dailygazette
SAN JOSE, Calif.
It turns out San Jose Sharks general manager Mike Grier can do wrong.
Because for at least the last two years, Grier was the smartest guy in every room, collecting high-end draft picks like rare coins.
It turned the Sharks from a laughingstock to a team that has future Stanley Cup aspirations.
But its fair to wonder if Wednesdays first day of NHL free agency helped improve those chances of finally bringing Lord Stanley to the Bay.
Because tasked with putting the final pieces of this elaborate jigsaw together, Grier went out and signed a crop of players whose resumes best resemble a nightclub security detail.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder here, yes.
But some squinting might be necessary, too.
The reality is simple: Grier has a type.
Some guys (ahem ...) like redheads; Grier likes guys who require custom-built doorframes.
I am frankly surprised he hasnt checked to see if George Kittle can skate.
(I, at 6-foot-9, am now awful on the ice, just in case I was next on the list.) Yes, the Sharks spent Wednesday acquiring expensive, heavy lumber.
Grier gave winger Mason Marchment, a 6-foot-5 forward, a five-year, $33.75 million contract.
Then he handed 6-foot-3 defenseman Jacob Trouba a four-year, $33 million deal.
To finish the trifecta, he traded young defenseman Shakir Mukhamadullin to the Edmonton Oilers for 6-foot-4 defenseman Darnell Nurse, who arrives with four years and a whopping $9.25 million average annual value left on his contract.
There wasnt a Canada Day parade in Edmonton Wednesday it was the Nurse Trade Parade.
That is more than $24 million in cap space burned in less than 24 hours.
And what did that buy? Instead, the Sharks got two defensemen who are not elite and a forward who might just be a surplus to immediate needs.
You can see why the fan base is not reacting with glowing praise.
With all that cap space and all that momentum, this feels underwhelming.
Dont get me wrong, the Sharks are improved.
They will probably get the four extra points they missed out on last year.
But are they a threat in the Western Conference? Thats a stretch.
To be fair, the other side of the coin exists.
The free-agent market was thinner than the walls of my first apartment.
Every player with a pulse had six suitors throwing silly money around.
And with the NHL salary cap consistently rising, these numbers will look slightly less terrifying over time.
Contextually, theyre not terrible right now, either.
Inflation drives people crazy, though.
But it also quickly turns bad contracts into totally acceptable ones.
Ill give this to Grier: He avoided the ultimate sin.
He did not sign anyone to a seven-or eight-year mega-deal that forces you into the dark arts of salary cap manipulation by year three.
What they did add in Trouba and Nurse are top-pairing penalty killers.
They will bring real, unadulterated solidity to their own end of the ice.
Nurse can theoretically provide more offense.
Though, as the Oilers will tell you, his offensive adventures often brought more harm than good.
They are both elite locker room guys who play with a nasty, physical edge.
The Sharks desperately needed some of that functional gravity.
Its like when John Lynch and then-defensive coordinator Robert Saleh tried to build a massive 49ers defensive line before the 2025 season: You buy the monsters up front to protect the smaller guys in the back.
And the Sharks needed some of that size after letting the one-man PK that is Vinny Desharnais walk.
Grier found a viable, if expensive, replacement on the same day.
The ultimate goal here is to create safe operational space for the kids.
I am thinking first and foremost of Will Smith and the young, physically unformed Michael Misa.
Marchment fits that bill, too.
Hes there to ensure nobody runs the kids into the boards.
But that tells me that Griers front office clearly does not trust Igor Chereshev to be the top-line power forward yet.
We already knew Keefer Sherwood is not a top-pairing guy.
And while Colin Graf is outstanding, he is a brains-over-brawn guy.
Marchment is close to the ideal Grier left wing.
Sure, he is often injured, but you would be too if you spent your life crashing around the ice at that size.
It was an overpay, sure, but the open market is a sellers paradise.
That is the cost of doing business in July.
The Sharks played the cheap flier game for a decade.
Graduating to the overpay game is a sign of progress, even if it hurts Griers GPA with the internet analysts.
Still, the skepticism is completely warranted.
An A-plus, plus day this was not.
But the general managers real grade is written in wins and losses.
After Wednesday, it is hard to argue the Sharks wont have more of the former and fewer of the latter.
The question is whether it will be enough to justify the cost.
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