{"id":557200,"date":"2026-04-21T11:16:47","date_gmt":"2026-04-21T11:16:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/557200\/"},"modified":"2026-04-21T11:16:47","modified_gmt":"2026-04-21T11:16:47","slug":"the-2025-26-san-jose-sharks-a-magical-season-that-came-up-just-short","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/557200\/","title":{"rendered":"The 2025-26 San Jose Sharks: A magical season that came up just short"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over 30 years ago, the San Jose Sharks engineered perhaps the greatest turnaround in the history of the NHL. <\/p>\n

San Jose was abysmal in its inaugural season, going 17-58-5 in 1991-92. The following year, the Sharks were somehow even worse, finishing 11-71-2. Their .143 points percentage that season is tied for the third-worst in NHL history. But in 1993-94, the fledgling Sharks improved by 58 points, made the playoffs for the first time and upset the top-seeded Detroit Red Wings in the first round. <\/p>\n

32 years later, they nearly did something very similar. <\/p>\n

You have to scroll a little farther down the all-time worst list to find the 2023-24 Sharks\u2019 .287 points percentage, but in a modern NHL world with a salary cap and floor, that\u2019s pretty much as dire of a season as you\u2019re going to see. The 2024-25 Sharks were mostly more of the same, just with the allure of Macklin Celebrini and a young core starting to come together. <\/p>\n

But the last-place finishes the last two years were replaced this year by meaningful hockey games in April. Led by Celebrini, the Sharks overcame a slow start and hung around an admittedly awful race for the second wild card spot in the Western Conference. San Jose ultimately came up emptyhanded, but it was a significant leap forward for a team that wasn\u2019t expected to be anywhere near the playoff conversation before the season started. <\/p>\n

This season, the Sharks won as many games as they had in the prior two years combined and picked up 34 more points than last year. They went from \u201cthe most fun last-place team you\u2019ll ever see\u201d to just \u201cthe most fun team.\u201d With no expectations of contending and no need to tank after securing a top-four draft pick three years in a row \u2014 all of whom were on the roster this year \u2014 every win was bliss and every loss wasn\u2019t a big deal. These innocently fun times won\u2019t last in San Jose once the expectations start ratcheting up, but the Sharks are set for bigger and better things down the road. <\/p>\n

On the other hand, it does feel like a little bit of a missed opportunity to not make the playoffs in a year where 90 points would have been enough to make it. San Jose had its 19-year-old sensation set a new franchise record for points in a single season and play huge minutes for Team Canada at the Olympics and still couldn\u2019t give him enough support to make the playoffs over a Los Angeles team that only had 22 regulation wins. <\/p>\n

The good news is that most of San Jose\u2019s team is either 23 or younger or on an expiring contract. Most of San Jose\u2019s much-maligned back end is the latter, with four players becoming unrestricted free agents and Shakir Mukhamadullin being a restricted free agent. General manager Mike Grier will have a lot of freedom to turn over the defensive corps this summer. <\/p>\n

The 2025-26 San Jose Sharks were essentially two different teams. There\u2019s the pre-Olympic break Sharks, who picked up enough points to be in the playoff conversation by scoring enough goals to make up for its horrific underlying numbers. Then there\u2019s the post-Olympic break Sharks, who had roughly the same results points-wise despite having much-improved underlying numbers. The latter is a good sign for the future, but it\u2019s unfortunate that the Sharks weren\u2019t rewarded for playing much better down the stretch. <\/p>\n

Before the Olympic break, at five-on-five, the Sharks ranked dead last in shot attempt share, second-to-last in expected goals percentage and had a minus-17 goal differential. After the break, San Jose was 10th in shot attempt share and 11th in expected goals percentage, but it was outscored 65-55. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The problem was that the Sharks\u2019 goaltending completely fell off a cliff after the break. Only Carolina and Vancouver had a lower save percentage at five-on-five in that span. That\u2019s something to keep an eye on, as it seems like the Sharks will return the same goaltending duo next year with Yaroslav Askarov and Alex Nedeljkovic both under contract. <\/p>\n

The Sharks will need to see a lot more from Askarov in his second full season in the NHL. Only four goaltenders played at least 25 games this year and posted a worse Goals Saved Above Expected than Askarov at minus-14.6, per HockeyStats. <\/p>\n

Midseason acquisition Kiefer Sherwood deserves some credit for making an immediate impact. The price (two second-round picks) was steep, and the five-year extension worth $5.75 million annually has some potential for disaster in a couple seasons. But with Sherwood on the ice this year, the Sharks had a 53.6 percent expected goals share, and that number went down to 46.1 percent without him. Plus, adding Sherwood meant pushing other, less effective players further down the lineup or even out of it altogether. <\/p>\n

For the most part, the Sharks were unafraid to give their talented young players big minutes, and they were rewarded for doing so. This season, San Jose had three of the top nine scorers by points per 60 minutes at all strengths among players who are 21 and under and played at least 400 minutes (Celebrini, Will Smith and Igor Chernyshov). That\u2019s not even counting the contributions the Sharks had from Michael Misa (19 years old), William Eklund (23) and Collin Graf (also 23). <\/p>\n

Celebrini\u2019s big season deserves its own post, but you can\u2019t talk about this team without mentioning how big of an impact he had. Celebrini\u2019s 3.95 points per 60 minutes at all strengths ranked fifth in the league as a whole and were the most by a U21 player in the analytics era. Celebrini had 56 more points than the next closest Shark, linemate Will Smith (59). And then there\u2019s this lunacy<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The Sharks\u2019 failure to make the playoffs is going to keep Celebrini from winning the Hart Trophy, but him already turning into one of the best players in the world was the best possible outcome for San Jose this season. While an unsustainably high on-ice shooting percentage made up for some rough underlying numbers the first half of the season, Celebrini really turned it on down the stretch. After the Olympic break, he was crushing his minutes to the tune of a 54.8 percent expected goals share and a plus-three goal differential at five-on-five. <\/p>\n

But you also can\u2019t mention Celebrini without bringing up Smith. The 21-year-old scored 14 more points in his sophomore year than his rookie season despite playing in five fewer games. Smith played almost exclusively with Celebrini, and that duo was hard for opposing teams to stop. When together at five-on-five, they outscored their opponents 46-28, though they did benefit from a 104.5 PDO (combination of on-ice shooting and save percentages where 100 is average). The advanced stats models might not like Smith as much \u2014 Celebrini didn\u2019t miss much of a beat when Smith was injured mid-December, and Smith\u2019s defense could really use some improving \u2014 but it\u2019s hard to argue with the production. <\/p>\n

Celebrini and Smith get a lot of attention \u2014 and deservedly so \u2014 but the Sharks also have something in 2024 second-round pick Igor Chernyshov. After a dominant post-draft season where he scored 55 points in just 23 games in the OHL, Chernyshov made the jump to professional hockey and split time between the Sharks and the AHL this year. <\/p>\n

Chernyshov flashed his potential in his time with the Sharks this season, especially as the complementary piece on the top line with Celebrini and Smith. That included the season finale, where all three found the back of the net in a 6-1 win over Winnipeg. <\/p>\n

Michael Misa, the second overall pick in the 2025 NHL Draft, had an odd season where he bounced between the Sharks, the AHL and Team Canada at the world juniors. But once he became a full-time Shark in mid-January, Misa really hit his stride and held his own despite only being 19. The Sharks being able to run Celebrini, Alex Wennberg and Misa down the middle on their top three lines the second half of the season really helped to improve the team\u2019s play. <\/p>\n

The Sharks still have a lot of questions on the back end that they\u2019ll have to find answers for this summer. Sam Dickinson had his struggles this year, though the fact that he played in so many NHL games as a 19-year-old means that he\u2019s ahead of schedule anyway. Prospects Luca Cagnoni and Eric Pohlkamp, both taken in the 2023 draft, will battle for spots in the lineup. But San Jose desperately needs a top-pairing-caliber, puck-moving defenseman who can run a top power-play unit. <\/p>\n

But the way that the Sharks improved down the stretch, especially with the gains that their young players made, is a promising sign for the future. Hopefully, this is the last spring that the Sharks will be watching the playoffs from home for a while. <\/p>\n

All stats are from Natural Stat Trick unless otherwise noted. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Over 30 years ago, the San Jose Sharks engineered perhaps the greatest turnaround in the history of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":557201,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5127],"tags":[5,4,519,168,5306,5305,1780],"class_list":{"0":"post-557200","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"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116442418824754110","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557200","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=557200"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557200\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/557201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=557200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=557200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=557200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}