The San Jose Sharks’ biggest move of the trade deadline season didn’t come in the form of a trade, but rather a contract for forward Tomas Hertl.
Hertl, now 28 years old, was set to become an unrestricted free agent this offseason. He’s scored 26 goals and 54 points in 65 games so far this season, a pace of 33 goals and 68 points in 82 games.
It was certainly an interesting move to re-sign Hertl, given his age and the direction of the team.
It seems as though the Sharks really continue to believe they’re not far off from competing again, even though most people from the outside can see that’s probably not the case. They don’t have the prospects or cap space to add to their roster and compete right now and deciding not to move a key trade chip for those prospects/future assets and instead committing about 10 per cent of their cap space to Hertl won't help down the road either.
I will say I actually don’t mind the contract itself. It’s relatively fair value and while slightly under $8 million per year would've been ideal, a cap hit at $8.14 million isn’t bad.
The issue is just deciding to commit to this contract in the first place. The Sharks are in the spot they are because they’ve committed to long-term, big money deals with players in the back half of their career who will face a decline later in the contract. Now they’ve decided to do it again and had to give Hertl varying levels of trade protection throughout the deal, with six of those eight years being pretty airtight in terms of restrictions.
Hertl was always going to command a maximum-term deal and if the Sharks were competitive right now, it would be a different story. Given their predicament though, the move doesn’t really make sense. If the Sharks build through the draft (likely with minimal other future assets added because they have few quality trade chips), they’re still at least a few years off from competing. At that point, Hertl will be into his 30s and the contract is probably starting to look worse.
San Jose needs to rebuild and while retaining Hertl may help them a bit in the short-term, it’s likely to hurt them long-term.
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