SAN JOSE – Sharks owner Hasso Plattner had a direct answer this week when it came to what he expects from his team this season.
“I hope we don’t have to go for McKenna,” Plattner said Thursday of Penn State forward Gavin McKenna, thought to be the best player available in next year’s NHL Draft. “I just talked to (coach Ryan Warsofsky), ‘No McKenna here now,’ and (general manager) Mike (Grier) said, ‘Absolutely not, absolutely not.’”
After finishing at the bottom of the league standings the last two years and having the best odds to win the NHL Draft Lottery, the Sharks know they need to take a step forward this season in what is Grier’s fourth year as the team’s head of hockey operations.
No one, perhaps even inside the organization, thinks the Sharks have a realistic chance of making the playoffs for the first time since 2019, especially after a 20-50-12 season. But growth is required, particularly from the team’s cadre of promising players now 23-and-younger, so they can be better positioned to make the playoffs in 2026-27.
“We owe our fans a good year here,” said defenseman Mario Ferraro, who is entering his seventh season in San Jose and is now the team’s longest-tenured player. “They’ve stuck around. They’ve stayed loyal through some tough seasons.”
The Sharks were on their way to a season-opening win over the Vegas Golden Knights on Thursday before a pair of mishaps resulted in a bitter 4-3 overtime loss before a sold-out SAP Center crowd.
The Sharks led 3-2 late in the third period and had an empty net in front of them with less than two minutes to go when William Eklund poked one shot attempt just wide and had another on a wraparound blocked by Golden Knights defenseman Shea Theodore. Just seconds later, a flip shot on net by Golden Knights center Jack Eichel bounced in front of goalie Alex Nedeljkovic and into the net to tie the game with 1:34 left in regulation time.
Reilly Smith scored at the 1:24 mark of overtime off a puck-handling error by Nedeljkovic. As the puck was sent back into the Sharks’ zone, Nedeljkovic came way out of his net during 3-on-3 play and tried to pass it ahead. Instead, his pass bounced off Smith to Theodore, who fed Smith for his goal in a wide-open net.
It was the Sharks’ fourth-straight season-opening loss. Over the last three years, the Sharks began the season on five-game, 11-game, and nine-game losing streaks.
This year, the revamped Sharks feel they can build on the positives of their season-opening loss, as they remained competitive against one of the league’s best teams.
“We never stopped competing, and now we’ve got to do that all year,” Eklund said. “It felt very different last night than (before). We made a very good Vegas team work hard for that win, and we’re going to be so much better this year.”
Perhaps Saturday’s opponent, the Anaheim Ducks, can be a blueprint for what the Sharks hope to do this season.
The Ducks had the third-worst record in the NHL at 27-50-5 two years ago. But with better team defense, veteran additions, and growth from some younger players, Anaheim improved by 21 points last season, finishing 35-37-10 and moving from seventh in the Pacific Division to sixth.
Jason Demers, a Sharks defenseman from 2009 to 2014 who played 700 NHL games in a 15-year pro career, is bullish that his former team, which finished at the bottom of the division the last two seasons, can make strides.
“I’m optimistic about having them sixth in the Pacific,” Demers, now an NHL Network analyst, told Bay Area News Group. “I think they pass Seattle and Calgary, and I expect a lot of good things.”
Demers points to a more stable defense corps with the additions of John Klingberg, Nick Leddy, and Dmitry Orlov, and improved goaltending, with Yaroslav Askarov entering his first full season in the NHL, and the promise of better special teams as reasons for hope. Last season, San Jose was 26th in the NHL on the power play and 27th on the penalty kill, and Askarov will start Saturday.
There’s also Macklin Celebrini, who led the Sharks with 63 points as a rookie last season and remains the best player on the roster.
“I’d like to see him have that same kind of growth on the defensive side of the puck,” Demers said of the 19-year-old Celebrini. “He played very well last year, won a lot of one-on-one puck battles. I think overall, defensively at centerman, just a few things he needs to learn. Hope he takes a step in the right direction.”
Celebrini, Eklund, Smith, Askarov, center Michael Misa, and defenseman Sam Dickinson, who will make his NHL debut Saturday, figure to form the Sharks’ nucleus for years to come.
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As for right now, what would be a successful season in San Jose?
“I just want to see improvement in all the areas we asked these guys to improve on,” Grier said last month. “And then hopefully our group can take another step and mature a little bit. They went through a lot of tough losses last year. So hopefully that’s something our group learned from, and we can turn some of those losses into wins.”
So this is not a year when the Sharks are eying McKenna, as they did Celebrini two years ago?
“He’s a heck of a player, and there are a lot of good players in this draft class, but it’s not the goal to go to get him,” Grier said of McKenna. “I’m thrilled to have (Celebrini, Smith and Misa), but if we’re not picking the top five (in 2026), I’m OK with that.
“It’s time to hopefully take a little bit of a step and win a few more games and start kind of pushing our way up the standings.”