The San Jose Sharks are officially in the offseason and that means there’s some business to take care of. The front office has a large group of unrestricted and restricted free agents to decide on over the next month or two, with the ultimate goal of building a team that can win a Stanley Cup. It’s pretty clear that this season, the Sharks took a major step forward in the team’s efforts towards that goal, so now, it’s about figuring out how to build on that.
Some of it will include bringing back veteran players who helped get the Sharks where they are now. But it may also include allowing some long-time Sharks to seek employment elsewhere. So, here’s a look at the current Sharks who will be unrestricted free agents on July 1 if nothing happens, and what we think the Sharks should do about it.
Ryan Reaves – Forward
Age: 39
Last Contract: 3 years, $1.35 million AAV
Ryan Reaves is coming off the final year of a three-year deal that paid him $1.35 million per season. The forward was acquired from the Toronto Maple Leafs in July for defenseman Henry Thrun, who had continued to tumble down the Sharks’ depth chart on defense.
Reavo was brought in to bring the vibes, and bring them he did. The veteran forward set the tone for the young Sharks stars. He helped the team bond quickly, taught the younger players how to foster a strong team atmosphere, and, most of all, kept the boys loose in the tough games down the stretch. Reaves taught them how to take the next step in their development as they start playing those meaningful games down the stretch.
The positives: Reaves wants to be here, and he clearly fits into the locker room, which is a big deal when it comes to what the Sharks want to build moving forward. He is an impactful voice within the Sharks locker room as the team starts to make its turn towards competitiveness once again.
He is also still respected as an enforcer. Like him or not as a player, other players understand when Reaves is in the lineup. There is some impact on the game when he is there.
The negatives: That said, Reaves isn’t getting any younger. He’s 39 and will be 40 in January. He has goals for the 2026-27 season. He wants to hit 1,000 games before he retires. He’s 32 away from that goal. Any team that he signs with this season is going to have to guarantee that he reaches that milestone.
On a team like the Sharks that’s looking to win games by playing fast, it’s hard to say that Reaves will be guaranteed those games. In the final stretch of the season, it was clear that the Sharks skated faster without him in the lineup.
Prediction: Reaves will be back next season. General Manager Mike Grier has a soft spot for veterans like Reaves, and it’s hard to deny that the veteran forward is a big reason the vibes were so good this season. The team will make sure that he gets his 1,000 games, somehow, but it’s hard to say he’ll get much more than that unless there are injuries. After all, the Sharks will need to compete for a playoff spot as well. Look for Reaves to be that backup forward who gets into the lineup occasionally but who is definitely there more for the vibes than his play.
Pavol Regenda – Forward
Age: 26
Last Contract: 1 year, $775,000
Pavol Regenda arrived in San Jose at a low cost. The Sharks only had to give up an AHL-tweener, Justin Bailey, for a forward who was looking for a real shot at the NHL. Regenda re-signed with the Sharks in the offseason to a team-friendly one-year deal and got his shot midway through the season. He earned his playing time and scored 10 points in 24 games.
The positives: Regenda was a great surprise, who turned into a roster player midseason. He outperformed expectations and turned into a player the Sharks could rely on during the season. As far as asset management goes, Grier got himself a steal.
The negatives: Unfortunately, Grier wasn’t able to turn that asset into anything at the trade deadline. Regenda is still, at best, a bottom-of-the-lineup player and only a slight step above Bailey as a player who fluctuates between the AHL and NHL. It’s pretty clear that there’s no spot for him in the lineup moving forward if the Sharks want to give a shot to some of the younger players in the system.
Prediction: Regenda is in talks with the Sharks about a return, and it seems he took solace in the fact that the Sharks waived and terminated Jeff Skinner’s contract rather than place him on waivers at the tail end of last season. The question is, will that goodwill be enough to keep Regenda in town? There’s no guarantee he will play, and he’s not a top liner. If he stays, it’s short-term, two years at most, and no more than $2 million.
Nick Leddy – Left/Right Defense
Age: 35
Last Contract: 4 years, $4 million AAV
Defenseman Nick Leddy arrived in San Jose via waiver wire in July. Looking to offload some salary, the St. Louis Blues dropped Leddy, hoping another team would pick him up, and the Sharks obliged. It was both a blessing and a curse for the Sharks. In one sense, the Sharks got themselves a defenseman who could play the right side, something the team needed. That said, Leddy wasn’t much of an upgrade over Marc-Edouard Vlasic on the backend this season, adding yet another veteran that seemed to clog up the blueline and make it tough for the younger players to move up into the lineup.
The positives: Leddy offered some stability to the extremely light right side, especially in the last few games of the season, when he seemed to allow Sam Dickinson to shine the best. If his presence did anything to let the young defenseman take a step forward in development, then adding him to the lineup was worth it. The Sharks did not give up anything in terms of assets to get Leddy, so the best you can say is that it was a gamble that didn’t pay off the way GMMG had hoped.
The negatives: Leddy was an anchor at many times during the season, and his minus-9 goal differential in 32 games certainly contributed to how brutal things were for the Sharks this season. He was slow and took up a roster spot that many fans had hoped would go to a younger, developing defenseman.
Prediction: This, unfortunately, will be a sad end to a good NHL career for Leddy. The defenseman will go out with a whimper instead of a bang. He’ll end his career in teal because if he couldn’t make it here with this thing we called a defense, then it’s doubtful that another team is going to want to take a shot with him.
John Klingberg – Right Defense
Age: 33
Last Contract: 1 year, $4 million
The Sharks took a flier on John Klingberg, hoping that if the defenseman, who was healing from injury and looking for another shot in the NHL, could get his mojo back, he’d be good trade bait at the deadline. The Sharks got Klingberg for free, signing him to a one-year deal at the start of free agency and promising to keep him in San Jose at least for half of the season.
The positives: Klingberg became an impactful piece this season, albeit an occasionally frustrating one for Sharks’ fans. Ultimately, he did what the team needed, which was move the puck to Macklin Celebrini and the rest of the forward group. With no guarantees that Sam Dickinson would make a smooth transition, Klingberg was the Sharks’ best hope for an offensive transition out of the defensive zone. In that sense, he delivered.
The negatives: However, Klingberg is still not the mobile defenseman he was before he had surgery, and it’s pretty clear he will not move like that again. If you’ve ever seen the other side of 40, you know that the things you used to be able to do as a teenager, you just can’t do anymore, no matter how much you want to. Your body remembers how to, but it does not cooperate. We imagine that’s what it’s like for Klingberg. Through the season, he seemed to be restructuring the way he played to account for that.
Prediction: The talk is that Klingberg and the Sharks are talking contract extension, but there are likely a lot of caveats for both sides. The Sharks won’t be locked into anything long-term or even mid-term, which the 33-year-old would ideally like. Meantime, the Sharks aren’t going to be able to guarantee him the ice time he’d like to see. Both of those might be sticking points for a player who still believes he can be an asset to an NHL team. If Klingberg is willing to accept a role as a third-pairing defenseman with some second-unit power-play time, a deal might be had. However, if he’s not, maybe he tests the market on July 1.
As it is, I would suspect that what he’s looking for isn’t out there. The Sharks will let him test the market, and a few days into July, the team will bring him back for another season on a deal similar to the one that he signed this past season.
Mario Ferraro – Left/Right Defense
Age: 27
Last Contract: 4 years, $3.25 million AAV
For seven years now, Mario Ferraro has been a force on the Sharks’ defense, from the young rookie who served as the “Wookie Whisperer” alongside Brent Burns to the most reliable defenseman through the dark times in San Jose. Ferraro, the 49th overall pick in 2017, is now entering new territory as an unrestricted free agent. For the first time, the defenseman gets to explore what the market thinks he’s worth, and that could mean some interesting things on July 1.
The defenseman is clearly looking for a long-term deal with a quality number, top-four defenseman pay. The question around the league is, does anyone think he’s worth that?
The positives: This season, the additions of Dmitry Orlov and Klingberg allowed Ferraro to move further down the lineup. The defenseman looked better placed as a three/four defenseman and he had less of the weight to carry for the team. As a result, he looked like he was better suited for his role on the blueline.
The negatives: It’s pretty clear that Ferraro has hit his ceiling. He is, at best, a middle-six defenseman. At worst, he’s a bottom-pairing one. One thing is for sure, he’s not worth the pay day that he wants at the moment.
Prediction: Ferraro hits the market on July 1, and someone offers him the money he wants. Then, it will be up to him if he thinks the money is better than what San Jose is building. My guess is, he’s moving on. But no hard feelings, at least from a fan’s perspective.
Vincent Desharnais – Right Defense
Age: 29
Last Contract: 2 years, $2 million AAV
The Sharks acquired Vincent Desharnais from Pittsburgh near the 2025 trade deadline for a 2028 fifth-round pick. It’s pretty clear that Grier and the rest of the coaching staff thought the big man was going to fill the role as a sixth or seventh defenseman, and that would be the end of it. I doubt they thought he would end up being one of the most reliable defensemen this season.
The positives: Desharnais kept his game simple. He killed penalties. He played the body. He cleared pucks. He didn’t try to get fancy. He didn’t try to do too much. On a blueline that was often trying to do too much, it was a pleasant relief for fans.
The negatives: Desharnais won’t light the world on fire. He’s not a goal scorer. What you see is what you get. So, on a playoff team, he likely is a sixth or seventh defenseman…
Prediction: …and so what? Desharnais has more than earned another go-around in San Jose. He’ll be what the Sharks need for at least a few more seasons, and he’ll sign a reasonable deal to stick around.
Laurent Brossoit – Goaltender
Age: 33
Last Contract: 2 years, $3.3 million
The Sharks traded Ryan Ellis, Jake Furlong and a 2028 fourth-round pick in January to the Chicago Blackhawks for Laurent Brossoit, Nolan Allen and a 2028 seventh-round pick. It was a deal that, in part, gave the Sharks some insurance in the net if one of its NHL regulars went down and gave the team a veteran netminder for an AHL team looking to go deep into the playoffs.
The positives: On the outset, the Sharks got what they needed, a netminder who could play up in the NHL if Alex Nedeljkovic or Yaroslav Askarov got injured. That was something the team could not count on with its other goalies at the AHL level.
The negatives: The Sharks did this exactly once and then discovered it went so poorly that they never tried it again. Brossoit was good enough to sit on the bench in a backup capacity, but never made it into another game. The Sharks sent him back down to the Barracuda, and the ‘Cuda exited the first round of the AHL playoffs very, very quickly.
Prediction: We doubt Brossoit will be back. The Sharks will want to look elsewhere, and the netminder will likely want a shot with an NHL team that will at least give him an opportunity to earn the role or backup. That’s not in San Jose, where we have our goaltending tandem set.
Other AHL UFAs
Brossoit isn’t the only other UFA currently with the Barracuda in the AHL. 25-year-old Egor Afanasyev is wrapping up a one-year, $800,000 stint. The forward returned after a year in Europe, hoping to find his way into the Sharks’ lineup, but he never earned a call up, and it now feels like he’s been passed on the depth chart by so many of the other youngsters that he’ll have to seek his opportunity elsewhere.
29-year-old Colin White appears to be one of those eternal AHLers, so the question with him is whether he likes where he’s at with San Jose and if the Sharks like the role he’s playing as a veteran leader. With a player like White, that’s what you’re looking for. The same goes for Samuel Laberge (29), Jimmy Huntington (27) and Lucas Carlsson (28).
As for younger players, forward Shane Bowers, right defenseman Jett Woo and goaltender Jakub Skarek are all finishing up their contracts as well. The Sharks obtained the 26-year-old Bowers from the New Jersey Devils in exchange for Thomas Bordeleau last summer, but Bowers never made an appearance in the NHL. Unless San Jose is looking to continue to fill out the Barracuda roster, it’s hard to see Bowers back on the roster again.
The 25-year-old Woo is a newer addition to the Sharks. He was added on March 5 in a swap with the Vancouver Canucks for Jack Thompson. The Sharks need right-side defensemen, so it’s hard to see management allowing Woo to walk. He’s the most likely to get another contract.
Then there’s Skarek. The goaltender was headed to Europe before he signed with the Barracuda last summer. He was a stop-gap measure to help fill the hole that was left open by bringing Yaroslav Askarov up to the Sharks. This is a question of whether San Jose thinks it can find someone better to fill the hole.
