The San Jose Sharks have made some moves before the start of the season, indicating what’s likely in store when the roster is officially in place on Thursday, Oct. 9, against the Vegas Golden Knights. Today, General Manager Mike Grier announced that he traded Carl Grundstrom and Artem Guryev to the Philadelphia Flyers for Ryan Ellis and a conditional 6th-round draft pick in the 2026 NHL draft.
The thing about this trade for Sharks fans is that this has absolutely nothing to do with the players involved. They’re just collateral damage as the Sharks get ready to shape the season.
What did the Flyers get out of the deal?
For the Flyers, this was a way to get rid of a bad contract and get some cap breathing room. Ryan Ellis is a 34-year-old injured defenseman who will likely never play an NHL game again. The team needed to move the contract. The Sharks have some breathing room to make that happen. The sixth-round draft pick was a pot sweetener to get the Sharks to take the full brunt of Ellis’ contract off of Philadelphia’s hands.
Ellis has two years left on a contract with a $6.25 million AAV. The Flyers now have $6.365 million in cap space. The team put Grundstrom on waivers after the trade, so it wasn’t really looking to add him as a forward.
The cap space gives Philadelphia plenty of room to work with for a team that’s hoping to play meaningful games in the spring.
What did the Sharks get out of the deal?
As for the Sharks, every NHL team can only have 50 active NHL contracts at one time, and San Jose was very, very close to that mark (49) before activating Sam Dickinson. It’s clear the Sharks wants to give Dickinson a shot, but to do so, it needs to clear out a few contracts first. By trading Grundstrom and Guryev and only taking Ellis’ contract back, San Jose did a two-for-one swap. Now the team can activate Dickinson and still have a bit of breathing room.
What’s more, it saves the team some of that waiver wire trouble it could have run into a little later this week. While Guryev didn’t get taken off of the waiver wire when he was waived earlier this week, Grundstrom might have. He didn’t have the best training camp and he didn’t earn a spot on the roster, especially compared to some of the other players in the camp. His time in San Jose was done and so trading him was the best option given the work that players like Ethan Cardwell, Collin Graf, Pavol Regenda and others have done this camp.
All in all, this was a good bit of work done by Grier to get the Sharks closer to where they need to be to start the season.
