Sheng’s Plan for Rebuilding Sharks

The San Jose Sharks find themselves at a crossroads with their reset: Does Tomas Hertl want to come back to the Sharks? And if he wants to leave, what’s San Jose’s next step?

But we’re going to do something different today: What would we do if we were the GMs of the Sharks? About Hertl and the big contracts?

Caution: The Sharks are going to Shark and go their own way. So this is probably about an hour of fantasy.

But before we slip into our suits as co-General Managers, Sheng gives us a status update on Mushu (1:03). We then dive into the injury status of James Reimer, the acquisition of goaltender Alex Stalock, and what it means for the team’s flagging playoff hopes (5:00).

To set up this roleplay, we reference back to Episode 20 where Sheng asked two past/present NHL executives what they would do if they were the San Jose Sharks (15:35).

Why Shouldn’t Sharks Tank?

We kick off our armchair GM role by breaking down what the Sharks’ current “reset” plan is (28:51) — and then outline what we’d do differently (37:28).

Unfortunately, we’re forced to trade Tomas Hertl at the Trade Deadline (38:45).

Next, we approach the expensive, long-standing veterans on the team (Brent Burns, Marc-Edouard Vlasic, Erik Karlsson, and Logan Couture) and allow them to decide their fates within the organization (41:45).

We then break down the importance of strong leadership during a rebuild and different ways to acquire it either internally or through free agent acquisitions (55:22).

We call back to Dean Lombardi’s 1996 off-season acquisitions and how the moves made during that summer helped set up the success of the San Jose Sharks for the next 15 years (1:04:40).

We then get to the Timo Meier question: Should the Sharks keep or hold him right now (1:09:40)?

We then evaluate the coaching staff and determine if we keep Bob Boughner as head coach (1:12:30). What’s the word that he won’t be allowed to use?

What do you think about our plan to rebuild the San Jose Sharks?

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