The San Jose Sharks continue to search for value in young defensemen around the league. The latest addition to the team is Calen Addison. Earlier today, San Jose Sharks General Manager Mike Grier announced he had traded forward Adam Raska and the team’s 2026 fifth-round pick to the Minnesota Wild in exchange for Addison.
“Calen is a talented young defenseman who sees the ice well and moves the puck well,” said Grier. “He is a very good player on the power play, and we are excited to add him to our group.”
The 23-year-old Addison has played 12 games for the Wild this season and has five assists. In total, Addison has played 92 career NHL games spread out over four seasons and has 38 points. Last season, he had 29 points in 62 games for the Wild.
Addison fills a key role for the Sharks on the power play
The main draw of the young defenseman is that he fills a key role for San Jose on the power play. The team has tried, with some minor success to use a five-man forward unit. Only when it was using Jacob MacDonald, a player who has played professionally in both a forward and defenseman role, had the power play seen sustained success. Other than that, it’s been hit or miss.
Addison has power play experience. Check out the regularized-adjusted plus-minus (RAPM) for Addison with Minnesota between 2021-24.
As you can see, he’s had steady minutes on the power play this season and the last two seasons. Better yet, he’s above league average in goals for per 60 minutes (GF/60) and expected goals for per 60 minutes (xGF/60) on the man advantage.
If you look at a limited sampling from this season, you’ll see that Addison has already played 48 minutes on the power play.
His Corsi for per 60 minutes (CF/60) is well above league average. It’s something the Sharks desperately need.
It is very clear that the loss of Erik Karlsson and his ability to move the puck out of the defensive zone hit the Sharks much harder than anyone expected. Adding Addison, a more offensively-minded defenseman than the Sharks currently have, should help alleviate some of that impact.
If he’s so good, why did the Wild trade Addison?
The Athletic’s Michael Russo, who has covered the Wild for a while now, thinks that this might be a precursor to another, bigger trade. What’s more, the Wild’s defensive depth is a little better than the Sharks, so Addison was starting to fall down the depth chart.
To help Sharks fans understand where Addison stood in the grand scheme of things, he was still behind former Sharks’ defenseman Jacob Middleton when you look at the Wild’s defensive depth.
What do the Sharks get with Addison? The Athletic’s Eric Stephens says, “Addison should bring some good vision in the attacking zone, skating mobility and some creativity along the blue line. His game does come with defensive warts in five-on-five play, and he lost the trust of Wild coach Dean Evason multiple times. Don’t count on him killing penalties because he hasn’t.”
That’s okay for the Sharks. The team has players like Jan Rutta, Nikita Okhotiuk and Mario Ferraro to play on the penalty kill. None of those players are particularly explosive on the power play.
What did the Sharks give up to acquire Calen Addison?
Going back to Minnesota is San Jose’s fifth-round pick in 2026 and Adam Raska.
Starting with the fifth-round pick, we all know that those are fickle creatures. Sometimes a fifth-rounder turns into Miikka Kiprusoff and sometimes that fifth-rounder turns into Taylor Dakers, who never quite made it to the NHL. The point is, sometimes you hit big and sometimes you don’t.
The true loss to the Sharks is Adam Raska, who, after brief stints in the Sharks lineup in 2021-22 and 2022-23, has not found his way back so far. In seven games with the Barracuda, he has zero points. Raska had fallen down the Sharks’ depth chart behind new acquisitions like Fabian Zetterlund, Jacob Peterson, Filip Zadina and Anthony Duclair. It’s no surprise that Grier decided it was time for a trade, especially with younger players like Daniil Gushchin and Thomas Bordeleau closer to a call up to the NHL than Raska.
Grading the San Jose Sharks trade with the Minnesota Wild
I’m really not sure what this trade does for the Wild other than what Russo suggested as a move to make room for something larger down the road. Addison’s cap hit was minimal at best. He’s signed for one-year with an $825,000 AAV. You can’t get much better than that. So, if I’m grading the Wild, the team gets an incomplete.
As for the Sharks, this is a B-plus move. Addison fills a role that the Sharks desperately needed to fill. He is a puck moving defenseman, though his defense reportedly needs some work. What’s more, the team didn’t give up anything that it could not live without. Raska was not going to make the Sharks. That fifth-round pick would have been anyone’s guess. These were all expendable pieces, so it’s an excellent trade from that standpoint.
However, San Jose loses points because it creates an even larger log jam on the backend. We’re starting to stack up sixth and seventh defensemen without moving any of them out.
There are now eight defensemen on the Sharks roster and two more – Matt Benning and Jacob MacDonald – on injured reserve. That’s ten potential roster players and no signs of what the team plans to do with them all.
That may be tomorrow Grier’s problem, but tomorrow is going to get here sooner than you think.
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