Sharks draft outlook post-trade deadline

Now that the emotions have settled after the trade deadline—I’ll admit that Saturday’s win helped soothe the pain a bit—we can look back at who left San Jose in the past week and who arrived in return. More importantly, we can look at how the Sharks stand for the drafts in the next few years.

Leaving San Jose	Arriving in San Jose
Tomas Hertl 2025 3rd round pick 2027 3rd round pick	David Edstrom 2025 1st round pick
Goaltender Kaapo Kahkonen	Goaltender Vitek Vanecek 2025 7th round pick
2025 7th round pick	Goaltender Devin Cooley
Nikita Okhotiuk	2024 5th round pick (better of CHI two picks)
Radim Simek 2024 7th round pick (pick belonged to NJD)	Klim Kostin
Anthony Duclair 2025 7th round pick	Jack Thompson 2024 3rd round pick

How the 2024 NHL Entry Draft looks for the Sharks

The Sharks have added a couple of picks and traded away one for the 2024 NHL entry draft, better positioning the team for another potentially impactful draft. Given all the bodies that have moved out of San Jose over the past few years, it can be easy to lose sight of exactly where the Sharks stand in the draft landscape.

Here are the picks the team currently has for the 2024 draft:

San Jose’s first-round pick
Pittsburgh’s first-round pick (top 10 protected)
San Jose’s second-round pick
New Jersey’s second-round pick (conditional)
Tampa Bay’s third-round pick
Vegas’s fourth-round pick
Chicago’s fifth-round pick (conditional)
Pittsburgh’s fifth-round pick
San Jose’s seventh-round pick

For the purposes of this discussion, we’re going to assume that one, Pittsburgh’s bouncing lottery ball, pops up as 11th overall, handing it over to the Sharks, and two, the New Jersey Devils do not make the Eastern Conference finals. That fifth-round pick from Chicago is going to be a fifth-rounder, no matter which way you slice it.

If all that’s true, then San Jose has nine picks in 2024, four of them in the first two rounds. What’s more, if it all plays out the way we think it will, then San Jose could have as many as six picks in the top 100. That’s not too bad.

The Sharks’ organization has a short history at the draft under General Manager Mike Grier, so it’s tough to say that it’s one way or another historically. That said, in the past two drafts, Grier has drafted players like Cam Lund, Mattias Havelid, Jake Furlong, Kasper Halttunen and Luca Cagnoni outside of the first round. While time will tell, it appears so far that he has been able to identify value in the later rounds of the draft.

Don’t forget that Grier and his team traded back in the 2022 draft. While the Arizona Coyotes used the 11th overall pick to take Conor Geekie, Grier used the picks he received in return to take Filip Bystedt, Lund and Havelid. Geekie had three points in five games with Team Canada in the World Junior Championship. Bystedt had four points in seven games, and Havelid had six points in seven games playing for Sweden in that same tournament.

How the 2025 NHL Entry Draft looks for the Sharks

There were also picks added to the 2025 draft. Here’s what the 2025 draft looks like for the Sharks so far:

San Jose’s first-round pick
Vegas’ first-round pick
San Jose’s second-round pick
San Jose’s fourth-round pick
Winnipeg’s fourth-round pick
San Jose’s sixth-round pick
New Jersey’s seventh-round pick

The two first-round picks are what makes this draft look salvageable for the Sharks. The second-round pick might be okay depending on the depth of the draft. There’s no third-round pick nor a fifth-round pick, which would be a good hole to fill in the coming year and a few months. But Grier has time.

If Kostin has a good bounce-back year with the Sharks, he could easily be flipped at the deadline for a fifth-rounder. Teams like grit in the playoffs.

If Vanecek has even a so-so season on the Sharks next year, a la what Kahkonen did, he could yield San Jose something in return. As we’ve seen, goaltending is fickle around the league, and some teams might think Vanecek is the solution.

Another trade chip for San Jose is Mikael Grandlund, provided that someone uses a fourth-round pick to pay another team to retain Granlund’s salary. The Sharks might be able to get a second or third-rounder in return if Granlund has another season similar to this one.

Nico Sturm, Givani Smith, Jan Rutta, Mackenzie Blackwood and Nikolai Knyzhov will also be UFAs at the end of the 2024-25 season. They could all yield some form of return for the Sharks, especially for teams looking for experience or depth at the deadline.

2024 free agency intangibles

If Grier continues to operate as he has in the past few seasons, we could see him pick up players at free agency either as rentals or as pieces he could move in the next year or two. As it is, GMMG has looked for value in smaller pieces that he can trade at the deadline. Trading for Anthony Duclair and signing Filip Zadina were small gambles that could have yielded large rewards if the season had played out the way the Sharks’ organization had anticipated. (Losing Logan Couture really hurt.)

Waiver wire hunting has also helped Grier as the past two seasons have evolved. The Mikey Eyssimont pick-up yielded results at the deadline in 2023. Taking Ty Emberson garnered San Jose a potential defenseman who, at the very least, can fill a bottom-pairing role.

With the added cap space of the Hertl trade, Grier can also add a one-year contract like the one Vladimir Tarasenko signed in Ottawa and turn a solid top-six forward into more picks next February/March.

Say what you want about the return at the trade deadline, but Grier has given the Sharks one thing it hasn’t had in several seasons: the financial flexibility to get things done.