Tag: Hockey

SAN JOSE – San Jose Sharks prospect Will Smith had lunch this week with veteran forwards Logan Couture and Barclay Goodrow, two central players in the team’s last playoff run in 2019.

Smith, naturally, wanted to know what it was like inside SAP Center more than five-plus years ago on the night Goodrow scored a series-clinching overtime goal in Game 7 against the Vegas Golden Knights, capping arguably the wildest game in team history.

“I actually watch it back on YouTube a lot, and seeing the Shark Tank like that is pretty crazy,” Smith said. “They were telling me how it was so loud, it was just ringing the entire time.

“It’s our goal to get it back to that.”

With plenty of renewed enthusiasm following a rather transformative summer, the on-ice part of that long process for the Sharks began Thursday with the first day of the team’s training camp.

New head coach Ryan Warsofsky directed several new players, including top prospects Smith and Macklin Celebrini, through hour-long practices featuring several up-tempo drills.

The overhauled Sharks hope to be a vastly different team than the one that finished last season with an NHL-worst 19-54-9 record, giving them the best chance to draft a potential future franchise cornerstone in Celebrini.

Now, with some more pieces in place, the Sharks feel ready to take a step forward. Certainly, their record could not get much worse.

“I think last year was rock bottom for us as an organization, and now it’s time to start moving forward and pushing things forward,” Sharks general manager Mike Grier said. “Not only myself, but I think the players and everyone’s excited to get going, turn the page and see what this year brings.”

Celebrini, who became the first player drafted No. 1 overall by the Sharks in June, already looked right at home during Thursday’s practice and intrasquad scrimmage, where he scored a couple of pretty goals and was all over the ice.

In one sequence, Celebrini buzzed around the offensive zone before he found a sliver of space in front of the opposing net. A split-second after he took the centering pass from defenseman Gannon Laroque, Celebrini ripped the puck past the glove hand of goalie Georgi Romanov.

“It’s pretty simple. Just get him the puck,” forward Tyler Toffoli said of Celebrini. “Yeah, he was pretty good out there.”

“The more you enjoy something, the more comfortable you are,” Celebrini said. “So enjoy it.”

Celebrini might start the season as the Sharks’ No. 1 center as captain Logan Couture will likely be on injured reserve to begin the year.

Couture, entering his sixth season as the Sharks’ captain, continues to deal with osteitis pubis — inflammation in the joint between the left and right pubic bones.

After missing all of training camp and the Sharks’ first 45 games, Couture last season returned and played in six straight games from Jan. 20-31 before being shelved again. But he hasn’t skated since that Jan. 31 game in Anaheim and still has no timeline for getting back onto the ice.

The Sharks open the season on Oct. 10 at home against the St. Louis Blues.

“I’ve played hockey for 30-plus years, and when it just ends abruptly, it’s difficult, especially when you don’t really have a choice. The body just breaks down,” Couture said Thursday. “But that’s the way professional sports, or sports in general, normally work, not always injuries, sometimes other reasons. But that’s the situation I’m in.”

Couture was one of four injured Sharks players unable to skate Thursday.

Goalie prospect Yaroslav Askarov and defenseman Shakir Mukhamadullin are both out with lower-body injuries, and veteran defenseman Marc-Edouard Vlasic has an upper-body injury that Warsofsky said occurred during captains skates earlier this month. Warsofsky said those three are considered day-to-day.

The Sharks would appear to be better positioned to absorb Couture’s absence than they were last season.

Celebrini and Smith played center during their standout freshman seasons at Boston University and Boston College, respectively. The Sharks also added Goodrow and Alexander Wennberg this summer and have Mikael Granlund and Nico Sturm back from last season.

The Sharks’ forward group could have as many as seven or eight new players this season, and the defense corps added some needed experience with the acquisitions of Jake Walman and Cody Ceci. Askarov, the Sharks’ hope, will be the goalie of the future.

It all adds up to what the Sharks hope will be the most competitive camp in years, a message Grier relayed to the players on Wednesday.

“It’s about compete and earning your opportunities that maybe somewhat in the past, (there were) guys in the lineup or on the roster that maybe shouldn’t have been,” Grier said. “Now there’s legitimate competition throughout, and there’s no one where we don’t feel like we have to force someone onto the lineup.

“That was kind of the message to the guys, young and old. If you want a spot and you want to earn something, you’ve got to go out there and take it. No one’s going to give it to you anymore.”

The Sharks were in a downward spiral for three years before Grier’s arrival in the summer of 2022, yet the front office at the time was still unwilling to publicly state that they needed to rebuild after a decade and a half of success.

Then Grier arrived, ripped off the band-aid, stripped the roster down to the studs, and endured two of the most painful seasons in franchise history.

But now, with a restocked farm system led by Celebrini, is when all that heartache starts to pay off. Or at least, that’s the hope.

“I think we’re all trying to look forward,” Grier said. “We appreciate what was done here. I think (former Sharks GM) Doug (Wilson) did a great job, and it was something special to be so competitive for such a long time. But now I think it’s our turn and the group’s turn to start writing their own history.”

SAN JOSE – The Sharks’ extreme offseason makeover continued Monday as they signed free agent veteran forwards Tyler Toffoli and Alexander Wennberg to multiyear contracts, adding to an already sizeable group of new players that general manager Mike Grier hopes will make the team more competitive.

“Sometimes it takes some time to do things, and there’s still a lot of work to be done,” Grier, now in his third season, said Monday, the first day of NHL free agency. “But I think now we’re starting to at least head towards being the type of team I would like us to be.”

Toffoli, a winger who has played for seven different teams over the past five seasons, was signed to a four-year, $24 million contract with a full no-movement clause. Considering the Sharks’ prospect pool, led by Macklin Celebrini and Will Smith, Toffoli was interested in coming to San Jose.

“It seems like the team is going in the right direction here,”Toffoli said. “Just excited to be part of the process.”

“Tyler was at the top of our list,” Grier said.

The Sharks then added center Wennberg, 29, to a two-year, $10 million deal that contains a full no-trade clause for the first season.

The 32-year-old Toffoli, a 2014 Stanley Cup champion with the Los Angeles Kings, has scored 260 goals in his 12-year career, including 87 in the last three seasons, despite moving from Calgary to New Jersey to Winnipeg.

Wennberg has 335 points in 712 NHL games and has spent most of his career as a middle-six forward in stints with Columbus, Florida, Seattle, and the New York Rangers.

Both players figure to not only add some badly needed scoring punch to the Sharks, who had the second-fewest goals in the NHL last season with 181, but also provide some insulation to Smith, the fourth-overall selection in 2023, and Celebrini, the top pick this year.

Smith, 19, led all NCAA Division I players in scoring last season with 71 points in 41 games for Boston College and signed with the Sharks in May. Celebrini of Boston University was the Hobey Baker Award winner as college hockey’s top player with 64 points in 38 games.

Those players needed some support after the Sharks finished last season with a 19-54-9 record, missing the playoffs for a fifth straight year. Toffoli and Wennberg, the Sharks envision, should provide some, along with the team’s other veterans.

Toffoli and Wennberg, perhaps not coincidentally, have the same representative as Celebrini in Pat Brisson.

“You can just see how skilled he is and how hard he works,” Toffoli said of Celebrini. “I’ve heard nothing but great things about him, being part of the same agency. It’s an exciting time, and I think that’s also another major reason for me wanting to come here, which was to be able to play with him.”

Celebrini, 18, still hasn’t officially declared whether he’ll turn pro or return to school for a second season. However, the addition of forwards Toffoli and Wennberg would seem to provide the kind of insulation his dad, Dr. Rick Celebrini, a Warriors’ vice president, wanted for his son before he started his NHL career.

Toffoli had a leadership role with the rebuilding Montreal Canadiens three years ago and spent the first three-quarters of this past season with the New Jersey Devils around Luke and Jack Hughes.

“I think for myself, it’s just coming to the rink every day and trying to teach him how to be a pro,” Toffoli said of Celebrini. “It’s not easy coming out of college or junior, turning pro and playing in the NHL. Just working hard every day, and if he sees those habits and he continues to progress, he’s going to be a special player. He already is a special player.”

Often used as a second-line center by Seattle. Wennberg can be seen as an insurance policy for the Sharks if captain Logan Couture cannot return to the lineup full-time next season.

Couture missed the first 55 games of last season as he dealt with a sometimes debilitating groin injury called osteitis pubis. He played in six straight games at the end of January, but his injury returned, and he did not play the rest of the season after the all-star break.

“I think that went into the thinking a little bit, but we’re very hopeful that (Couture) will be able to play and contribute,” Grier said. “It’s a little insurance, sure, but hopefully (Couture) can play.”

The Sharks have made some massive roster changes this week, probably for the better.

Forwards Filip Zadina, Jack Studnicka, Mike Hoffman, Alexander Barabanov, Kevin Labanc, and Ryan Carpenter, defensemen Calen Addison, Jacob MacDonald, Kyle Burroughs, and Nikolai Knyzhov, and goalie Devin Cooley are gone.

Toffoli, Wennberg, Smith, Barclay Goodrow, Ty Dellandrea, Carl Grundstrom, and defenseman Jake Walman are new additions.

SAN JOSE — Following one of the worst seasons in franchise history, David Quinn on Wednesday was fired as coach of the San Jose Sharks.

“After going through our end-of-the-season process of internal meetings and evaluating where our team is at and where we want our group to go, we have made the difficult decision to make a change at the head coach position,” Sharks general manager Mike Grier said in a statement.

“David is a good coach and an even better person. I would like to personally thank him for his hard work over these past two seasons. He and his staff did an admirable job under some difficult circumstances, and I sincerely appreciate how they handled the situation.”

The status of the Sharks’ assistant coaches,

Scott Gordon, Brian Wiseman, Ryan Warsofsky and goaltending coach Thomas Speer, was not immediately clear.

Quinn, who had one year left on his contract, posted a 41-98-25 record in two seasons. The Sharks’ 19-54-9 record this season was the worst in the NHL.

Grier also announced that Ray Tufts, the Sharks’ longtime head athletic trainer, will not return to the team.

“Ray spent more than two decades overseeing the care and well-being of our players,” said Grier.  “We thank him for his service to the organization and our players and wish him and his family the best in the future.”

Please check back for updates to this story.