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The San Jose Sharks have drafted quite a few stars in the early rounds over the years, including Logan Couture, Tomas Hertl, Timo Meier and Marc-Edouard Vlasic. But what may be more interesting is the success they’ve also had in the later rounds of the draft. This article will look back at players that Doug Wilson has managed to get from the fifth round of the NHL draft and later in his tenure with the Sharks.
In Wilson’s first draft as San Jose’s general manager in 2003, he hit the jackpot in the seventh round, selecting Joe Pavelski at 205th overall. Obviously, we don’t really need to go in detail on Pavelski’s career with the Sharks, other than to say it was a pretty great way to kick off Wilson’s drafting as San Jose's GM.
Four years later in 2007, after selecting Logan Couture in the first round, the Sharks made great sleeper picks with both a sixth-round pick and a seventh-round pick. The sixth-round pick was used to select Nick Bonino at 173rd overall, who never played for the Sharks organization but did go on to find success with Anaheim, Vancouver, Pittsburgh (where he won back-to-back Stanley Cups in his only two seasons with the Penguins), and now Nashville. He’s pretty consistently able to score between 35 and 40 points in a season and has turned into a quality NHL middle-six forward. The seventh-round pick was used to select Justin Braun at 201st overall. Braun went on to play nine seasons with the Sharks and was a key part of San Jose’s defense corps until last summer, when he was traded to Philadelphia.
Then the following year, the Sharks managed to select Tommy Wingels in the sixth round at 177th overall and Jason Demers in the seventh round at 186th overall. Wingels played 448 NHL games, including parts of seven seasons with the Sharks. Demers has played 658 NHL games and after five and a half seasons with the Sharks, he was used to acquire Brenden Dillon from Dallas.
In 2011, the Sharks drafted Sean Kuraly in the fifth round, who they later flipped as part of a package to acquire Martin Jones. He’s since gone on to become a member of Boston’s bottom-six. At the end of the sixth round in the same draft, the Sharks selected Dylan DeMelo at 179th overall. DeMelo was traded as part of the package to acquire Erik Karlsson and is now a member of the Winnipeg Jets.
The next year, the Sharks selected Joakim Ryan in the seventh round, who played all 20 playoff games in San Jose’s run to the Western Conference Finals last season. Then, perhaps most notably of the recent selections, the Sharks selected Kevin Labanc in the sixth round of the 2014 draft. Labanc is currently an important member of San Jose’s middle-six up front.
If you’re looking into drafts from the past few years, while none of the players selected by the Sharks in the later rounds have turned into impact NHL players just yet, many look to have a promising future. Joachim Blichfield, a seventh round pick in 2016, already got into NHL games this season at just 21 years old and posted strong numbers in the AHL. Sasha Chmelevski, a sixth round pick in 2017, became a star in junior with Ottawa and also had solid production in his first AHL season. Lastly, I’ve already done an article on John Leonard but his comparables also have him projected as a future NHL middle-six forward.
As the Sharks look to try and fill their roster with young, cheap additions to stay under the salary cap, it’s good to know that Wilson and the Sharks have had quite a bit of success drafting in the later rounds. It goes to show that, especially for the Sharks, every pick is valuable no matter how late in the draft it may come.
Here's today's poll question (results and discussion will be posted this weekend):
Other than Pavelski, which late-round pick are you most impressed by?
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