State of the Sharks: Ice Insights with Warsofsky Pt. 2

State of the Sharks: Ice Insights with Warsofsky Pt. 2

All right, I’m going to do the Will and Mack portion of this uh Q&A. Only two questions because there’s more to this team than those guys, but I realize they are very much the center of of attention. Mlin’s passing ability, if there’s something that is underrated about his game, they talk about how many points he’s putting up, and I know he’s assisted on a lot of Smitty’s goals this year, but his ability to see the ice and I think pass almost better than his shot. Am I Am I crazy for thinking about that? No. Yeah, he’s I mean, he’s the complete he’s the complete player. He’s a complete package. Um, and I think in baseball they call them fivestar, you know, baseball players. Five tools. He’s got the five tool hockey players. Guy’s a Red Sox fan, by the way. You can wait. I expected booze. Sorry. Sorry. So, I think, you know, 100% his passing is elite. His shooting is elite for me. And and maybe you guys could watch him. And the one that sticks out for me, what is so impressive is how he defends. um when he’s in our defensive zone, how he closes, how physical he is, it’s it’s it’s amazing. He’s 19 years old and he’s, you know, up there with one of our most physical guys and um his competitive drive to, you know, if there’s a puck there, me versus you, he wants the puck more than the other guy and I think that’s what’s makes him so special. All right, so the Sharks take a too many men on the ice penalty. You’re on the bench steaming. There’s there’s a fumes coming out of your ears. You’re hot, right? But Will Smith is the guy who always goes in the penalty box or has been a lot this year. But I don’t I think I know why. But why? Two reasons. One is like we saw it with Tofoley in Seattle a few weeks back with a pass. Yeah. Gets a breakaway and scores. So, we have an opportunity to get, you know, Smitty on a on a breakaway and and usually um what teams will do is their third or fourth lines will come out after their power play and that’s an opportunity for us to get our top line out there and that’s why uh we’ll see Smitty and you see with, you know, 15 seconds left in the penalty kill, Mack and Smitty, we we connected, you know, a few weeks back, uh I think against New Jersey or or Florida, uh coming out of the box there. So, um you know, there there’s definitely some reason behind that. Uh those are the two big ones. Here’s another coaching one for you. So, Colin Graph is on the team last year, and he told me prior to being in the NHL, he’d never really been on a PK unit, but you saw that in him. You made him a penalty killer. He’s done so well at it. He’s so aggressive, short-handed. What did you see? How did you coach him into that? How did you get him in that spot? Well, I don’t know. I don’t think it was I uh that made any um the group, you know, it was a team effort and and I think at the end of the day, Colin made him a great penalty killer. his stick, his stick detail, you know, his attention to details, uh, without the puck. Um, he we found him as a guy that we could really trust. He has high hockey sense. He reads the game really well. Uh, obviously when you’re short-handed, you have one less guy. You’re going to be able to think quick and, uh, react quickly and and he does a really good job of that. So, um, you know, it was more so the tools that he has. He’s long, he’s lengthy, he can skate, and then his hockey sense put him over the top. So, he’s done a really good job. Him and Dandre have done a really good job this year. Uh, I’ve kind of solidified those first two guys over the boards. Ping pong has been a really big thing in the San Jose hockey community this year. The Barracuda have their own table in a storage area. You guys put a ping-pong table right in the middle of the dressing room at Sharks Ice. I know the coaches get together and play. I want to make this challenge while everybody here gets to see and hear it. I want to challenge you after practice whenever you got time. Month of December, Jan, one-on-one. Would you would you take that challenge? Oh, 100%. How is your How are your ping pong skills? What do you mean 100%. I’m competitive. You don’t you don’t know how my hands you don’t. Um we play pretty we play. You practice a lot. That’s doubles. Um me and the coaches play doubles. Um it’s kind of our therapy session uh in the afternoon. So, uh, we’ve gotten really into it and it’s and it’s been, uh, a good passion of and and the players play a lot before practice and, uh, you know, there’s they have a standings board and whatnot, but the coaches when the players leave the facility, that’s when the kind of the coaches jump in. It’s the golf course that you don’t have access to like in the moment, right? It’s like a different version of golf. Exactly. Do something else. It’s not four and a half hours long. Not four. Exactly. So, wait, the challenge part you’re you would do that? I would 100% do it. Let’s go. All right. All right. You heard it here first. I better see that on YouTube. Oh, no. And this this is for, you know, this is for a segment. Yeah, we’ll film it. Yeah, sure. This is content. Yeah. Yeah, content. Bleep my language. Yaruslav Ascarov having a really good month of November. Uh he’s putting the no in November as I said recently. Um but he’s an interesting goalie because usually they’re they’re a different breed. They don’t I don’t know, they don’t connect with the room as much. He seems both happy and confident, but also determined right now. How do you how do you even start to describe his approach and how he’s been successful here this month? Yeah, I think he’s done a really good job of, you know, you know, working with his game and developing his game with Thomas Spear as far as had some struggles early, uh, and is now um, you know, I think he had a lot of pressure on himself to come in and and and really carry us. And we didn’t really need him to carry us. We just need him to be himself. And he’s back to being himself. He’s confident. He’s calm in the net. Um, you know, I think sometimes you get try, you put pressure on yourself and you try to do too much. And, um, he’s got a swagger about himself, which I think is really important for goalies. I think they have to have that quiet confidence um, and tow the line of cockiness. And, um, I think he does a really good job of that. And, uh, he’s played really good hockey here for us in November. Handling Michael, Misa, and Dickinson, is it much different from Will and Mack last year? I know they’re all different people, different situations. Did you learn anything last year that you can help those two this year with? Yeah, a little bit. You know, I think going through that with with Mack and Will, we we have a pretty good plan in place with both those players. And um you know, I think you know, obviously Nice has gotten hurt now and is missing some time, but um again, every player is a little bit different. Uh if there was one plan that everyone used to develop a player, um we would use it. But everyone develops at a different time and everyone um goes through challenges at a different time and has success a different time, then hits speed bumps along the way. We’ve seen that here with with Dicki a little bit of uh playing some really good hockey and then he struggles a little bit at times and then comes back and plays really good. So, um I think each guy’s a little bit different, but we definitely have some experience from last year. All right, we are precisely at about 14 minutes. I said 20 minutes total. We got to let the coach go back to doing his work. So, I’m going to ask one more question. After that, we will take a few from the audience. Uh my last one is this. We’re at the quarter point of the season already. Time flies. What would make you satisfied after game 41 this year? And then what would make you satisfied after game 82 this year? Oo, that’s a tough question. You know, I I think we’re continue to see, you know, positive results and and we’re seeing success um individually. We’re seeing players develop. Um we’re seeing Graph take another step. We’re seeing Mack and Will take another step. um our veteran guys are just getting more comfortable and in what we are doing here. Uh but at the end of the day, we’re building a you know a program and and a team to win in the long run. Uh if we were going to win wanted to win one year, I know we wouldn’t want to take we want to win long term. We want to win five 10 for the next 20 years. Um we have to do it the right way. We have to build this thing the right way. And um I don’t know if there’s an exact answer. I don’t can’t say there’s an amount of wins I want to of course we want to win all the games. Uh we want to be there at the end. We want to, you know, we’d love to go in and and be in a playoff spot in February and and keep going into March after the Olympic break. Um, but there’s a sign that goes in in our door. When you walk in, it says focus on today. And we’re going to focus on our game tonight against Utah. And then when we get to tomorrow’s practice, we’ll worry about practice. So, um, you know, as as human beings, we get into this mindset of what’s in the future, what’s in 10, you know, two weeks from now, what’s in 10 games from now. That’s extremely hard mentally to to process. So, you know, we’re going to process it as one game at a time. We’re going to focus on our first period and when we come back after the first admission, we’ll make our, you know, adjustments and get ready for the second. So, we’re going to really just stay where our feet are.

Brodie Brazil and Sharks Head Coach Ryan Warsofsky talk all things Sharks during Ice Insights, an exclusive pregame Sharks365 member event.