The San Jose Sharks' season didn’t play out as many would have expected. For a team with so many quality players, it seemed as though the Sharks wouldn’t have a problem getting back into the playoffs for a fifth straight year.
But the fact is, the Sharks lost a ton of depth in the offseason and expectations should've been lower for the team heading into this season. Sure, injuries and other factors played a role and the team should never have been as bad as they were but when you remember who they lost in the offseason, San Jose was never going to be as strong as the year prior.
Last summer, the Sharks lost Joe Pavelski, Joonas Donskoi and Gustav Nyquist in free agency. Pavelski was certainly the biggest loss and was on pace for about 42 goals and 70 points per 82 last year. Any time you subtract a top-six forward from your lineup like that, it’s a huge loss, even if he’s 35 years old. Donskoi, on the other hand, provided great secondary scoring and was pretty much consistently able to average between 35 and 40 points per year. With Nyquist, even though he was only a deadline addition, he was a quality middle-six forward for the Sharks and in his 39 games played for the team between the regular season and playoffs, he scored at a pace of 46 P/82. Take those three players away and you’ve essentially removed one-third of San Jose’s top-nine forward group.
The Sharks also traded Justin Braun to free up cap space. Braun averaged the third-most minutes per game of any Sharks skater in the 2018-19 regular season and played almost three minutes per game on the penalty kill during the team’s playoff run.
So while the Sharks’ poor season was unexpected and realistically, they shouldn’t have been anywhere near as poor as they were, it shouldn’t have been such a surprise that they took a step back this season.
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Here’s today’s poll question (results and discussion will be posted in a future article):
Who was the biggest offseason loss for the Sharks (other than Pavelski)?
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