Sheng Peng
“I don’t know if there are locker room issues.”
That’s what Doug Wilson told us last week, after the Draft.
“Sources indicate significant friction built up between [Evander] Kane and a number of his teammates last season,” Frank Seravalli of The Daily Faceoff reported last month, “frustration that was expressed clearly to management in exit interviews.”
Believe who you want, but there’s no doubt that the San Jose Sharks’ UFA signings today, center Nick Bonino, winger Andrew Cogliano, and goalie James Reimer, were all repetitions of a theme.
“These guys are such hard-working guys, and they don’t cut any corners. They’re the consummate pros,” Sharks head coach Bob Boughner offered. “As a coach, looking at the guys we’ve added, I think that they’re all in that same role. For me, they’re guys that are good pros, that are reliable. They supply that veteran presence to our room.”
And of course, they can still play — they may not be Bonino, Cogliano, and Reimer circa 2016, but 33-year-old Bonino is a reasonable bet to still be an NHL-caliber third-line center, 34-year-old Cogliano should be a speedy, reliable bottom-six penalty killer, and 33-year-old Reimer can still play tandem minutes.
They also come at a decent cost: San Jose Hockey Now reported Bonino’s two-year, 2.05 million AAV agreement and Cogliano’s one-year, $1 million pact. Pierre LeBrun reported Reimer at two years, $2.25 million AAV. That’s $5.3 million next year for three NHL-caliber additions.
Now let’s not get lost in a simplistic narrative: Bringing in Bonino, Cogliano, and Reimer doesn’t repair a Kane-fractured locker room. Meaning, don’t blame just Kane for whatever’s going on in San Jose’s room. It’s unlikely that Kane can be the only locker room “issue” if a story like that is being leaked to Seravalli.
But adding three battle-tested veterans on Day One of free agency sounds like a wakeup call to me.
Boughner didn’t seem to disagree: “I think that sends a message to the rest of the team as well. These guys are so well-respected and the young guys are gonna have a great example of what to look up to, as well as the vets.”
It’s also a shot across the bow to San Jose Sharks youngsters like John Leonard, Noah Gregor, and Alexei Melnichuk, for example, who often looked overmatched by the NHL but were given minutes regardless.
“Last year, I put a little burden on Boogie,” Wilson acknowledged.
Last off-season, the San Jose Sharks’ primary veteran acquisitions up front were Matt Nieto and 41-year-old Patrick Marleau. For a forward group that was already shallow, this wasn’t close to enough.
Now? With the addition of a rock-solid 3C in Bonino and another Nieto type in Cogliano to complement the still-present Nieto? To go along with the potential emergences of Rudolfs Balcers, Alexander Barabanov, and Dylan Gambrell last year as NHL-caliber forwards?
Wilson offered this hope: “The young players will have to come in and knock the door down, take a spot on the team.”
That was a prayer, and not a hope, over the last two seasons: Remember Danil Yurtaykin starting 2018-19 in San Jose’s top-six and Gregor being handed the 3C job to kick off the 2019-20 campaign.
This time around, Gregor, Leonard, Joachim Blichfeld, Sasha Chmelevski, Jeffrey Viel, and Ivan Chekhovich may actually need to earn their NHL minutes.
Bonino and Cogliano, in particular, should also provide more detail-oriented play than the San Jose Sharks forwards, young and old, did last year.
“You heard these guys speak about how hard they approach everyday and prepare, how important working away from the puck is, playing and taking pride in their defensive game, just as much as they do their offensive game,” Boughner noted. “I think that’s going to help take some of these important, heavy minutes away from from Tommy and Cooch.”
A greater commitment and improved execution in the team defense will also ease the load on San Jose’s beleaguered goaltending and defensive corps.
“These guys bring something to the table that I think makes everybody around them better in many different ways,” Wilson said of the duo, who were teammates in Anaheim from 2011 to 2014. “I’ve been trying to acquire both of them for several years.”
Again, this isn’t Bonino and Cogliano circa 2016. If it were, I wouldn’t mind writing the San Jose Sharks’ return ticket to the post-season, especially in a weaker Pacific Division. They were that good.
But this is a quietly better San Jose squad, that’s addressed on and off-the-ice issues with three solid NHL vets, three more than they started the off-season with.
“We feel that we’ve got, with the ingredients in place and in some of these veterans, that we are a playoff team,” Wilson declared.
Wishful thinking? Less wishful than this time last off-season, perhaps.