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SAP Center is consistently filling up again and even a 3-2 overtime loss to the Blues on Friday couldn’t quell the sense among a sellout crowd that the Sharks’ darkest days are in the past.
“The fact that we could potentially make the playoffs this year is huge,” said Ashley O’Connor, who spent her childhood cheering on the Sharks and now plays collegiate hockey, “because this team was hard to watch for a while.”
Sections were sparse and some rows were left empty when San Jose finished with the league’s worst record last season. But fans who once cheered for Joe Thornton and Patrick Marleau are back in the building, now supporting a generation of players born in the early 2000s.
Since taking over as general manager in 2022, Mike Grier has approached his rebuild in San Jose with patience and a clear blueprint: nail the draft, avoid short-term gambles, and allow time for a young core to blossom. Now with nearly four years on the job, as the Sharks sit within reach of a playoff berth (they’re two points behind Seattle for the final wild card spot), Grier’s vision has begun to crystalize.
Everyone in the organization remembers the fateful day when ping-pong balls provided a jolt of hope. When the Sharks won the 2024 NHL Draft Lottery and secured the rights to the No. 1 draft pick, there was no debating who San Jose would select.
Macklin Celebrini would soon be on his way to the South Bay, and would instantly shift the franchise’s trajectory.
But Grier’s maneuvering didn’t start or stop there — his process has required years of stockpiling young players through the draft and committing to talent development at the NHL level.
Will Smith, 20, was the fourth overall pick in 2023 and his 43 points trail only Celebrini among Sharks. Michael Misa, 19, was the No. 2 pick in 2025 and netted a goal in three straight games in the homestand. Then add Sam Dickinson (19), the Sharks’ 11th pick in 2024, undrafted acquisition Collin Graf (23), who’s made his way into the mix, goaltender Yaroslav Askarov (23), a 2020 first-rounder who arrived in a 2024 trade with Nashville, and William Eklund (23), who penned a three-year, $16.8 million extension last summer, and the concept is clear. Patience is power for an organization that was floundering when Grier arrived.
After Friday’s NHL trade deadline passed, Grier said that he was not interested in turning to the rental market, nor in breaking up the locker room that’s responsible for the most successful season for the organization in six years.
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“It’s an eye on the future,” Grier said. “As well as balancing that out with the here and now.”
Just before the Olympic break in January, Grier traded 2026 and 2027 second-round picks and minor-league defenseman Cole Clayton to the Vancouver Canucks for pending free-agent Kiefer Sherwood. This week, the team signed Sherwood to a five-year, $28.75 million extension, securing the physical, vocal winger as part of its long-term core. And just two days after signing the lucrative deal, Sherwood buried a third-period equalizer to force overtime, his 19th of the season and second in teal.
Since the start of 2026, the Sharks have also locked up a pair of pending free-agents, signing center Alexander Wennberg, a recent Swedish Olympian, to a three-year extension, and goaltender Alex Nedeljkovic, in his ninth NHL season, through 2028.
Notably absent from Friday’s trade deadline was the type of firesale that once defined this time of year for the Sharks. With Celebrini emerging as a superstar, San Jose’s deadline posture was less about dismantling and selling pieces, and more about instilling confidence that the next few years will be far different than the previous ones.
“Mike played in this league for a long time, he knows what it’s like to be in that locker room as far as the belief and the feeling you have when you get something going,” second-year head coach Ryan Warsofsky said.
The Sharks didn’t make any blockbuster acquisitions and Grier didn’t go all-in on a postseason push, but this team is no longer solely dependent on drafted players to end a playoff drought and eventually pursue a Stanley Cup. Sherwood’s decision to sign an extension is proof that veterans see what San Jose has built, and now, they want in, too.
“These guys have not only welcomed me with open arms, but have dug in so much to get ourselves in this position,” Sherwood said after Friday’s loss. “Obviously, they could have made a lot of moves and whatnot, but to keep the group together and give us a chance says a lot. We’ve got to do right by that.”
San Jose enters its final 22 games still hovering near the playoff race, and with $46 million in projected cap space (opens in new tab) this offseason. The NHL salary cap is set to rise significantly once the new CBA takes effect in September — it will reach $113.5 million by the 2027-28 season, marking a 9% jump in four years. The franchise can extend Celebrini as early as July, and the price tag could, and probably will, reach uncharted territory.
“I have a lot of faith in this team,” Pluto Zavala, a fan from Santa Clara, said. “And my faith has grown significantly in the past two years.”