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No. 14 Quentin Musty: Is his future in teal?

Posted on by Erika Towne

San Jose Sharks’ prospect Quentin Musty is falling down our prospect pool boards. He was 5th overall in 2024. He was 9th overall in 2025. And this season, he’s 14th overall. But don’t let that fool you. His ranking this season has a lot more to do with San Jose’s draft luck and less to do with the player himself. Remember, Musty was drafted late in the first round of 2023. Since then, San Jose has had four top-ten draft picks and one just outside of the top ten, Sam Dickinson at 11th overall. When you can draft that kind of talent, a quality player like Musty can get overlooked.

Which is sad because Musty had himself a pretty good season as a 20-year-old rookie playing in the AHL for the San Jose Barracuda. The potential power forward is developing nicely, even if he’s being overshadowed by some of the top talent in San Jose’s deep prospect pool.

Position: Left Wing
Height: 6’2”
Weight: 205 pounds
Age: 21
Date of Birth: July 6, 2005
Draft Year: 2023 (26th overall by the San Jose Sharks)
Shoots: Left
2026-27 Team: Most likely starting with the Barracuda, but he’ll get a good look at Sharks camp and could get NHL games

Our prediction for Musty this season is a copy and paste from last season. He’ll start with the Barracuda, but could get some looks with the Sharks this season, especially depending on the club’s need as the season wears on. This, of course, has taken a hit given what’s happened coming out of the Rookie Faceoff Tournament, where Musty was injured and is now facing a few months of recovery. The speed of his recovery could impact how quickly/if he gets a look at the NHL level this season.

But given his body of work to date, Musty deserves a look. He did exactly what he needed to do with the Barracuda last season. He came into the AHL from a lower level, the OHL, and quickly integrated himself into the Barracuda’s system. By the end of the season, he had 45 points (21 G, 24 A) in 61 games. That’s a 0.74 points-per-game pace. Musty was also second on the team with 168 shots.

To be able to come into the league and do that is the reason why Musty shared the title of San Jose Barracuda’s Rookie of the Year with Igor Chernyshov.

What we like

Musty’s nose for offense is what makes him such a scoring threat. He looks for opportunities to create offense.

“He makes good plays in tight areas. He’s able to find his teammates and he can also put the puck in the net himself,” San Jose Barracuda Head Coach John McCarthy told NHL.com earlier this summer.

Musty has a great shot and he uses it often. It’s why he scored 21 goals this season as a rookie in the AHL. Early in the season on Nov. 19, 2025, against the San Diego Gulls, he scored this game-winning goal in overtime. Notice how he was smart enough to use the opponent to screen the goalie, and then snapped the puck through the screen he created to score.

Then there’s this goal in April. The 5-on-3 is a good example of how well Musty shoots. The puck barely touches his tape before it’s in the back of the net.

So far, Musty’s shot and hockey IQ have translated well to every level of hockey that he’s moved into. He dominated in the OHL and was very good for his first season in the AHL. If he continues to improve and shows an increase in productivity in his second season in the AHL, there would be a good case for Musty to make the jump to the NHL and show what he can do.

Then there’s his edge. Musty is a gritty player who has no problem mixing it up. He sticks up for his teammates, as evidenced by his play in the Rookie Faceoff Tournament, where he mixed it up several times.

Areas of improvement

Of course, the problem is that because of those scraps, Musty is now out long-term meaning that he’s not available for the Sharks or the Barracuda.

While every team likes players who play with an edge, they don’t like it when top end scorers like Musty knock themselves out of games for long periods of time. Teams cannot afford to lose players like Musty, who can score 20+ goals in a season. After the game, Barracuda Head Coach John McCarthy told the media that while he liked Musty sticking up for a teammate, “As far as the fighting stuff, I don’t really want him doing that too often.”

Musty will have to learn to walk the line between playing with edge and staying safe.

As for other areas of improvement, there’s been some criticism about his ability to play defense. As with a lot of high-skilled scorers, when you have the puck all the time, you don’t spend a lot of time playing defense and so you haven’t developed that skill. Musty had one of the worst plus/minus stats on the Barracuda last season, with a minus-14. He was tied with forward Patrick Giles for second-to-last on the team. Only Jett Woo (defenseman) and Oliver Wahlstrom had worse plus/minus stats.

It could be argued that, as a rookie, Musty should get some leeway; however, other rookies on the team fared much better. For example, Chernyshov ended the season with a plus-11 in 41 games and was second on the team. Defenseman Mattias Havelid, in his first season on North American ice, finished with a plus-two. The Barracuda, overall, had a pretty good season and ended it with a positive goal differential. It was Musty who was not positive in that stat.

There’s also the issue of whether or not he goes to the so-called “hard areas” of the ice. As scout Brock Otten of McKeen’s Hockey writes, “…he’s not always getting to the middle of the ice, which is an area he’ll have to find at the next level. Productive in his AHL rookie season, Musty is at least showing that his traits translate to pro hockey. However, as the Sharks look set to become a perennial playoff team, Musty won’t get the kind of runway to make mistakes in the NHL that other young players in the organization before him have.”

If Musty isn’t choosing to go to those areas of the ice right now, when they’re easier to get to, then who is to say that he will be able to go to those spaces at the NHL-level where every inch is harder to gain?

Finally, skating has been a concern for the forward, but he’s been working on that, so it’s not top of our list.

What’s next for Musty?

For the moment, it’s getting healthy. Because he took a puck to the face during preseason play, he’s out for several months recovering.

Getting healthy is the first step for Musty and as a result he’s not available for the Barracuda or the Sharks.

Though Musty has his faults, he is still an excellent player who can become a roster player for the Sharks this season if he shows he can string together some consistent games when he returns from injury. During an interview with Brodie Brazil at the beginning of the summer, Sharks Assistant General Manager and Barracuda General Manager Joe Will said that Musty and several other Sharks were “not that far away” from playing with the Sharks for more than a game or two without causing too many hiccups.

For Musty, the real issue is whether he can force his way into the lineup over the players he is competing with. Perhaps his most direct competition is Chernyshov, who right now has the edge for the top-six forward role that Musty is hoping to occupy.

The next question would be is Musty defensively responsible enough to fill a role in the bottom six, where he would potentially be tasked with taking on a role on the penalty kill? The clear answer at the moment is no. What’s more, is he better and more trustworthy in the coaching staff’s eyes than Barclay Goodrow, Adam Gaudette, Ty Dellandrea, Kiefer Sherwood or Mason Marchment?

At this moment, Musty’s biggest problem is that he’s not better than the young players currently occupying spots on the roster (Macklin Celebrini, Michael Misa, Will Smith, Ivar Stenberg, Chernyshov, Collin Graf and even Zach Ostapchuk). He’s also not as reliable as the role players like Marchment, Alex Wennberg, Sherwood, Tyler Toffoli, Goodrow, Gaudette or Dellandrea. That leaves little room in the lineup for Musty now and potentially in the future, given that he currently lacks the defensive skills necessary to unseat the players we just listed.

Highlights

Musty has an excellent shot and we’d love to see how it translates in the NHL this season. We’re pretty sure it will be electric if he scores that first goal at SAP Center during the playoffs.

2026 Top 25 Under 25 countdown … so far

15. Filip Bystedt
16. Zack Ostapchuk
17. Leo Sahlin Wallenius
18. Cam Lund
19. Ethan Cardwell
20. Nolan Allan
21. Haoxi Wang
22. Cole McKinney
23. Carson Wetsch
24. Mattias Havelid
25. Christian Kirsch
Honorable Mentions: Joey Muldowney, Teddy Mutryn, Andre Gasseau, Brady Knowling and Alexander Karmanov

Editor’s Note: More than 100 people voted in our fan poll this year, though admittedly, not everyone filled out the entire form, i.e., all 25 spots and the honorable mentions. In some cases, some people filled out their top ten and left the rest blank. While it makes the math a bit harder, we found the fairest (and easiest) thing to do was average the scores based on the total responses received. While blank scores counted as zero, it didn’t seem to skew the results too badly. Ultimately, this isn’t an exact science, but I think you’ll find it’s a pretty good list.

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