Heading into the second half of the season, it was clear that the Sharks were a shopping mall, and barring a few untouchables, virtually everyone was on sale for the right price. Most fans expected leaders like Mikael Granlund and Luke Kunin to get traded, and even the Jake Walman deal was met with acceptance. But Fabian Zetterlund’s trade to Ottawa sparked bewilderment.
Zetterlund simply isn’t like the rest of the Sharks on the For Sale shelf. At just 25, he presumably has years of cost-controlled productivity left — and his knack for putting the puck in the net is a rare skill on this roster, with the forward having scored 41 goals over the last two seasons. Given that there was no indication of the Sharks actively shopping him, this deal comes out of left field.
Perhaps some of this boils down to contract negotiations. Zetterlund’s agent (and former Shark) Claude Lemieux told Sheng Peng of San Jose Hockey Now that the two sides were in the middle of contract negotiations when the deal happened, implying that the gap between the two sides may have contributed to the deal being done. With prices at an all-time high in one of the strongest buyers’ markets in recent memory, it’s possible that the Sharks just felt this offer was too good to pass up.
But that simply doesn’t add up, and indeed, Grier pushed back on this reasoning, claiming that the deal was about acquiring Zack Ostapchuk and putting a responsible, two-way centreman behind Macklin Celebrini and Will Smith.
The reasoning is baffling, at least at first glance. Players like Zetterlund are young, cheap, and productive, and they are very hard to replace. When they are traded, they generally command a better return than what the Sharks got, which amounted to a mid-second-round pick and a potential future bottom-six forward in Ostapchuk.
One deeper explanation is that the Sharks don’t think Zetterlund is really as good as his numbers suggest and don’t see him slotting into the top six as the team gets better, making them reluctant to pay his asking price. And indeed, if you look at JFresh’s player card for him, you’ll see a player who draws penalties and scores goals at a decent clip but can’t actually drive play on his own.
It’s quite possible that unless he gets put on a line with Tim Stützle and Drake Batherson, his production doesn’t approach what it’s been in San Jose — and it’s likely that whatever Zetterlund wanted was not in line with the numbers underlying his production, which was almost certainly inflated by minutes he would not continue receiving as Celebrini, Smith, Igor Chernyshov, Quentin Musty and William Eklund began to hit prime time.
But the Sharks are not strapped for cap space in the slightest and probably could have afforded paying Zetterlund something close to what he wanted. It isn’t easy to find 20-goal scorers in the National Hockey League, and they chose to dump one for a second-round pick and a checking-line forward.
It’s fair to say that Mike Grier has done an incredible job maximizing value on cheap pickups. But it’s also fair to question whether this was a necessary or optimal move for the Sharks, given Zetterlund’s age and production.
