed on unconditional waivers today, and the termination can proceed if no one claims him in the next 24 hours.
Poturalski has an opportunity lined up outside North America, the Sharks said, presumably in Russia’s Kontinental Hockey League. He told Sheng Peng of San Jose Hockey Now after the season ended that he was frustrated with the lack of NHL opportunities he received in San Jose this year, despite leading the AHL in points, something he’s done three times in the past five seasons. He’ll walk away from the second season of a two-year contract that would have paid him an $800K salary in the NHL and a $500K salary in the minors.
The 31-year-old center has always been a high-end contributor at the AHL level, but after going undrafted, he barely ever got an NHL look. His three games played with the Sharks this season were actually a career high. He’d logged six NHL games entering 2024-25, two each in the 2016-17, 2021-22, and 2023-24 campaigns with the Hurricanes and Kraken.
The 5’10”, 187-lb pivot will thus head overseas, potentially for the remainder of his career, without an NHL goal to his name. He recorded three assists and a minus-six rating in his nine games of NHL action.
In the minors, though, Poturalski has been one of the most dominant players of the last decade. He made his debut with the Charlotte Checkers, then affiliated with Carolina, in the 2015-16 season and has since won two Calder Cups, twice been named a First Team All-Star, and scored the Calder Cup-clinching goal for Charlotte in their 2019 championship win, along with being named playoff MVP. He’s posted a 161-332–493 scoring line in 527 career AHL contests over the last 10 years, including a career-high 30 goals with the San Jose Barracuda this year.
With no NHL future ahead of him this late in his career, he’ll head across the Atlantic in hopes of playing a starring role on championship teams there. He’s likely to land with Avangard Omsk on a two-year deal, Russia’s Match TV reported back in April.
Sharks Re-Sign Shakir Mukhamadullin
The Sharks announced they’ve re-signed defenseman Shakir Mukhamadullin to a one-year, $1MM contract. He was set to become a restricted free agent this summer.
Mukhamadullin, 23, just wrapped up his second full season in the Sharks organization. He was a first-round pick (No. 20 overall) by the Devils in 2020 but was traded to San Jose in the 2023 Timo Meier deal before he could make his NHL debut. He’s split the following two years between the NHL and AHL as he climbs up the organizational depth chart.
He has 33 games of NHL experience, 30 of which came this past season. The lefty has always carried intrigue based on his high-end skating ability coupled with his 6’4″, 200-lb frame, and he’s flashed his upside as a potential long-term top-four piece in San Jose. He averaged over 21 minutes of ice time across a three-game stint to open his NHL career in January 2024 amid a strong debut season in the North American minors with the AHL’s San Jose Barracuda, whom he led in scoring among defensemen in 2023-24 with 27 assists and 34 points in 55 games.
His 2024-25 campaign started on the non-roster list due to a lower-body injury, and he was returned to the minors when cleared to play in late October. He’d get his first NHL recall of the season in early December, and he stuck with the big club for the majority of the balance of the campaign. Mukhamadullin put up a 2-7–9 scoring line with a minus-seven rating while averaging 18:04 per game, also contributing 51 blocks and 25 hits. He graded out quite well defensively, sitting near the high end of the Sharks’ Corsi leaderboard at a 48.0 CF% at even strength. San Jose also allowed 2.7 goals against per 60 minutes with Mukhamadullin on the ice at even strength, the best figure among Sharks defensemen with at least 10 games played. It’s worth noting that Mukhamadullin also averaged north of a minute per game on the penalty kill.
The Sharks still have Mario Ferraro, Henry Thrun, and Marc-Édouard Vlasic penciled in as their three left-shot defenders for 2025-26, but there’s still upward mobility there for Mukhamadullin. Ferraro could end up as a trade candidate, and it wouldn’t be surprising to see the 38-year-old Vlasic, who played just 27 games in 2024-25, relegated to the press box more consistently. There’s also the possibility that fellow lefty Sam Dickinson, whom San Jose drafted 11th overall in 2024, lands an opening-night role next fall after being named the OHL’s Most Outstanding defenseman in 2024-25.
A seven-figure commitment certainly indicates the Sharks plan on Mukhamadullin making the opening night roster and playing more of a regular NHL role as he continues on what’s been a promising development path thus far. He’ll start requiring waivers next year if San Jose wants to send him to the minors anyway, something they won’t be willing to expose him to.
Sharks Sign Egor Afanasyev
May 19: Afanasyev is headed to the Sharks for next season. He’s signed a one-year deal worth $800K, the team announced.
May 15: After being traded to San Jose last summer, Egor Afanasyev surprised some people by inking a deal with CSKA Moscow of the KHL instead of joining the Sharks. However, things could be changing on that front as the two sides reached an agreement on a mutual termination, per the KHL, paving the way for the winger to potentially join San Jose for next season.
The 24-year-old was a second-round pick by Nashville back in 2019, going 45th overall after a solid season with USHL Muskegon. He went to the OHL the following year with Windsor before returning home for the 2020-21 campaign, spending time in three different levels in Russia.
Afanasyev spent three years in Nashville’s system, getting into 19 games with the Predators but didn’t have much success offensively, recording just a single goal. He was, however, a steady performer in the minors and put up 27 goals and 27 assists in 56 games in 2023-24 with AHL Milwaukee which was enough for San Jose to part with Ozzy Wiesblatt to secure his rights.
Unfortunately for Afanasyev, he wasn’t able to match that level of success back home this season. In 53 games, he notched just seven goals and 14 assists although he was a little better in the playoffs with four points in six outings.
Afanasyev is waiver-eligible moving forward so if he does wind up joining the Sharks, his time with them could be short-lived if he fails to crack the roster. Alternatively, he could be looking to try his hand at a different league altogether but with some recent NHL experience under his belt, a return to North America would seemingly make the most sense. Sport-Express’ Artur Khairullin suggests (Telegram link) that Afanasyev is expected to sign with San Jose so it looks as if he’ll give it another go to try to make the top level.
Sharks To Stay In SAP Center Through 2050
- The Sharks have called the SAP Center home since their third year of existence in 1993-94, and that won’t change anytime soon. They’re close to finalizing a 25-year lease extension with the City of San Jose that will keep them at the downtown arena through 2050, per Curtis Pashelka and Devan Patel of The Mercury News. Local government will be putting funds toward renovating the arena, the fifth-oldest in the league, as part of the contract.
Sharks Notes: Eklund, Bordeleau, Gushchin, Poturalski
Sharks winger William Eklund is eligible to sign a contract extension as of July 1st and it appears that the team would like to get something done quickly. GM Mike Grier told Curtis Pashelka of The Mercury News that he recently met with Eklund’s agent to get an early sense of what the asking price might be on a new agreement. Speculatively, that would be a long-term agreement as early extensions are rarely short-term bridge pacts although Grier said all options are on the table this early in the process. The 22-year-old set career highs in goals (17), assists (41), and points (58) this season while finishing second in team scoring to Calder Trophy finalist Macklin Celebrini. With the salary cap set to spike, it wouldn’t be surprising to see a long-term extension surpass the $8MM mark per season.
More from San Jose:
- Center Thomas Bordeleau told reporters including Sheng Peng of San Jose Hockey Now (Twitter link) that he has been dealing with a concussion and wasn’t particularly close to returning had the AHL’s Barracuda been able to go on a long playoff run. The 23-year-old played in 59 games in the minors this season, notching 14 goals and 24 assists as he heads to restricted free agency for the first time this summer.
- Bordeleau also spoke about his status in the organization, voicing some frustration to reporters including Pashelka (Twitter link) about how the last couple of years have gone, saying that the message changed. It wasn’t long ago that it looked like he was on the verge of being a full-timer with the Sharks but instead, he played in just one game with the big club this season after getting into 27 in 2023-24.
- Winger Daniil Gushchin is also set to be a restricted free agent this summer. Despite a strong year with the Barracuda that saw him pot 27 goals and 21 assists in 54 games, he only saw a dozen games with the Sharks, leading to some frustration earlier in the year as well. Although there has been some speculation that he’d like to return to Russia, Peng relays that the 23-year-old’s intention is to remain in North America. A three-time 20-goal scorer in the minors, it feels like Gushchin will be in tough to crack a full-time spot with the Sharks, especially if Grier goes out and adds some pieces this summer.
- In that same column, another player who voiced some frustration about his usage this season was Andrew Poturalski. The 31-year-old led the AHL in scoring this season with 73 points, earning his first career MVP award but that only got him three games with the Sharks, a decision he said he doesn’t agree with. Signed for one more year, there has been speculation that Poturalski could look to go to the KHL next season over remaining in the minors but the two sides would need to reach a mutual contract termination first before that could happen.