5 “Under the Radar” San Jose Sharks Prospects to Watch in the 25-26 Season

5 “Under the Radar” San Jose Sharks Prospects to Watch in the 25-26 Season

Class is now in session. I’m Professor Hockey and today we’ll be discussing five under the radar prospects for the San Jose Sharks to keep an eye on heading into the 2526 season. As we know, the Sharks have a lot of bigname players within their prospect pool like Sam Dickinson, who will be likely spending the majority, if not the entirety of this next season in the NHL, or Michael Misa, whose future is a little bit more up in the air. I had originally thought he’d be heading to the NCAA, but considering it is now August and we haven’t gotten any sort of announcement, he might very well try his chances at the NHL. But no matter where he ends up, there will be a lot of eyes on him. And then players like Chernoshave and Musty and Kagnoni who will be spending the season with the San Jose Barracuda and bringing a lot of interest with them. But one of the reasons for why the Sharks are considered to have arguably the best prospect pool in the entire NHL. It is not just the high-end talent that they have, but also the depth that they are able to bring to the table. The players who might not register on non San Jose Sharks fans radars, but are still very important to this organization. I have limited that list of players to just five names. This isn’t because there’s only five players to watch. There are a bunch of others like Cam Lond or Matias Hav who had very important points of their career, but these are the five who I think bring the most amount of intrigue. And we’ll start off at the top of this list, a player who’s not going to come as a surprise to anybody, and that is defenseman Eric PCamp. This is because our most recent bit of San Jose Sharks hockey was the 2025 development camp scrimmage. And indeed, Pole Camp was the MVP of that event. A former fifthround draft pick of the San Jose Sharks back in 2023. He then made his NCAA freshman debut with Baiji State where he had an extremely impressive season. So much so that he ended up getting transferred over to Denver University. definitely more of a a bigname team, but not before he was able to dominate the 2024 development camp scrimmage with the San Jose Sharks. That Denver season also went very well for himself. He didn’t quite get to play in that big top role because he was stuck behind Zeve Buham, but he has now most recently signed his entry- level contract with the Minnesota Wild, which means now heading into his junior season with yet another dominant development camp scrimmage under his belt, PCM will be given the chance to take that top spot to have the big responsibility on his shoulders as the team’s number one defenseman to get the power play and the penalty kill type of ice time. How much is he really going to be able to lead Denver? How much success are they going to be able to have is the major question here. Being his junior season, it is also very very pivotal for the San Jose Sharks. Because as it works with these college players, junior year is basically the final time where you have the most amount of freedom to actually sign them to a contract. This is because if you don’t take the opportunity there, they then play their senior season. You still have the chance to do so before any other team in let’s say April post the at once the season ends, but the player will have the opportunity of instead waiting until August 15th, at which point they will become an unrestricted free agent and have the freedom to sign with whichever team they want. And so for the San Jose Sharks, they would want to lock this player down at the end of his junior season as long as things continue to go well for him. So there is a very real possibility that not only does he get a contract by March, late March, maybe April, but that he actually ends up playing some NHL games with the Sharks as well. So he’s definitely going to be a player to watch to see how much he is able to step in to this top role with a big team. Staying in the NCAA now, we have another Sharks prospect here with Joey Mold Downey. He’s definitely even more under the radar than a player like Eric PCamp, having been a sixthround pick back in 2022. He didn’t immediately make the jump to the NCAA right after in his D+1. Instead, made his freshman debut in the 23-24 season with the University of Connecticut. Didn’t put up exactly super impressive numbers, which isn’t that much of a surprise for a former sixth round pick. But it was really this past year, his sophomore season with Yukon, where he had an explosion in terms of offensive production, finishing the year with 29 goals in 39 games. This was only behind Ryan Leonard who is a Washington Capitals prospect who signed his ELC at the end of the year and had a good amount of success with Washington at the end of the season as well as into the playoffs. He was also tied with Isaac Howard who would end up winning the Hobie Baker that season. So indeed very good company that Joey Mul Downey found himself with. And now heading into his junior season, it’s going to be about building on top of that, maintaining if not improving on those productive numbers. This is going to be extremely important for this player because he is an undersized winger, which means he needs to be able to put up huge numbers if he actually wants to be able to find a spot in the NHL. We just saw a few weeks ago the Sharks give up on both Thomas Bordlo and Denil Guushian as these kind of top nine boomer bust style of players. Mold Downey might end up falling into the same style of category. And so if he struggles a little bit in this next season, if his numbers do regress, I’m not sure the Sharks will even be able to offer him a contract at that point. So he’s going to need to do as well as he possibly can to try and get this spot with San Jose. That’s why he’s going to be a very interesting player to see because those 29 goals this past season were rather promising. Then we move on to the OHL where we have Xi Wong, the only player from the 2025 draft who is on this list. He was someone who obviously has been talked about a good amount as of late because he was that draft pick. But the reason I view him as more of an under the radar guy is because on the surface the numbers aren’t particularly impressive. Just evaluating from a pure production standpoint. This is a player who may have been drafted in like the sixth or seventh round. Definitely not the first pick of the second round. But it was the unique blend of size and speed that he does bring as a prospect that made the Sharks very interested in drafting him. He has made some very big strides over these last few seasons, starting kind of from a weaker position compared to a lot of his peers. He has been able to close that gap quite considerably, but now it’s about even continuing that forward. This past season, as I said, the production basically wasn’t there. He had just a small handful of assists when he made the jump to the OHL. he’s going to be remaining there. It has originally been thought that he would commit to play with Boston University in 2526 like a bunch of other OHL players and CHL players are going to be doing, but he’s decided to hang back in the OHL, see if he can dominate that league. And now that it’s going to be a little bit easier, hopefully the chance will be there. Even though Wong maybe projects more so as like a defensive defenseman in the NHL, you do still need to be at least a pretty decent puck mover in 2025 to actually be able to find success at that top level. And so that should translate into some pretty good offensive numbers, especially as a D+1 in a weaker OHL. And so that’s going to be something to watch for this particular player. a few assists here or there is not going to be an acceptable level even for a project player like Wong who is not maybe a year or two away but closer to three or four seasons into the future. So we’ll be hopeful that he’s going to be able to pull that off. This was always a gamble a risk type of pick for Mike Greer with that 33rd overall selection and hopefully it works out which is why it’s going to be interesting to see and keep an eye on him. Then we move on to the SHL overseas here with another defensive prospect, Leo Selene Wolinz. He had a very complicated season this past year. Most team or most players will only end up playing with one team. Maybe they get traded during the year and have to play with two teams. But Selene Wolinius ended up spending time with four different teams this past season. That is exceptionally difficult to do to constantly have to get used to new teammates and find some new chemistry. And yet, despite this fragmented year that he had, the Sharks felt as though they saw enough to actually give him an entry-level contract. And the hope here is going into this next season that Selene Wolinius will end up having a good amount more stability, that he will be able to find a consistent home in the SHL, but this is not necessarily going to be an easy thing to do. The SHL doesn’t necessarily care about developing these young players, and we’ll just hand over lineup spots to 18 or 19 year old players. They want to be able to win games and if the young guys do give them a higher chance of doing so, they will play them. But otherwise, they will be benched. They will be sent down. They will be given very little ice time to actually show. So, there’s going to be a very difficult bar for Selene Wolinius to actually clear to be able to get that consistent ice time. And the hope is that he will be able to do so. At the very least, we should end up being able to see Selene Wenius compete with team Sweden at the World Juniors in December. He is actually currently playing at the World Junior Summer Showcase right now with Sweden where he has been doing rather well. And so that certainly bodess well for his position on that team a few months from now and that will be a great opportunity for him to be able to compete against players at his same age and his same level and that’s going to be fun to watch. But it is the SHL season that’s going to be more so important for him to see if he can really kind of make some moves up in his game. It is also possible that he could end up mirroring what happened with Philip Beastat a couple of years ago where at the end of his D+2 season he made the jump to the North America level. Hopefully we can see something like that with Selen Wolinius and we can see him with the Barracuda by let’s say April of this season. The final player on this list is Ethan Cardwell. We have seen and I’ve talked about over these fast past few seasons with Mike Greer as general manager how he has slowly but surely been getting rid of a lot of the players that Doug Wilson has brought in. There are still a couple on the main Sharks roster with both Mario Ferraro and William Ecklund. But just recently, the Sharks got rid of Denil Guushian and Thomas Bordlo, two Doug Wilson draft picks. Well, Ethan Cardwell is one of the few holdouts still being a draft pick back in 2021. He is still around, but this is the final year of his contract. And so, it’s kind of like a do or die type of year for Ethan Cardwell. A couple of seasons ago, he made his uh AHL debut with the San Jose Barracuda, put up really solid and impressive numbers, over 20 goals. This past season was hopefully going to build on that. And while the production numbers were similar, the goal total had fallen considerably. Now, you might be thinking that for a fourth liner, production isn’t as important, and indeed, it is the details of your game that are going to matter slightly more. And it was enough to actually get him some NHL games this past season where he actually scored his first career goal. But the thing is, as we go into next season, we see that there is a lot of competition for that fourthline role. And we know that the Sharks coaching staff absolutely adores players like Ty Dandria, Barklay Goodro, and likely will do the same with a player like Ryan Reeves. That these guys could make a hundred mistakes on the ice, but the moment that they have a fight or they lay a nice hit or they have a nice block, they buy 50 games of goodwill. And so for Ethan Cardwell to actually get a spot in the lineup above one of these players, it is not just about being at a similar level. It is not just about being slightly better. He needs to be so overwhelmingly better as an option than any of these guys that the coaching staff cannot possibly refuse him a lineup spot. And to do that, it is not just about getting the details ironed out. It is going to end up being about the production numbers. It’s going to be an interesting situation because with Borlow and Guushian now gone, there’s a little bit less of a traffic jam in that top six as Chernos and Htonin and Musty all move into making their full-time AHL debuts with the Barracuda. Cardwell, if he finds himself in one of those top two lines, he could end up being able to put up some pretty big offensive numbers. We shall see what ends up happening. Maybe he does earn a spot in the NHL. But the thing is is that, as I said, it’s a contract year for him. And while I do believe there is a slightly higher chance he can still get a deal because he does not fall into that same category as Guushian and Bordlo with them both being more so those like if they’re not in the top line top nine they’re not doing much while Cardwell is more of a fourthline guy. The Sharks have spent each of these last few seasons drafting so many different players that a bunch of them are guys who the Sharks really project out as more so bottom six players. And so Cardwell does actually have a lot of competition. It might not be at the same level as like Amisa or Smith or Cabbrini. He’s not competing with those types of players, but guys like a Stapchuk or Cole McKini or Teddy Mutrin, all these kind of fourth, third line type of guys, Cam Lun, Philip Beast, these types of players, that’s who Cardwell is competing against. And he has the slight head start cuz he is a year a couple of years older than a lot of these players. And so this is really the chance for him to actually try and lock down a position here. Kind of reminiscent in a way of Henry Thun, though obviously was given a significant amount more of NHL ice time. But if it doesn’t work here in this next season, I’m not sure if Cardwell actually has a home on this San Jose Sharks roster. So, going to be very interesting to see if he gets some NHL time and how he does with the Barracuda otherwise. But that will do it for this video. As I said, I’ve limited it to five players, but you could definitely go a good bit further than that. There are others who are going to be very interesting to watch across the multitude of different leagues around the world, whether that be the KHL or the SHL or the AHL or the CHL or whatever the case may be. The Sharks have a ton of prospects. As I said, they spent the last few seasons basically doing only this. And so, as they say, the future is teal. Class dismissed.

Discussing 5 under the radar San Jose Sharks’ Prospects to watch as we head into the 25-26 season.