Our Projected Sharks Opening Night Roster

What will the San Jose Sharks’ opening night roster look like?

Keegan and Sheng take an early swing at it, just one week into training camp.

Keep in mind that these are our projections as of Sept. 28 – a lot can change from now until opening night on Oct. 12.

We start off with the locks at forward for the San Jose Sharks (1:30), and Sheng touches on what’s surprised him about Filip Zadina (2:38) so far.

Then we discuss six forwards on the bubble, Thomas Bordeleau (9:11), Oskar Lindblom (13:35), Ryan Carpenter (19:45), Jacob Peterson (22:00), Givani Smith (28:40), and William Eklund (32:32).

Next, we touch on the locks among defensemen (39:06).

There are a lot of blueliners – we counted seven – on the bubble, Henry Thrun (40:20), Jacob MacDonald (45:50), Radim Simek (47:50), Nikolai Knyzhov (50:28), Leon Gawanke (56:05), Nikita Okhotiuk (59:05) and Shakir Mukhamadullin (1:02:00).

UPDATE: A day after this episode dropped, the Sharks claimed defenseman Ty Emberson off waivers. Keegan and Sheng project that Emberson will make the roster ahead of Thrun, just a concession to Thrun being waiver-exempt and Emberson not being so. From Sheng’s perspective, while Thrun projects to be a better overall blueliner in the future, Emberson is probably better defensively right now too. Meanwhile, on the offensive end, Thrun has been good in the pre-season, but it’s just pre-season. He doesn’t project to have a high ceiling on that end of the ice.

Then, a note on the goalies.

Who’s on our 23-man opening roster (1:14:21)? Who’s getting waived? Sheng and Keegan share their joint list.

What will the San Jose Sharks’ opening night roster look like if Logan Couture is unavailable? We forgot to get to it on the podcast, but Sheng has Carpenter in for Couture, while Keegan has Bordeleau replacing the captain.

Finally, we discuss training camp impressions of Danil Gushchin (1:27:50), Ozzy Wiesblatt (1:30:13), Tristen Robins (1:32:30), Nick Cicek, Gannon Laroque, Georgi Romanov, and Eetu Makiniemi.

Subscribe to the San Jose Hockey Now Podcast YouTube channel, we’re trying to get over 1K subscribers!

Listen to the San Jose Hockey Now Podcast — it’s a new link — on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and Google Podcasts.