San Jose Sharks
Vlasic Has Been Practicing for Over a Month — When Will He Play Again?
Marc-Edouard Vlasic has been practicing since mid-November, but according to the San Jose Sharks, there’s still no timeline for his return to action.
Vlasic missed the beginning of training camp with what he described as an upper back injury. In late September, he started skating on his own.
When the San Jose Sharks submitted their opening night roster on Oct. 7, Vlasic was designated as a Non-Roster player, meaning that he didn’t have to be counted on the 23-man roster.
His $7 million AAV, part of an eight-year, $56 million contract inked in 2017, still counted against the cap, but the rebuilding Sharks have plenty of cap space.
“I’d say within two weeks I’m back, for sure,” Marc-Edouard Vlasic said on Oct. 13.
Vlasic didn’t re-join practice until Nov. 18. Usually though, that would be a sign that he was close to coming back to action.
Vlasic and Thompson skated together, extra pairing
— Sheng Peng (@Sheng_Peng) November 18, 2024
Not so in this case. Vlasic has been a regular participant in practice since, but his Non-Roster status hasn’t changed in the last month and a half.
“He’s building up. Obviously, the conditioning was the big thing, missing training camp,” San Jose Sharks head coach Ryan Warsofsky said on Wednesday. “He’s skating a lot here as of late, so I think it’s getting closer and closer. But that was a big thing. It’s getting over the conditioning hump.”
Going to the AHL on a conditioning assignment is possible — Vlasic hasn’t played there since Jan. 2008, when he appeared in one game for the Worcester Sharks — but that hasn’t happened yet.
“We haven’t got into that,” Warsofsky said. “That’s a Mike [Grier] question.”
The San Jose Sharks, essentially, don’t need to make a roster decision on Vlasic, or any other players affected by his inclusion on the roster, long as the veteran isn’t officially on the roster. The Sharks could also place Vlasic on IR, except he doesn’t appear to be injured.
For example, if the Sharks were to activate Vlasic for their currently full 23-man roster tomorrow, they would likely need to send a waiver-exempt player like Shakir Mukhamadullin down, or place the injured Jake Walman or Carl Grundstrom on IR.
“We’ve talked to Marc, and he understands the situation and where we’re at, what we expect, and where he needs to get to, to play,” Warsofsky said. “We’ve seen a better Marc the last few days.”
But that said, there’s still no timeline for Vlasic’s return, with half a season in the books.
San Jose Hockey Now made a request to speak with Vlasic on Wednesday, but the Sharks declined the request, citing team policy. The organization doesn’t usually make IR or non-roster players available to the media.
Reading between the lines, do the San Jose Sharks still think that Vlasic can help them?
“He’s been in this league a long time, right? He’s one of the better guys at shutting down teams’ top players when he was really in his prime, and I thought he did some good things last year, he had some good stretches again,” Warsofsky said.
Vlasic won a gold medal with Canada at the 2014 Olympics and 2016 World Cup and was considered the world’s top defensive defenseman then. Over the last four seasons though, the 37-year-old has been used mostly on San Jose’s bottom pairing.
And the Sharks don’t seem in a hurry to bring their long-time blueliner back.
Vlasic’s contract expires after the 2025-26 campaign.
This non roster spot status is so hard to understand. Like is he part of the Sharks? Does he need to be at practise and follow all the rules? So many questions. But wish both him and Logan the best.
He is still a shark technically. NHL non-roster players are approved by the commissioner himself. Vlasic still counts against the cap but he doesn’t effect the 23-man roster limit. Non-roster can be for a variety of reasons not including injury. Sharks put Evander Kane as non-roster while working on buying him out a few years back.
Is it possible that “conditioning” is code for looks old and slow? I don’t know if he has NHL level ability anymore since there have been so few times he’s showed it the last few years but the group they keep trotting out there is terrible to the tune of 8 straight losses. Please correct me anyone but doesn’t it look like other teams forwards skating circles around our defense and the only reason there haven’t been more blowout losses is because the forwards are actually NHL level talent that unfortunately plays a lot of defense. Like so much they… Read more »
When hell freezes over.
Man he used to be a hell of a player, he was so damn good in his prime, secret MVP to Sharks success they had back then tbh
I fully expect the Sharks to buy him out this summer, not because they need the cap space (they don’t), but because they want the roster spot to go to someone else. Once a trade or two happens later this season and opens up a D sport on the roster, Vlasic will likely get back into the lineup. It will be a final opportunity to prove he can still play in this league, and possibly get another (league minimum) contract somewhere else next year.
He was one of the Sharks’ greats – a shutdown stud from day 1 until he aged out. I look forward to seeing Sheng’s write-up when pickles retires.
I’m still fascinated with how quickly Vlasic went from top shutdown D on a gold medal Canada Olympic team to a 7th D. I know Sheng has addressed this in a previous article. Other former Sharks with interesting steep declines were Heatly and Cheechoo. Probably skating (no longer able to get to areas of the ice to be effective) is the underlying issue with all of them.
That also surprised me. But Pickles just played an ungodly amount of NHL hockey from age 19 on. Most defensemen don’t take on the level of responsibility he did until they’re 23-25 or even older. It’s sort of like he crammed a career and a half worth of minutes into a single career. I guess it just caught up to him. When your value is all about positional smarts and you no longer have the feet to get yourself into position, I suppose the decline looks precipitous.
The thing that surprised me was his game was never really about speed…at all, so I thought his contract would age really well but it seemed like once Karlsson came over and Braun was no longer playing opposite of him, his game declined really fast. I wondered if maybe Braun was stronger defensively and that maybe masked some of Vlasic’s deficiencies… or maybe Vlasic just didn’t trust his d-partner and played differently (I noticed he would frequently get caught out of position around then). Or maybe the game and competition just continued to get faster and his style became less… Read more »
Vlasic has more experience and has seen more situations than the coaching staff combined and has played in high leverage situations at the highest level, he’s getting paid a boat load of money and I hope that he doesn’t just sulk in the corner instead of being a great teacher and leader to the young guys.
I would like to see him on the ice again. It can’t get worse, and maybe he can help teach the kids some things.
This article might be one of the quickest to get outdated.
According to Max Miller, Pickles led the post skate stretch this morning and slated in with Rutta tonight against the Lightning.
Welcome back Pickles.
I think he’s playing cause Sheng asked about him lol