SAN JOSE – San Jose Sharks general manager Mike Grier does not have any regrets about how he handled Marc-Edouard Vlasic’s contract buyout, saying Thursday that he was upfront with the longtime NHL defenseman at the end of last season about the possibility of a change.
Vlasic said last month in Quebec City that he came away from his exit interview with Grier and the Sharks in April with a positive feeling and was under the impression at the time that he would be back for a 20th season in San Jose.
“I still have a residence in San Jose,” Vlasic told reporters in August. “It would have been honest of them to tell me right after the season, ‘By the way, we may (buy out your contract), so prepare your house.’ Instead, they did it (in late June).
“Now, I have a lot of things to think about.”
While Grier appreciated how Vlasic mentored the Sharks’ younger defensemen in recent years and battled through an upper back injury last season, he said there was never a guarantee the 38-year-old would return.
Grier also said he gave Vlasic “a little heads up” once the decision to buy out his deal, which carried an annual $7 million cap hit, was finalized.
“I don’t want to get into a he said, she said-type situation,” Grier said. “I’ll just say, I’m fine with how I ended the meeting with him. I thought I was pretty clear about the possibilities of things. If he kind of mistook some words from myself or the coaches, that was never our intention to not be upfront with him.
“To his point, we did appreciate the time he and the effort he spent to try and mentor some of our young guys, and we’re very appreciative of that, and the attitude he had throughout the last couple of years. … It was just a decision I had to make and what I thought was best for the organization.”
Grier wanted to make significant changes to the Sharks’ defense corps after the team finished with an NHL-worst 20-50-12 record and allowed a league-high 3.78 goals per game last season. Besides moving on from Vlasic, the Sharks also did not re-sign Jan Rutta and traded Henry Thrun.
Those three players were replaced by Dmitry Orlov, John Klingberg, and Nick Leddy. Grier also said that Sam Dickinson’s performance throughout the OHL playoffs and Memorial Cup this spring convinced him that he needed to give the Sharks’ top defensive prospect every opportunity to try and make the NHL roster.
“We had to have a discussion here and see which path we wanted to go down,” Grier said. “And unfortunately, that’s the decision we made, but we felt like it was best for the organization.”
Vlasic was a second-round draft pick by the Sharks in 2005 and played all of his 1,323 NHL games with the franchise over 19 seasons.
Vlasic was one of the NHL’s premier shutdown defensemen, averaging over 20 minutes of ice time per game for the Sharks from 2006 to the end of the 2018-19 season, which was the last time San Jose made the playoffs. In 2014, Vlasic enjoyed one of the biggest highlights of his career as he helped Canada win a gold medal at the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.
Vlasic’s playing time, though, tailed off in recent years, and this past season, he averaged a career-low 14:38 while scoring just three points in 27 games. Vlasic had an upper-body injury that kept him out of the first half of this season, although he said this week that he was healthy enough to play by early November.
Vlasic had been a healthy scratch several times over the last two years.
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“He’s a proud guy and a proud player, so I kind of get that it probably stings a little bit,” Grier said. “I’ve got nothing but respect for Pickles. I enjoyed playing with him. He’s obviously a great representative of the organization and everything. If he feels slighted or misled, that wasn’t ever my intention or our intention.
“From my standpoint, I’m fine with how I handled our exit meeting. I was upfront with him about where things were from my end. Now, if you talk to someone else, I don’t know. But from my end, I feel fine about how we handled it. … I had a really good conversation with him and his agent, and kind of explained everything and the reasons why we decided to go that route. I understand you’ve been so successful in this league for a long time, and been within one organization and had a great run and been a great player here that it probably stings a little bit, and I get it.
“But my job is to do what’s best for the organization, and that’s the decision we made. I wish him all the best in his career and his life after hockey, and at some point, I’m sure we’d like to get him back here to celebrate him at some point.”