Welcome to Fear the Fin’s Top 25 San Jose Sharks Under 25 series!
This was initially planned to be the content to get us through the 2022 Winter Olympics break. It’s been a minute since the site has had any additional support — not to mention how the pandemic has affected juniors hockey over the last two years — so it felt like a good time to sneak in a quick prospects ranking before a swath of players age out of the rankings this summer.
We’re still planning on running it during that general timeframe: the Sharks’ updated schedule still has a pretty big gap in it, and the few reshuffled games are spread out. But if you were wondering “Why now?” because this is usually a summer series, that’s what we’ve had planned behind the scenes for a few months now.
For this special Winter ranking, players must be younger than 25 years old by Jan. 1, 2022 to be eligible. In total, 48 players are included, either as members of the Sharks and Barracuda or because their signing rights are currently owned by San Jose.
In terms of how you decide to rank the players … ultimately, that’s up to you! Some people value whether a prospect has gotten their feet wet at the NHL level over potential, and sometimes people vote a player in because they have a cool name. Just try to have some sort of sensible methodology (I read comments for a living and know trolling when I see it) and have fun picking your favorite hockey children.
Voting this year will be done through Survey Monkey.
Here are some basic guidelines as you vote:
- The survey will technically let you rank all 48 players, but nothing after 25 will be counted OR contribute to a player’s overall rank.
- Users are asked to submit only one ballot. We reserve the right to remove ballots that are incomplete, spam or otherwise determined to be a joke.
- Remember: No. 1 is the best player ranking. We will reveal the series in reverse order, starting with No. 25.
- Ballots are due by noon PT on Tuesday, Feb. 1, 2022.
- Once again, that link to vote is here./
After voting closes, we’ll look at the players that just missed the cut of the Top 25, before revealing the list starting from the bottom until we reach the best of the Baby Sharks.
For your convenience, all eligible players are listed below — first in order of draft year, then by age, oldest to youngest, as I think it’s more useful to identify over-agers than draft position — with links to each player’s respective Elite Prospects page.
2021
Ethan Cardwell (C) | William Eklund (C/LW) | Yevgeni Kashnikov (D/F) | Liam Gilmartin (LW) | Benjamin Gaudreau (G) | Max McCue (C) | Theo Jacobsson (C) | Artem Guryev (D) | Gannon Laroque (D)
2020
Linus Öberg (C/RW) | Alex Young (C) | Adam Raska (LW/RW) | Tristen Robins (RW) | Brandon Coe (RW) | Thomas Bordeleau (C) | Daniil Gushchin (RW) | Ozzy Wiesblatt (RW) | Timofei Spitserov (RW)
2019
Timur Ibragimov (LW) | Dillon Hamaliuk (LW) | Artemi Knyazev (D) | Santeri Hatakka (D) | Yegor Spiridonov (C/LW)
2018
Jasper Weatherby (C/LW) | John Leonard (LW) | Zachary Émond (G) | Ryan Merkley (D) | Magnus Chrona (G)
2017
Mario Ferraro (D) | Jonah Gadjovich (LW) | Jake McGrew (RW) | Zach Gallant (C) | Scott Reedy (C) | Alexander Chmelevski (C/RW)
2016
Jonathan Dahlén (LW) | Joachim Blichfeld (RW/LW) | Noah Gregor (C)
2015
Mike Robinson (G) | Rudolfs Balcers (LW/RW) | Nick Merkley (RW/C) | Nicolas Meloche (D)
Undrafted
Jeffrey Viel (LW) | Jayden Halbgewachs (LW/C) | Lane Pederson (C) | Brinson Pasichnuk (D) | Zach Sawchenko (G) | Nikolai Knyzhov (D) | Alexei Melnichuk (G)
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