San Jose Sharks
Taylor Turnquist, Nico Sturm’s Fiancée, Shares Realities of Getting Traded
When a player gets traded, his family gets traded too.
Nico Sturm was dealt by the San Jose Sharks to the Florida Panthers the day before the Mar. 7 Trade Deadline.
Sturm and his fiancee, Taylor Turnquist, were realists and had been expecting movement, given his impending unrestricted free agent status. Turnquist spoke with San Jose Hockey Now twice, once before the Deadline and once after, about the experience.
With the Deadline approaching, Turnquist said on Feb. 27 that she was thinking about it everyday.
“It’s exactly a week away from today, and it’s always just kind of in the back of your mind, just the anticipation of it all, if it were to happen.”
High on the priority list for her, were the logistics associated with the move.
“Do we keep our apartment? Do we move stuff into storage? Where are we going to be, how far? What to do with your cars?” Turnquist said. “Nico, being the player, is thinking less of that stuff and just focusing on playing, but me, being at home, I’m thinking about all those logistic things and is it going to happen? Is it not going to happen? Am I going to have to move? Am I going to be staying?”
The San Jose Sharks were on a two-week road trip, from Feb. 23 until the night before the Deadline, meaning if centerman Sturm were to be traded more than 12 hours before the 12 PM PT Deadline, he wouldn’t have returned to San Jose to pack more.
In the end, between the Sharks’ pre-Deadline road trip, and the Panthers hitting the road right after the deal, Sturm basically lived out of the same suitcase for over three weeks, according to Turnquist’s Mar. 17 Instagram Story:
Leading up to the Deadline, there were plenty of conversations with Sturm’s agent Matt Keator and Sharks general manager Mike Grier, all of which he shared with Turnquist.
“I always ask questions, and Nico’s really good at keeping me in the loop. If he does have an important conversation, he’ll come home and he’ll say, ‘I talked to Griersy today. This is what was said, this is what’s going on, this was what might happen,’” Turnquist said. “When he’s talking to his agent, he’ll always be open with me.’”
Turnquist and Sturm have been together since their freshman year of college, back in 2016, while they were both playing for Clarkson University.
Before they’d even met, they had even chosen to wear the same number – 17.
They’re a rare hockey couple – each having won the biggest prize in their league.
Sturm won the Stanley Cup with Colorado Avalanche in 2022, while Turnquist lifted the Isobel Cup with the Boston Pride in her rookie season in 2021. Those wins, paired with Turnquist’s two national championships at Clarkson, certainly make the duo a hockey power couple.
Turnquist has since retired from professional hockey, but she now holds an Occupational Therapy Assistant degree and has passed her boards.
A few days before the Deadline, Sturm had heard rumblings about a potential Florida move. But Turnquist didn’t think too much of it, given all the rumors flying around the Trade Deadline.
The destination became officially Florida just before a San Jose Sharks’ morning skate on Mar. 6 at Ball Arena, allowing Sturm the rare chance to say goodbye to his now-former teammates.
“He said that was nice, because sometimes when you get traded, you’re not at the rink, you’re at the hotel, and maybe guys are taking their pre-game nap, so you don’t really get that chance to say goodbye. You just have to shoot everybody a text,” Turnquist said on Mar. 11 . “He said it’s always kind of sad, emotional, you say thank you to everybody, good luck, and hopefully you’ll see him again sometime in the near future. I think it was nice for him that he was at the rink and was able to be surrounded by all the guys.”
Turnquist, herself, got the call as she was heading home from the grocery store Thursday morning.
“Nico had called, and I knew right away, it happened,” Turnquist said. “I was in my car and he called me, and he’s like, ‘Hey, I can’t talk very long.’ Because he had to call his agent, he had to talk to the team, he had to do all these things. ‘I just want to tell you before you find out anywhere else I’m being traded to the Panthers. I’ll give you a call the second I have a minute. But I just wanted to let you know.’”
Her first message after hearing the news went to her family, who Sturm lived with in Minnesota during his rookie season.
Her two brothers had been keeping up to date on all the trade rumors, apprising her of their speculations any time an NHL center went on IR.
“The first thing I did was text in my family group chat with my parents and my two brothers, ‘We’re going to Florida,’” Turnquist said. “I actually have a twin brother, and he texted back right away and said something like, ‘Go Panthers baby!!!!!!’ with a bunch of exclamation points. And my mom, she sent back, ‘NO WAY’ in all caps. And then my dad, we always laugh, he’s a man of few words, and he hates texting, so he just will send back, like one word or one emoji, and he just sends a thumbs up emoji.”
But the realities of the Deadline are hardly encompassed by the moment one finds out about a trade.
Behind the scenes, the waiting game can take a toll, and moving can be difficult for anyone – although Turnquist and Sturm said they have it easier than most, with no pets or kids to complicate things.
Turnquist and Sturm’s faith also helps them stay steady through uncertain times.
“We both rely on and tell ourselves that God has a plan for him and a plan for us, and it’s in His hands, and everything’s going to happen as it should,” Turnquist said. “That faith in who He is and what He has in store for us is what makes us so calm about the whole situation.
But still, Turnquist and Sturm had laid down roots in San Jose, having been there for nearly three years.
“I actually have made such good connections and friendships here, even outside the Sharks organization,” Turnquist said. “I did coach with the San Jose Jr. Sharks, so I made so many friends through that, and they’re friends I hang out with – I’m hanging out with some of those girls that I met tonight just through coaching. So that’s going to be really hard to leave, just because I built such a community here, being here so long.”
Something Turnquist still values after the end of her professional career is exercise – she and a few coaching friends have formed a run club and ran a half marathon the weekend before the trade.
She’s taken advantage of the weather and the multitude of workout classes in San Jose – something Fort Lauderdale will also enable her to do.
“I have already heard from a couple of the wives and girlfriends, ‘You’re going to love it here. The weather is amazing. Fort Lauderdale is such a great place to live.’ So I’m super-excited that I’ll be able to still run and do all those kinds of things outside.”
Turnquist’s fellow significant others, both in San Jose and Florida, played a key support role amid the turmoil and stress of the Deadline.
Just over a week before the Deadline, early in the San Jose Sharks’ 14-day road trip, the significant others who remained in San Jose had a nearly four-hour lunch where they traded stories.
“That’s the best part about all this is we’re all in the same situation, we’re all going through this together,” Turnquist said. “It was just so nice, because we all have such different experiences. And we were actually talking quite a long time about everybody’s experience with the Trade Deadline in the past – all their different stories and what’s happened to them and what they did when they got traded, how they dealt with all that…It’s so nice to have that community and just be able to lean on each other. “
And on the Florida side of things, Turnquist said she got many messages welcoming her to their city.
“I was added to the wives and girlfriends group chat, which is nice to get everyone’s contact saved and that kind of thing. We played with the Gadjoviches in San Jose, so I knew Allison, and she reached out. And same with Emelie Kulikov, we played with them in Minnesota, so she also reached out, and she’s like, ‘We’re so excited for you to come.’”
Turnquist even received a message from Julie Zito, the wife of Panthers general manager Bill Zito.
The Panthers also set Sturm and Turnquist up with a realtor, and they’re hoping to find the right place as soon as possible – with the hope that Sturm can stop living in a hotel sooner rather than later. While she headed home to Minnesota following the trade, Turnquist will return to San Jose in a few weeks to pack up their things and forward them to Florida, while Sturm continues playing with his new team.
But no matter how exciting a welcoming new team and the prospect of a Stanley Cup run may be, there’s still plenty of sadness in leaving San Jose behind.
“It’s honestly, really sad,” Turnquist said. “I’m not sure if you saw the Instagram video that the Sharks posted of Nico. Honestly, watching that I was in tears just because we were there for three years, and it started to feel like home. It’s hard in this lifestyle to feel at home wherever we’re playing, just because you’re not guaranteed to stay there, and you might only be there a short period of time. But being in San Jose for three years, it really did start to feel like our home.”
And Turnquist had a specific message for the city of San Jose.
“We want to thank everybody in San Jose for making our three years so memorable. We’re so grateful that we had those three years there. And maybe, you never know, we might end up back there one day.”
