Something HUGE is brewing in San Jose…
Something huge is brewing in San Jose after general manager Mike Greer made a trade with the Montreal Canadians acquiring goalender Carrie Price. All signs point towards a huge trade coming to the San Jose Sharks to make room for the young prospects coming up and so Mike Greer can add even more draft capital to his cupboard. We’re to break down all this and so much more later on this episode. Before we get into that, if you’re part of the 76.5% watching this and you haven’t hit the sub button yet and you want to stay up to date on everything to do around the NHL, from the San Jose Sharks, the Montreal Canadians to the Ottawa Senators, make sure to go down, hit that subscribe button. It’s completely free and it helps a ton. But with that, Darius, let’s just get straight into where we did see last night the San Jose Sharks acquired the contract of Carrie Price and a fifthround pick for a defensive prospect. Now with the prospect draft in the fourth round, haven’t been seen a lot of hockey due to a lot of injuries, two hip surgeries in the past, missed all of last year, just playing 22 games over the past three seasons. And listen, we’re going to get into the importance of this contract, how it helps the San Jose Sharks, but what is your overall thoughts on them acquiring essentially a fifth round pick for free? Yeah, I think that, you know, a lot of people looked at this trade and said, why are the San Jose Sharks acquiring a goalender that hasn’t played in a handful of years? That makes absolutely no sense, but actually makes a ton of sense for the San Jose Sharks team because of the rules, the new implications on the cap and the new cap rules starting this year. Obviously, some of them were kicking in in a year’s time as well. But this makes a ton of sense for the San Jose Sharks for a guy that again has dealt with a lot of injury issues and like, you know what, best of luck to him in Montreal. hope you find success whatever that looks like in that system but of course you know has dealt with a lot of stuff over the last couple of years. So not giving up too much in that way and in return you get a contract that takes you above the cap floor and you know this was a problem for the San Jose Sharks of course going into the season as they were uh they would have been fine but if anything happened they had to make any type of move then that would have been problematic they would have been under the floor. So, with this contract, they secure that. Uh, obviously, there’s only one year left on the contract, and you can afford to do something like this right now and acquire a draft pick as well. So, I think this is actually tidy work to put them in a much more comfortable position where they can make moves if they want to in season, uh, where there’s no, you know, salary cap implications. It comes off the, uh, the books right away at the end of the season. Keep that in mind as well. And then you have to look forward to obviously resigning a lot of your star young players, right? And you have a couple of them who are going to be entering the league maybe as soon as this year as well. But you got to start looking towards Will Smith, Mlin Celibbrini, what do their contract extensions look like? So you’re not going to handcuff yourself where you can’t sign any of these young guys to contract extensions because you have over $10 million on the books or anything like that. After this season, it’s done. So it makes a lot of sense for this season. you’re not stuck with it beyond this season. I think it’s a really good move. It’s a tidy move. You knew that the Montreal Canadians needed to do it as well because they needed to free up some salary cap space and they couldn’t be an overage and all of these things in the offseason. So, makes a lot of sense, I think, for both teams. And there’s a draft pick involved as well. And I think that’s the big thing. You get a free fifth round pick, but it helps this team even more than it says on paper. I mean, looking right now, you’re going to have cap space at the current moment having about 16 million in current cap space. she get an extra fifth round pick. But the big thing with this team and like you alluded to with the cap floor lingering around with the San Jose Sharks being 70 million, they currently have a cap hit of 86 million. So you have 16 mil to work with. This gives them the opportunity to move out contracts at deadline to start the year. Every team wants to buy, but the San Jose Sharks are in the perfect opportunity to sell some guys on a one-year deal. Wenberg coming in. Every team is looking for a center. You can now move this out, retain salary, whatever you want to do. You can add more draft capital. Jeff Skinner, you might want to hold on to. They just signed him to come in, add some scoring to the center depth of very young players. But Darius, this is a team that wants to get better eventually. They want to continue adding good talent. This is going to be a stacked draft coming up. They got Misa, they got another center, but going into the draft next season is exactly what the San Jose Sharks want to hit on, then start to get better. You have such a great young horse, Celabbrini, you have Misa that’s not even listed here. You can work the way through Will Smith. There’s so many guys within this lineup, but there’s a lot of veterans that are going to make the push and help this team develop a little more. You can trade them off. But looking at the Sharks team, if you’re in Mike Ger shoes, if your team starting to over achieve, yes, go for it. Make a little run. But looking at the roster, could you see Mike Ger saying, “Hey, next year’s draft class is what we need to hit on. Let’s tank for one more season and then we can start to push. Absolutely. Tank for this season. I don’t know if you’re doing it on purpose, but don’t make any moves to, you know, further yourself along that that much this season at at least. I think you have some really good pieces. And one thing that I think the Chicago Blackhawks are having a tough time with is insulating a lot of their younger talent with older talent that can still score and produce. And you have guys like the Foley on this team like the Sharks are doing a pretty good job of insulating some of their younger talent, not just leaving them out there on an island. You also bring up another good point and this is why the trade was such a good one to take on this salary cap space and of course you get the LTI relief but to just bring on that cap space is they weren’t going to be able to make any moves. So if Sam Dickinson for example if Michael Misia do not make this team which is a real world where they don’t make the team maybe later on in the season like you said you’re selling off a couple pieces at the trade deadline like a Wenberg like a couple other pieces maybe you’re even looking at Skinner to move off of him. they would not have been able to do that at that point in time uh you know or at any point in time uh if they were going to go under the cap floor. So that’s why this move is pretty brilliant in that way and they can do that and then you can inject those guys into your lineup later in the season. We see that all the time some of the college guys and of course from juniors sometimes join their teams at the end of the season. So, um I think that that’s a very interesting storyline that people are overlooking in all of this. And the San Jose Sharks to me, I mean, yes, you want to be better. You want to take that step forward, right? But that’s on uh for the most part a lot of the younger guys on the team. Are they ready to take that step forward? If they’re not, it’s not a bad thing. You have another really strong draft coming up here and then you can really push forward. All your chips on the table. Okay, we need to take the next step starting next year. And I think that this team is being built beautifully. Honestly, I think they’re, you know, they’re going to look fantastic in a couple years. and they’re going to be built to compete. But again, it’s not anytime soon. Probably within the next 5 years. But if you’re the Sharks again this year, uh why would you try to make the playoffs? Try and get another really, really good draft pick and just take, you know, steps forward in certain positions and in obviously the right direction. And I think the big thing is too, if you’re going to tank this year, no one wants to move draft capital in this current draft. So Mike Ger has the opportunity to say, “Hey, give us future picks. Give us picks in 2028, 2029, 2030.” So, when the Sharks are getting into the window, you have an extra first round pick, a third round pick to toss out in a trade. And I mean, the big thing is, listen, the Sharks have a lot of free agents on the defensive end. You can see the one Demetri Orof, obviously, Sam Dickinson not being one of these involved, but the big thing is they’re going to clear up a lot of room. They can go out after this year to get a big fish. They can go out to move some of these contracts. And at the trade deadline, if Sam Dickinson doesn’t make this team, the CBA rule change, makes it so he is eligible to play with the Barracuda in the AHL, which is a great development for him. If he wants to already show that he proved everything in the OHL, take the jump to the AHL. When they move on, or if an injury occurs, then you get him straight into the NHL. They’re in the perfect opportunity to not only build for this season, build for next year, but build for the future. Moving out assets, using the cap floor to their advantage now that they have more room. You can take on bad contracts, move further up, acquire more picks. The San Jose Sharks might not compete this year, but it’s going to be an interesting year. I’m expecting a lot of moves from Mike Greer and Sharks. What is your thoughts on what Mike Greer is doing with this team? He has the core built. He’s going to add more to this. We’re seeing the future teal building through the team, through the veins. They’re getting this going. What is your thoughts on how the San Jose Sharks are? What’s your thoughts on the price trade? Do you think this is exactly what they need to do to get over the cap floor or do you rather just not take on that extra money? Let us know down in the comments. While you’re down there, leave a like, subscribe, share this with your friends. We’ll be back another episode, so keep for that. for having your host Mark with my co-host Darius and take
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0:00 San Jose Sharks News
0:45 This trade is perfect
2:00 More moves coming
5:40 Young stars break through
The San Jose Sharks and Mike Grier make the perfect trade acquiring Carey Price from the Montreal Canadiens as more moves are incoming after pushing past the cap floor, and Sam Dickinson and Michael Misa are pushing to crack the lineup. Mark Pye and Darius Domingues break down all this and more on this episode of Hat Trick HQ.
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