Early Look at San Jose Sharks 25-26 Defensive Pairings

Early Look at San Jose Sharks 25-26 Defensive Pairings

Class is now in session. I’m Professor Hockey and today we’re discussing an early look at what the San Jose Sharks defensive pairings could look like for the beginning of the upcoming 2526 season. The Sharks have struggled immensely from a defensive standpoint in each of these last couple of seasons and one could argue that this has been their major issue as a team as it leaks into every other aspect of their game. Yes, last year the Sharks were the lowest scoring team in the entire NHL, but it does not help when you don’t really have many puck movers at all on your blue line or you also have an inability to clear the puck out of your own zone consistently. It’s going to lead to less offense being generated. On the other side of things, your goalending is going to have a very difficult time with the high amount of high danger opportunities that this Sharks defensive core has been giving up. And so if the Sharks truly want to make some steps and some strides in the standings this season, it does start from their blue line. Mike Greer recognized this and made a few key additions to help address different areas of need in this defensive core. One of them and likely the most important addition that the Sharks have made this entire off season finds himself here as the top pairing player. I have Dmitri Orlov, a veteran defenseman who has seen a tremendous amount of success in the NHL, including a Stanley Cup back in 2018 with the Washington Capitals. He played a pivotal role on that blue line, averaging over 24 minutes of ice time during that playoff run. In each of the last couple of seasons, he has been with the Carolina Hurricanes where he has played more in a second pairing position. This past year in the regular season, he has averaged 20 minutes of ice time. And so, this is a player who is definitely used to getting some pretty difficult minutes. not quite a number one, but just as the Sharks did with Jake Walman this past season, he’s going to be played as such cuz he’s going to end up as the Sharks best option. And considering his track record here, it is likely a player who has a bit of a higher ceiling than Jake Welman, who was a little bit more unpredictable. Now, the thing that most people will remember with Orlov, as it is his most recent play, is that series against the Florida Panthers, where he definitely got heavily exposed. But to be fair, at the very least, pretty much every single player that played against the Panthers in these past playoffs really struggled. Even the best player in the entire world, Conor McDavid, didn’t manage to put up as much offense as he would have liked in that Stanley Cup final series. And so, I don’t really hold it against Orlov too much. This is still a player who could truly end up elevating this Shark’s defensive core. However, there is one major potential problem here, which is just how much of a buyin are they Sharks actually going to be able to get from Orof? How much motivation is he actually bringing to the table? Is this a player who is viewing this time in San Jose as like a new opportunity and a new challenge where he’s going to put his best foot forward? Or is he viewing this as a sort of like semi-retirement where he can just sit back and relax? Because when it comes to Orlov, as I said, very successful in each of the last 10 seasons of his career, he has made it to the postseason. And yet, he has made the conscious decision to sign with the San Jose Sharks, a team that he pretty much knows is likely to not make the playoffs this season or perhaps even next. So, the entirety of his 2-year contract, it’s a very big change of pace to what he is used to. And usually there is a kind of winners’s motivation for let’s say a player like Jake Walman who had not really won anything in his career to try and maybe find his way onto a better team. But with Orlof he’s got a Stanley Cup in his back pocket. And then also with Walman you’re trying to go for maybe a bigger contract to be able to cash in when your time is coming. But with Orlof he’s already made a ton of money throughout his career. He doesn’t necessarily need another big contract here going at the age of 35 by the time his current deal does expire. And so you’re really just hoping that that motivation can kind of come from within. And the reason I do bring this up in comparison to with a lot of the other newcomers to the San Jose Sharks roster this season is that Orlof is a lynchpin of this defense. If this defense actually wants to be an improvement over last year’s, it is going to fall very heavily on the shoulders of Dmitri Orof. Compare this to, let’s say, Jeff Skinner at the forward position. Even if there’s not much motivation there and he struggles, you can kind of just have him sit as a healthy scratcher on the fourth line and you’re really not that much worse off for it because he’s only maybe the sixth best forward on this team. But with Orlov, if he struggles, the whole team is going to end up struggling. So, there is a lot of pressure on this particular player. The hope here is that he will be able to bring his best. We’ll see what ends up happening. And I have him paired actually with Mario Ferraro, which is interesting because, of course, Orlof is a left-handed defenseman. One would expect the usual left and right-handed split. However, with the righties that the Sharks do currently have on their roster, Clingberg, Lin, Lillrren, Darnare, there’s not really any one of those players that really gives you confidence in that top pairing role. And Ferraro is someone who the Sharks are used to having play in this type of position. And when it comes to Dmitri Orof, while he is more of a left-handed guy, we do know that there is a history of him playing on the right side. I don’t necessarily think it’s an optimal situation, but it is probably one that the Sharks do end up going with. There’s a lot more trust in Mario Ferraro to be able to handle this type of position. It’s not as though that he would either play a top pairing role on most other teams, but he’s done so more than pretty much every other player on this roster outside of Orlov. Now, what is actually quite interesting to watch here when it comes to Mario Ferraro is that this could end up actually being a pairing where Ferraro sees some very real growth as a player because over these last couple of seasons, he has played with players who just aren’t necessarily all that great like in the case of a Yan Ruda or are very inexperienced like in the case of Shikir Mukamadullan at the end of this past season. And if even if you go back further in his career when he had uh defensive pairings with guys like Eric Carlson or Brent Burns, those were players who are very much indexed in the offensive side of things and leaving Ferraro to have to cover a lot of the defensive responsibilities. But this is really going to be one of the first times in his entire career where he’s playing with a very responsible defensive end and player who is better than him in these areas like Orlov is who can also be a relatively decent puck mover. So, this could be a situation here for Ferraro, who we view as this veteran guy, but is still relatively young, especially from a defensive standpoint. This could be a season where he sees some pretty big improvements in his game if he’s able to learn at from this mentor type of position that Orloof could end up taking on. So, definitely a player to watch this season. Ferraro is. Now, there is the possibility that Ferraro still ends up getting traded. The Sharks do have a significant amount of blow tier on the defensive side of things. A lot of different names and only six spots to actually go around and Ferraro does have a decent amount of value and he is an unrestricted free agent. So perhaps closer to the trade deadline that could be something that does occur and so there is also that type of motivation for Ferrar here, a contract year. Does he look to try and really take his game to that next level? This would be the position to actually do it. When it comes to their second defensive pairing, this is where I have the next newcomer on the team. we have John Clingberg and his story is actually very interesting because just a few years ago he was actually considered one of the better offensive defenseman in the entire NHL when he was playing with the Dallas Stars and at the end of his uh current deal at the time he was in line to sign a pretty significant extension with Dallas. They had offered him reportedly an 8-year deal, $7 million per season. However, Clingberg, he was looking for a little bit more than that, and in the end, they could not end up reaching an agreement, and the Stars looked elsewhere, and Clingberg didn’t really have any other bites in the offseason and ended up having to sign a one-year deal with the Anaheim Ducks worth $7 million. and he is absolutely the prime example for what I talk about when I mentioned how these better players, you know, the best of the best amongst free agents are always looking to try and get that long-term deal cuz there is a lot of risk involved with not taking it. Clingberg ended up on a one-year contract with Anaheim. You’d think that that’s not going to be a problem. He just performs well and then he gets to sign another long-term deal at the end of the next season, but instead he struggled immensely with Anaheim. He didn’t quite manage to play himself into a better contract the following year. Then he ran into some injury trouble. So while right now Clingberg could still be making $7 million per season on the Dallas Stars payroll, instead he’s making $4 million on the San Jose Sharks, trying to kind of rejuvenate his career in this spot. Clingberg does still have good value from an offensive standpoint, but defensively he is a liability. This is the reason why I didn’t really want to put him onto that top pairing with Orlov. He did show a certain amount of uh responsibility this past playoffs with the Edmonton Oilers, which I imagine is the reason for why the Sharks were willing to give him a chance in the first place. He was rather solid from a defensive standpoint against the Kings, the Golden Knights, and the Stars through the first three rounds of the playoffs. Struggled against the Panthers, but like I said with Orof, pretty much everybody struggled with the Florida Panthers. So, not going to hold that against uh Clingberg at all. And so, he has shown an ability to be able to perform from a defensive standpoint. The question is is that can that be more of a reliable thing? Can he do that in a much more difficult situation here like with San Jose, a much worse team than what Edmonton was this past year? That’s going to be the big question mark. But I imagine they’ll put him in this top four position. I imagine they’ll have him as like the number one power play guy just because he is probably the best puck mover on this roster currently. And so this is going to be a huge opportunity for him to shine. And when it comes from a motivation standpoint, that is absolutely there because Clingberg’s contract is uh designed in a very interesting way where he has a fullon no trade clause up until the end of January. So he knows that he’s going to be with the San Jose Sharks for the first few months of this season. But once February rolls around, that actually ends and instead gives him a node trade list where he can decide on a few teams that he does not want to end up getting moved to. This gives him a certain amount of control where he could at the very least prevent himself from getting traded to like a Pittsburgh or a Chicago where it’s just another rebuilding team where he’s not going to be able to do much and he can try and force his way onto a more of a competitive squad. He’s not going to just be able to choose his location, right? He’s not going to just be able to say, “Okay, trade me to Florida or Edmonton.” But he’ll be able to have some ability to dictate where he ends up going. And if he does well, and the Sharks will certainly give him every possibility of doing so, he is a very easy trade bait who could bring back a decent return. That does seem to be the future of John Clingberg here with the San Jose Sharks. It is unlikely he’s even still with the organization this time next season. I have him playing next to Shakir Mukamadullan. Now, this is a bit of a tough spot. There really was a lack of optimal position, I would say, for Muhammadulan. Naturally, you might want to have him stick with Mario Ferraro, which was the duo that they had at the end of last season. That actually worked rather well. But in that case, you’d probably have Ferraro, Mukamadun as your second pairing. But that would mean you’d have Clingberg on the first. And like I said, I don’t think you actually want that. Then you could theoretically go with Mukamed and Orlov, which I think would probably be the best possible partner for Mukamed. However, that would have him on that top pairing. And we saw at the end of this past season, Mukamadullan not quite ready for that position just yet. And so it feels as though you’re kind of trying to make the best of a bad situation. If you want to keep him in the top four, it’s on the second pairing and it probably ends up with Clingberg. The hope here is that Clingberg can keep up enough of that defensive play that he showed with the Oilers in the playoffs this past season that could help support Mukamadullan and that he could end up maybe learning a little bit from the offensive game that Clingberg does bring. uh Mukhamdulan. I’m hopeful that over the course of this season, he’s going to be taking some pretty big steps forward and maybe ends up being a guy you could have on that top pairing. I just don’t really see it come immediately game one in October just yet, but still someone who’s going to get a significant amount of responsibility this year as long as things do pan out. There’s obviously this injury that occurred near the end of this past season. I believe he needed to have surgery, so we’ll see how that actually ends up impacting things. We know he missed the beginning of last year due to injury. that the the hope is that that’s not going to happen again here, but we’ll we’ll see what ends up being the case. Then we get to the Sharks third defensive pairing, which is where we have the most amount of intrigue. And the first player to talk about here is indeed Sam Dickinson. Logically, for many San Jose Sharks fans, it seems as though Dickinson would end up being on this San Jose Sharks roster. He’s in a position where he either has to head to the NHL and play there or go back to juniors in the OHL. But he has already accomplished pretty much everything possible. He was the OHL’s best defenseman this or the CHL’s best defenseman I should say. He set a new franchise record for most points as defenseman with the London Knights organization. He won the OHL Championship with the Knights. He won the Memorial Cup with the London Knights. There is literally nothing else that he could possibly end up doing in the junior uh scene. And so you would expect that development does need to come. He has to make that jump. And it seems as though Mike Greer, based on what he has said in some pressers, does agree with that. So I suspect he’ll attempt to be integrated at least to begin the season. We’ll see just how that works out. And he’ll probably end up taking a very similar route to what we saw with Will Smith and likely even more extreme. Will Smith through the month of October or so, he missed a bunch of games due to that development path that they were trying to take with him. Dickinson being a defenseman where there is kind of more of the pressure on his shoulders. He can be a little bit more of a liability compared to like a third or fourth line forward like Will Smith. And so with Dickinson, you might see him set even more games than that depending on how he actually looks. However, I do suspect him to play game one of the regular season. He’ll be in the lineup for that given that full-on experience here, game one of the year, get the rookie lap and everything like that. So, I do have him in this position currently. Now who ends up playing for him or with him I should say is still a big question mark. The Sharks seem to have three real options. That is Nick Ley, Vincent Darné and Timothy Lilligrin. Naturally, you might want a right-handed defenseman which would leave with Darn or Lilligrin. However, Ley did play a lot of the right side with the St. Louis Blues despite the fact that he is a lefty. And while I do think the actual best possible choice here might end up actually being Dearn, I do suspect what the Sharks will end up going with is Nick Ley in this spot. And that is for one major reason, which is the circumstances that brought Lety here to San Jose, which mirror very similarly the circumstances that brought Barlay Goodro to San Jose last off season, which is crazy that this has actually repeated itself because for those who don’t know, Barklay Goodro was on the New York Rangers last off season and the Sharks wanted to trade for him, but Barklay Goodro had a no trade clause in his contract that actually allowed him to block a trade to San Jose. And so to get around this, the Rangers put him on waiverss and since the Sharks finished in last place, they were able to pick him up with the first claim. And that’s exactly what they did. It was weird that the Sharks decided to circumvent this player’s wishes and bring a player who didn’t want to be in San Jose to the Sharks in the first place. But to plate him, it seems the Sharks ended up giving him every possible game in the lineup. No other team in the NHL would have done something like that. and especially no other team would have given him the top six time that the Sharks did at different moments this past season. And yet, it was something that the Sharks decided to do anyway. And now, history is repeating itself this off seasonason. Nick Ley also had a no trade clause. He reportedly also blocked the trade to San Jose. And yet, once more, he was put on waiverss by the St. Louis Blues. And the Sharks with the first claim since they finished in last place were able to pick him up yet again. And so I imagine it’s going to end up being a similar situation to try and keep Letty at least somewhat satisfied for having gone to a team that he did not want to play with. The Sharks are going to give him a lot of ice time. I don’t think it’s necessarily going to be the case like Goodro where he plays every single possible game, but he’ll likely end up playing a lot. And so with Dickinson in the lineup, it is very likely that Lety does join him with that first game. But I had mentioned that I personally would actually have Vincent de Harne playing with Sam Dickinson because I would imagine the Sharks would like to have or at least I personally would like to have someone who compliments Dickinson rather well. And what does Dickinson do? He is a great skater. He can move the puck. He has relatively physically built as well. So you’re not necessarily trying to make up for in those areas. The one major issue that Dickinson has is his decision making, his defensive awareness in his own zone. how much of a reliable player is he actually going to end up being? And so with those problems, you’d want to stick him with a much more stable defensive partner. That’s not really what Nick Lety is. The one positive of Nick Let’s game is the ability to move the puck still decently well. But when it comes to his own zone play, it is not good anymore at this point of his career. When it comes to Timothy Liginrren, he might have the highest ceiling out of all three of these players, but he as well isn’t exactly the most reliable defenseman. But when it comes to Vincent Daharn, I feel as though at the end of this past season, he has showed a good amount of this type of stable play. It is actually a very similar reason for why the Sharks had placed him with Luca Kagyon at the end of the season. Yes, there was also the physical aspects of things, but it’s also because Darn is a very, very decent defensive player. I honestly think somewhat maybe underrated by certain San Jose Sharks fans who just don’t really necessarily give him that respect. Feel as though he’s just another kind of defensive pylon fill-in number seven or eight defenseman. And you know, personally, I thought the same thing when the Sharks acquired him, but he impressed me in the games he played at the end of last season. So, I think Darn and Dickinson would end up being a pretty good defensive pairing. But I do think they will end up going with Dickinson and Lety. This leaves, however, a situation when Dickinson does step out of the lineup for those development days that we are expecting. Who ends up being the actual third defensive pairing in that case? Well, I imagine Lety will move to the left side because he is the only lefty. And so you have to decide who ends up playing with him, Darn or Lilligrin. I would again imagine Darn is the best possible choice just because as I said, Lety his main aspect is being able to move the puck and giving him a more of a defensive defenseman like Darn would be good. However, as I also mentioned, Lillren does have more of that upside to his game. He has the highest potential out of all three of these players. Letty at this point of his career is nothing more than a six defenseman or less. Darn very much the same thing. But LGrin does have the possibility of maybe reaching up to being like a number four. He’s not exactly super young, but he is not, you know, on the wrong side of 30 or anything like that either. And this is also a player who the Sharks did use a third round pick to acquire. So maybe someone they would want to have a little bit more in the spotlight. But this is the major reason for why I still believe that a Mario Ferraro trade or somebody else could end up still getting traded here is because the Sharks do have a ton of bloat on the defensive side of things. someone whether that’s Li Lilligrin, whether that’s Darn, whether that’s Ley, is going to end up not really playing any amount of NHL games here for the Sharks outside of just significant injuries occurring. And that does actually bring me to the next player here, which is Jack Thompson, which ties into a little bit of news that we got this uh today, which is that Jack Thompson signed a contract with the San Jose Sharks. had been given a qualifying offer on June 30 uh June 30th and now a couple of weeks later does end up signing that deal. However, the big note here for Jack Thompson is that he is no longer waiver exempt, which means if the Sharks are not going to be keeping him up here with the San Jose Sharks and they want to send him down to the Barracuda, he would have to pass through waiverss. And I’d have to imagine that like a young right-handed defenseman who has shown he can play in the NHL would be a pretty interesting pickup for a lot of teams, especially those near the bottom of the standings. We saw, for instance, a couple of years ago, the Sharks picked up a player like that with Tai Emerson from the New York Rangers and then eventually ended up flipping him for Cody Cece in a third round pick and then CC was traded for a fourth. So the Sharks got pretty good value out of that waiverwire pickup. A team like Pittsburgh could easily end up picking up Jack Thompson. And yet, as it stands right now, he’s probably like at best the eighth if you want to put him above a guy like Dear, but likely the ninth defenseman on this team, which means there really isn’t much space for him for him to actually get playing time. And the thing is, at this point of Jack Thompson’s career, at his age, you want to try and continuously make some step forwards in your career. Last year, he played 31 games. He had four goals, six assists for 10 points. Actually, some okay production. While he might not be expecting to be an immediate full-time NHLer this next season, he’s probably hoping to at the very least play a similar amount of games, 30, maybe up to 40 or even 50. But with the current makeup of the Sharks defensive roster, it’s hard to imagine that being the case. And if we assume he is that ninth defenseman, just to be kept around with the Sharks and not have to put him on waiverss, the Sharks would have to run with 12 forwards and nine defensemen with two goalenders on their roster. It’s kind of sort of similar to what they did la at the beginning of last season when they ran with 15 forwards and six defensemen. So, it can be done. It’s just not really all that optimal here. And so, we’ll see what ends up happening. Perhaps the Sharks do end up waving Vincent the Har despite the fact that I think he could be a decent fill into that third pairing. They might not feel the same way. Perhaps they do end up making a trade. But, it is possible that the Sharks might end up losing a player for free and hopefully that guy is not Jack Thompson. The final player to mention here, one last defenseman who I thought people would maybe ask questions if I didn’t include him, is Luca Kagoni. This is a player who did play a few games at the end of this past season for the San Jose Sharks. He looked pretty good, but not so impressive that I think Mike Greer was willing to actually pencil him into an actual roster spot for this season. And clearly, he is quite far down the depth charts here. He is definitely going to be starting the next season with the San Jose Barracuda. And the hope is that he’s going to be able to build on the rookie year he had with them last season, which was so so impressive. He’ll probably end up being a player who does get called up and gets some games near the end of this season as long as things do end up going well for him. And then perhaps 2627, so the following year, could end up being the year he looks to make that fulltime jump, as long as again things do continue to go well. But don’t expect him to actually be on an October or November roster for this San Jose Sharks team. But that will do it for this video. As I said, whether or not this defensive core actually ends up being better than last season is going to heavily depend on how some of these newcomers look and in particular how Dmitri Orof does in this top pairing role. If he can perform, it will generally bring up the rest of these Sharks defenseman and end up making it look not great, not even probably middle of the pack, but hopefully at least not the worst decor in the league, which it has been for these last couple of seasons. So, there could be some hope here. Class dismissed.

Taking a very early look at what the defensive pairings could look like at the beginning of the 25-26 season for the San Jose Sharks.