San Jose Sharks Win The Draft and Boost Their Depth In Free Agency

Um, but let's just start from the beginning prior to the draft actually taking place.

The Sharks get huge amount of luck with drawing the second overall pick, but that kind of threw in, uh, a bit of a wrench into what direction were we gonna go in.

Uh, is he gonna choose a defenseman? 'Cause we know that that's desperately needed in our depth.

Or is he gonna go for the next available player? A couple of days before the draft, Mike Grier makes a huge move to bring in Michael Kesselring from the Sabres.

The Sharks acquire a 2026 first-round pick, um, which would be the 27th, and Michael Kesselring from the Buffalo Sabres for our 20th that we got from the Edmonton Oilers.

And then right from there, I'm getting excited.

[laughs]

What is Mike Grier doing? Uh, I see Michael Kesselring.

He's a right-handed defenseman.

He's, he's, he's in the age range of the youthful core, so I'm excited.

I'm thinking, "So this covers it, right? This is our defenseman that we wanted.

Uh, so he's definitely, definitely going for Ivar Stenberg."

Yeah, I think this is, since I've started following hockey, it's been 10 years now, by the way, which is crazy, uh, this has probably been the most exciting off-season so far.

There have been...

And it's not just Mike Grier, right? There's been other teams that have been making some crazy trades, specifically for this draft, people sen- sending, um, you know, pretty well-known players for, for high draft picks and stuff because, like, the, I guess this draft class was just r- really good, at least in the top 10.

Um, if you guys don't remember, because it's been so long now, the Chicago Blackhawks ended up trading their fourth overall pick for Bo Byram, which was an insane move by, I don't even remember the Chicago Blackhawks GM's name, but everyone was like, "What is he doing?" [laughs] Turns out, I think is he was trying to mess up Mike Grier's plans because he had a plan to potentially trade for Bo Byram.

But I actually think that Mike Grier got in the head of the Hawks GM.

[laughs] Absolutely.

'Cause we know that, that Mike Grier is always playing 4D chess.

He's always has all these...

And I'm sure all the GMs do too, but the way that Mike Grier works-

[laughs]

...

it gets me excited.

Like, this is, this is not it.