It’s been a few days since the Sharks made major organizational changes at the trade deadline. Emotions ran rampant on Friday, whether it was fans or the players themselves. Some beloved players were traded, and the Sharks received some assets that could become a key part of their future.
Duclair to the Lightning, Simek on the Move
Mike Grier’s busy 48 hours started on Thursday night when Anthony Duclair was traded before the Sharks played against the New York Islanders. They received a third-round pick and defensive prospect Jack Thompson, while Duclair and a seventh-round pick went to the Tampa Bay Lightning. Unfortunately, Duclair’s last game in real was memorable for all of the wrong reasons, as I discussed earlier this week. Still, they did get a promising return and certainly made a profit compared to what they gave up to get him this past summer.
The third-round pick is far from a guaranteed NHL player, but Thompson, a former third-round pick, is nearly NHL-ready and could make an impact as early as next season. Meanwhile, Duclair gets a shot at contending for the Stanley Cup with the eighth team of his career.
Deadline day started fairly slow, with the recently named captain of the American Hockey League’s San Jose Barracuda being traded to the Detroit Red Wings. Long-time Shark Radim Simek was sent to the Motor City with a seventh-round pick for winger Klim Kostin. By many people’s standards, Simek may not have had a long, successful career at the NHL level, but playing parts of five seasons at that level is certainly an impressive career. Anyone who attended a game at TechCu Arena this season would have undoubtedly seen Simek warming up outside by the ambulance parked in the parking lot before every game. He would take the time to greet anyone who approached him and drop what he was doing to interact with the fans. Whether he ends up playing in the AHL for the Grand Rapids Griffins or finds his way back to the NHL, one thing is certain. The Red Wings organization added an excellent human being into the mix.
Goaltending and Depth Moves
As the deadline approached, the Sharks made a few last-minute deals. Two involved goaltenders, as Kaapo Kahkonen was traded to the New Jersey Devils in exchange for Vitek Vanecek, who was reunited with former battery mate Mackenzie Blackwood. However, Vanecek is not expected to return this season, so it’ll likely be Blackwood and Magnus Chrona in net for the remainder of the season once the former is healthy. For now, though, Los Gatos native Devin Cooley, who the Sharks acquired from the Buffalo Sabres for a seventh-round pick, will be in between the pipes alongside Chrona.
The Sharks also traded defenseman Nikita Okhotiuk, who they acquired as part of the Timo Meier trade last season, to the Calgary Flames for a fifth-round pick. This move was essentially for the same reason that Simek was moved: the Sharks were starting to get too many AHL-caliber defensemen and needed to make space for younger, higher-profile prospects.
Hertl Moves On
The most surprising move of the day was undoubtedly when Tomas Hertl was traded to the Vegas Golden Knights alongside two third-round picks for David Edstrom and a first-round pick in 2025. The Sharks also retained 17% of Hertl’s salary for the remainder of the contract, limiting their ability to retain salary in other trades for a considerable amount of time since they’re also retaining the salary of Erik Karlsson and Brent Burns. Until the end of next season, the Sharks cannot retain salary in any trade.
Hertl broke onto the scene in San Jose as a teenager, and his four-goal game against the New York Rangers in 2013 quickly shot him into the national spotlight. He earned the nickname “Teenage Mutant Ninja Hertl,” although he’s now 30 years old, he could never completely get rid of it. The Sharks have some assets for their future, and Edstrom has the potential to be a very good player, but this trade will sting for Sharks fans for quite a while.
The trade deadline was tough for Sharks fans, and there’s no denying that. They lost one of the most beloved Sharks and got a package many are disappointed by. Realistically, moving on from Hertl when he was a pending free agent a couple of years ago would’ve probably been the right move, but how things ended up going was even more painful for the fans and his teammates. He seemed set to end his career in San Jose when he signed that deal, and only a couple of years later, things changed instantly.
Related: Sharks’ Bizarre Tomas Hertl Trade Changes Team’s Direction
A few players didn’t move, namely Mike Hoffman and Alexander Barabanov. The odds are that neither will be on the team next season, but the Sharks couldn’t get any assets for them before time ran out.
The Sharks have more building blocks in place for the future, and their rebuild has gotten even more extreme. They’ve torn the team down to the absolute minimum, and now there’s nowhere to go except up.
