Sharks general manager Doug Wilson restated the Sharks commitment to keeping Patrick Marleau in San Jose for next season in a conference call on Monday morning. He also touched on the Sharks’ plans in the draft, their injury situation and a potential extension with Brent Burns.
I’ll give some of the highlights of the call below:
On Patrick Marleau
Patty is an important member to our team, he has been for a long long time and we feel he has a lot of good hockey left in him.
On whether it would be hard to trade a player who has been with the organization so long
Any situation that ever arises we do what’s best for the hockey team. I told you how I felt about Patrick and about how important he has been to this team.
On potential RFAs/UFAs
I have touched base with RFAs and players that are pending UFAs.
He chose not to go into any more detail than that, though he did say the team, as it stands, is likely the foundation of the group. I take that to mean the pending UFAs (Nick Spaling, Roman Polak, Dainius Zubrus, James Reimer and Micheal Haley) are unlikely to be brought back … but he certainly didn’t say that himself, so.
On potential expansion draft
I think as I said the BOG will have that all clarified for us. We’re positioned very well for the expansion draft in contractual terms. We kinda planned getting to this point but I think we have a lot of flexibility and a lot of coverage and a lot of young players coming through the system.
On draft strategy
We always take the best player available. You take a look at where the game is going and where players fit, whether it be the draft or in trades or whatever. They fit with how we want to play. We’re always looking for the best player but it’s the character, their style of play and seeing how they’ll integrate with the organization.
On injured players:
There are a couple players seeing some doctors and getting some evaluations this week. If that happens this week I’ll pass it along.
On Tomas Hertl’s injury
Without going into that it was a knee injury, we’ve had our doctors look at it and he’s been braced since that took place. He was day to day at that point and we’re doing an extensive evaluation now on a few players in the next weeks to see if any surgery or treatment is needed. I’ll get a better read on that in the next week to 10 days.
On potential offseason moves
We’ve got guys coming in with successful years in college, junior and europe and it’s a great infusion of youth and at the same point it’s nice to have a little cap space which we do or to keep a little going forward. The majority of the team is in place and that’s probably going to be the foundation of our hockey team. I can’t say definitively we won’t add pieces but we do encourage our young guys knock a door down to come in and make this hockey team.
On extending Brent Burns
I think you know how we feel about Brent, phenomenal year, it was a big piece to acquire him. There’s no doubt he’s important to us, we want him and he loves being here and those conversations will take place shortly.
Biggest takeaways from this? Probably Wilson’s commitment to wanting to extend Burns. With the Sharks getting ready to go through some type of transition next offseason, he was a big question mark in my mind.
The Patrick Marleau stuff, while mildly notable, is all kind of academic at this point. If Wilson gets a good offer and Marleau approves, a deal will be made. That being said, I think the odds of the Sharks getting any type of favorable offer for their longest tenured player are exceptionally low.
It turned into a busy day all of a sudden!
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