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Just a few hours after acquiring Mike Hoffman from the Ottawa Senators, the Sharks have dealt the 28-year-old forward to the Florida Panthers, along with their 2018 seventh-round draft pick in exchange for the 2018 fourth-round pick originally belonging to the Vegas Golden Knights, a 2018 fifth-round pick, and a 2019 second-round pick. No salary was retained by San Jose in this move.
Dealing Mikkel Boedker to the Senators and flipping Hoffman allows to the Sharks to dump Boedker’s $4 million contract in its entirety, while accumulating draft picks in a year where the Sharks are missing a second- and third- round draft pick.
It’s possible Doug Wilson isn’t done. He indicated yesterday that the Sharks are in a position to add players to the roster.
Doug Wilson today: "Are we positioned to add players? Yes. Could it be in the UFA market? Yes. Could it be in the trade market? Yes. … I think we’re positioned really well to be pretty active in adding another piece.” #SJSharks
— Kevin Kurz (@KKurzNHL) June 18, 2018
He doubled down on this sentiment in a statement this morning, adding that players from within the organization have impressed, as well.
“This series of trades has allowed us to accomplish several organizational goals. We have witnessed some tremendous growth in our younger forwards over the past season and we feel that we have another group of players that are ready to challenge for additional ice time, including Kevin Labanc, Marcus Sorensen, Dylan Gambrell, Max Letunov, Rudolphs Balcers, Antti Suomela, Vincent Praplan and Lukas Radil. These transactions have also allowed us to add to our pool of draft selections, as well as free up a substantial amount of cap space for internal and external player options in the coming months.”
Next season’s roster may look drastically different, but it seems some of those faces we’ll at least be familiar with.