{"id":413509,"date":"2026-01-18T00:51:52","date_gmt":"2026-01-18T00:51:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/413509\/"},"modified":"2026-01-18T00:51:52","modified_gmt":"2026-01-18T00:51:52","slug":"san-jose-sharks-activate-will-smith-pro-hockey-rumors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/413509\/","title":{"rendered":"San Jose Sharks Activate Will Smith \u2013 Pro Hockey Rumors"},"content":{"rendered":"

As expected, the San Jose Sharks announced<\/a> that they\u2019ve activated Will Smith<\/a> from the injured reserve. The Sharks placed<\/a> forward Ty Dellandrea<\/a> on injured reserve yesterday to make room for Smith\u2019s return.<\/p>\n

Smith, 20, has been on the shelf for a month due to an upper-body injury. At the time, he was second on the team in scoring behind Macklin Celebrini<\/a>. He has since been surpassed by Alexander Wennberg<\/a>, Tyler Toffoli<\/a>, and William Eklund<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Still, in terms of points-per-game, Smith is clearly San Jose\u2019s best offensive option behind Celebrini. Before suffering the upper-body ailment, the sophomore forward had scored 12 goals and 29 points in 33 games. Had he continued that pace over the course of the entire regular season, Smith would have finished with approximately 72 points, a 27-point increase from his rookie campaign.<\/p>\n

According to line rushes this morning, Smith will reprise his role on Celebrini\u2019s wing, alongside rookie Igor Chernyshov<\/a>. The two youngsters primarily played with Philipp Kurashev<\/a> earlier in the year, with the trio combining for a 45.2% xGoals%.<\/p>\n

Somehow, despite losing their second-best scorer, the Sharks\u2019 offense has taken off since Smith exited the lineup. In his 33 games to begin the year, San Jose averaged 2.9 GF\/G and a 18.6% success rate on the power play. Without him in the lineup, they\u2019ve averaged 3.84 GF\/G and a 25.6% powerplay. Getting Smith back into the lineup should vault the Sharks\u2019 offense even higher moving forward.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As expected, the San Jose Sharks announced that they\u2019ve activated Will Smith from the injured reserve. The Sharks…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":358404,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5127],"tags":[5,4,519,168,5306,5305,1780,405,507],"class_list":{"0":"post-413509","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-jose-sharks","8":"tag-hockey","9":"tag-nhl","10":"tag-san-jose","11":"tag-san-jose-sharks","12":"tag-sanjose","13":"tag-sanjosesharks","14":"tag-sharks","15":"tag-transactions","16":"tag-will-smith"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/115913368803148926","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=413509"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413509\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/358404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=413509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=413509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=413509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}