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Minor League Notes: Carriere, Bucheler, Hanzel, Hanelt

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The San Jose Barracuda have joined in on the NCAA free agent market, signing University of Vermont defenseman Jérémie Bucheler and goaltender Gabriel Carriere (Web link). Carriere is signing after his senior year, having spent all four college seasons with Vermont. He’s become a pivotal piece of their lineup since joining in 2020-21, totaling 89 games with the club, while no other goalie topped 25. And he’s performed well in the role, with 28 wins ranking him as the fourth-winningest goalie in Vermont’s history. His career .908 save percentage ranks 10th in club history.

Meanwhile, Bucheler just completed his first season with the Cougars, joining via the transfer portal after four years at Northeastern University. Bucheler had the best season of his collegiate career in Vermont, setting career-highs in all scoring categories on his way to six goals and 18 points in 33 games. He also served as an assistant captain for the club. Bucheler played in five collegiate seasons, totaling 143 games and 46 points. He’s already made his professional debut, stepping into the Barracuda’s lineup on Wednesday night. He went without a point, but did record his first shot on goal.

Other notes from the minor-leagues:

  • The Milwaukee Admirals have signed WHL defenseman Jeremy Hanzel to an amateur try-out (Twitter link). Hanzel was the main return in the Trade Deadline move that sent Yakov Trenin to the Colorado Avalanche, moving to the Predators organization alongside a 2025 third-round pick. Colorado originally drafted Hanzel in the sixth-round of the 2023 NHL Draft. He’s now signing his first pro deal after four seasons with the AHL’s Seattle Thunderbirds, where he totaled 149 points in 218 career games. He also showed plenty of clutch, with 35 points in 44 playoff games. Hanzel is a great on-puck defender that knows how to find teammates and draw opponents out of position. He’ll look to maintain that poise into the pros, moving to the AHL for the remainder of the season.
  • Washington Capitals draft prospect Haakon Hänelt has signed a professional try-out with the AHL’s Hershey Bears (Twitter link). The 20-year-old forward – who can also play defense – has spent all season in the DEL, Germany’s top league. He’s scored two points, split evenly, in 38 games this season – his second stint in the league after spending the last two years in the QMJHL. The Capitals drafted Hanelt in the fifth-round of the 2021 NHL Draft.

Labanc Knows His Days In San Jose Are Coming To An End

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  • Speaking with reporters including Curtis Pashelka of The Mercury News, Sharks winger Kevin Labanc acknowledged that he knows he’s in his final days with the organization and that there hasn’t been much communication with the coaching staff. The 28-year-old had a respectable 33 points in 72 games last season but he has been a frequent healthy scratch this year, notching just nine points in 41 appearances when he has played.  It’s fair to say that he won’t come close to getting his current $4.875MM AAV on the open market this summer but he could be an intriguing buy-low candidate if a team feels that he can get back to his old offensive levels in a new environment.

Mike Hoffman Sustained Concussion; Ty Emberson Done For Season

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  • Sharks winger Mike Hoffman has been listed as day-to-day with an upper-body injury since March 9 against Ottawa, which the winger confirmed Sunday to Colby Guy of San Jose Hockey Now was the first concussion of his career. Hoffman has been a full participant in practice in recent days but hasn’t yet been cleared for game action. The former top-six fixture has continued to regress after potting six straight 20-goal seasons between 2015 and 2020, posting 10-12–22 in 61 games with the Sharks this year in mainly third-line minutes. The 34-year-old is in the final season of a three-year, $13.5MM deal signed with the Canadiens in 2021 and found his way to San Jose in last offseason’s Erik Karlsson three-way swap with the Penguins.
  • Sticking in the Bay Area, promising shutdown prospect Ty Emberson’s season is likely over due to a lower-body injury, head coach David Quinn said Monday (via Sheng Peng of San Jose Hockey Now). The 23-year-old has missed over 20 games already this season with different injuries and hasn’t played since Feb. 29 against the Ducks. It’s a tough end to an otherwise promising rookie campaign, as Emberson logged 10 points in 30 games and will finish the season with a team-high -4 rating among skaters with at least 10 games played. The 2018 third-round pick of the Coyotes is on his third NHL organization after being dealt to the Rangers in July 2022 and being claimed off waivers by the Sharks to begin the 2023-24 season.

Hoffman Won't Play Tonight But Is Nearing Return

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  • Sharks winger Mike Hoffman is nearing a return from his upper-body injury but won’t play tonight against Chicago, head coach David Quinn told reporters including Max Miller of The Hockey News. The 34-year-old has missed the last two weeks with the injury which he revealed is a concussion.  It has been a tough year for Hoffman who has been limited to just 10 goals and 12 assists through 61 games so far, hardly the type of platform year he was hoping to have as he gets set to hit the open market in July.

Sharks Activate Mackenzie Blackwood, Reassign Magnus Chrona

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The Sharks announced they’ve reassigned rookie netminder Magnus Chrona to AHL San Jose. His weeks-long emergency loan ends because Mackenzie Blackwood is ready to come off injured reserve. As such, their roster size remains at 23, and their cap space increases by Chrona’s $867.5K cap hit.

Chrona has been on the San Jose roster for the last three weeks, except for a brief return to the minors on trade deadline day to make him eligible to play in the AHL down the stretch. The Sharks recalled him under emergency conditions on Feb. 28 when Blackwood landed on IR with what was later revealed to be a groin injury. After getting shelled in his first two NHL appearances earlier this season, Chrona improved over the last few weeks, posting a .891 SV% and a 1-4-1 record in six starts this month. However, his emergency recall meant he must be returned to the minors (or converted to a standard recall) upon Blackwood’s return.

The Sharks will likely keep Chrona in the minors down the stretch while 26-year-old rookie Devin Cooley, picked up from the Sabres in one of the final trades before the March 8 deadline, serves as Blackwood’s backup. Chrona, 23, was initially a fifth-round pick of the Lightning in 2018 but saw his signing rights traded to San Jose in April 2021 for minor-league defenseman Fredrik Claesson. He’s in his first professional season after four seasons with the University of Denver, posting a .892 SV% and 3.51 GAA in 24 games with AHL San Jose and a .940 SV% and 2.94 GAA in two showings with ECHL Wichita. The Swede has one season remaining on his entry-level contract and will be an RFA in 2025.

Blackwood returns after his groin injury sidelined him for all of March to date. He’s had a solid rebound season after the Sharks picked up his signing rights from the Devils in a trade last summer, leading San Jose with 32 starts, a 9-18-3 record, .899 SV%, and 3.48 GAA. He’s also saved 2.6 goals above expected, per MoneyPuck, his first season above expected since his standout rookie season in 2019-20. He signed a two-year, $4.7MM deal with the Sharks just after they failed to issue him a qualifying offer and, like Chrona, will be an RFA in 2025.

Ozzy Wiesblatt Loaned To AHL Milwaukee

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  • The Sharks have found a new place to play for winger Ozzy Wiesblatt, loaning him to Milwaukee. The 22-year-old was a first-round pick by San Jose back in 2020 (31st overall) but has struggled this season, notching just three goals and eight assists in 34 games.  Wiesblatt is signed through next season and his AHL rights will revert to the Barracuda for 2024-25.

Jacob MacDonald Out With Illness

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  • On a minor note, the San Jose Sharks announced that defenseman Jacob MacDonald would miss the team’s game tonight due to an illness. Recently recalled on March 9th after the Sharks’ trade deadline day moves, MacDonald has played in two games since that transaction. Over the season, on the whole, MacDonald has played in a total of 24 games, scoring six goals and seven points overall.

    [SOURCE LINK]

Sharks Recall Jacob MacDonald

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After moving Nikita Okhotyuk to Calgary in a late move before Friday’s trade deadline, the Sharks were down to just six defenders on their active roster.  They’ve determined who his replacement on the roster will be as the team announced (Twitter link) that they’ve recalled blueliner Jacob MacDonald from AHL San Jose.

The 30-year-old has spent most of the year with the Sharks but playing time was limited thanks to three separate injuries that kept him on injured reserve for 29 games.  In between those, MacDonald got into 22 games, recording six goals and one assist along with 37 hits while averaging a little over 12 minutes a night.

Last month, the Sharks opted to place MacDonald, a pending unrestricted free agent, on waivers to give a longer look to some of their other options.  He cleared and was sent to the Barracuda a little more than two weeks ago.  He suited up six times for them, collecting four assists.

There’s a decent chance MacDonald might not wind up back there as Ty Emberson is on injured reserve while Matt Benning is likely done for the season so MacDonald could be in a depth role for the Sharks for the stretch run.  Since this is a post-deadline recall, he would be eligible to return to the Barracuda later on while this will count as one of their four allowable regular recalls unless there’s another blueliner whose availability for their game tonight against Ottawa is in question.

Logan Couture Out For Season With Groin Injury

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San Jose Sharks captain Logan Couture has announced that he won’t play again this season due to a groin injury in a press conference with team media, per Sheng Peng of San Jose Hockey Now.

Couture didn’t make his season debut until January 20th, missing the season’s first half with a lower-body injury. He played in just six games, and recorded just one assist, before re-aggravating the injury and once again exiting the lineup. Couture didn’t play any games outside of the last two weeks of January. His season now ends before it really got started, marking the first year Couture has missed since making his NHL debut in 2009-10.

The 15-year-pro Couture quickly established himself as a backbone of the Sharks lineup, scoring 32 goals and 56 points in the 2010-11 season, his first full year in the NHL. He scored 31 goals and 65 points in the subsequent season – and has since crossed the 30-goal mark just one additional time, in 2017-18, and crossed the 60-point mark four more times, including when he scored a career-high 70 points in 2018-19.

Couture has served as San Jose’s captain for each of the last five seasons after four seasons as an alternate captain, taking over the role from Joe Pavelski. Couture has seen it all in his 933 career games with the Sharks, going from a fringe playoff contender, to a Stanley Cup hopeful, and then to one of the league’s bottom-dwellers over the course of the 2010’s. He ranks fourth in all-time scoring among Sharks, with 701 career points, and fifth in all-time games played. He is signed through the end of the 2026-27 season, carrying an $8MM cap hit, and will aim to play in his 1,000th NHL game when he returns next season.

Sabres Send Devin Cooley To Sharks For Draft Pick

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The Buffalo Sabres have acquired a 2025 seventh-round draft pick from the San Jose Sharks in return for goaltender Devin Cooley.

Cooley, 26, has been a career minor-leaguer, totaling 66 appearances in the AHL since making his professional debut in the 2020-21 season. That includes the 14 games he’s appeared in with the Rochester Americans this season, where he’s managed six wings and a .891 save percentage. That brings Cooley’s career totals in the AHL up to 32 wins and a .900 save percentage. He has also posted 14 wins and a .916 in 25 ECHL games.

San Jose’s last-minute acquisition of Cooley corresponds with their swapping of Kaapo Kahkonen and Vitek Vanecek. Devils team reporter James Nichols reported that Vanecek could miss the rest of the season with a lower-body injury, some bad news for a Sharks team already down Mackenzie Blackwood to a groin injury. That means the San Jose Sharks will have to ice Magnus Chrona and Cooley as their top two options. Interestingly, the pair of rookie NHL goalies have experience playing together – with a senior-year Cooley backing up a freshman-year Chrona at the University of Denver in the 2019-20 season. The pair combined for 20 wins, before Cooley moved to the pros in 2020-21. Chrona is now in his first pro season, boasting an .830 save percentage in his first four NHL games and a .892 in his first 24 AHL games.

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