The Sharks are right there again, but being right there in 2026-27 has a vastly different context for a franchise that finally has regained relevance after missing out on the playoffs for seven straight seasons.
When things were really popping in San Jose, with top centers Patrick Marleau and Joe Thornton helping to fill the Shark Tank with fans and expectations, the perpetual narrative was that the Sharks stood on the cusp of winning the Stanley Cup.
It was a realistic thought, but was left unfulfilled. The Sharks’ lone trip to the Cup Final in 2016 fizzled out in a six-game loss to the Penguins.
Nowadays, all the talk rightly centers on Macklin Celebrini, their dynamic young pivot, and the Sharks shaking the doldrums and qualifying for the postseason. The Bruins will be in San Jose on Tuesday to experience firsthand the franchise’s ongoing revival show, though entering weekend play, availability of the hobbled Celebrini (lower body injury) remained in question.
With Thursday’s overtime win in St. Louis, the Sharks moved to 3-1-0, their most promising start in years. Two years ago, under new coach Ryan Warsfosky, the ex-Marshfield High blue liner, they opened with nine consecutive losses (0-7-2). Last season, Warsofsky’s charges dropped the opening six (0-4-2).
The Sharks entered play this weekend slotted fourth in the Western Conference with their .750 points percentage. Again, it’s early, but they at least have avoided the season turning into an October shipwreck.
As the puck was about to drop on the new season, Warsofsky steered far clear of making playoff predictions when meeting with Sharks beat reporters.
“Not going to go there,” said Warsofsky, fresh from signing a contract extension with general manager Mike Grier. “You guys can set the expectations.”
Grier, raised in Holliston, former Boston University forward, and son of former Patriots executive Bobby Grier, was more philosophical about where the season could be headed. He noted his club’s 34-point jump in the standings last season and chose to focus on seeing continued growth in individual players and team performance.
If his Sharks were to finish with, say, 98 points and still not make the cut, Grier mused, “Then it kind of is what it is — it’s sports.”
From the historical perspective, what is playing out for the Sharks is almost a mirror image of what the then-Quebec Nordiques experienced in their years before leading to their departure for Denver. (Reader alert: This in no way is hinting that the Sharks are about to beat it out of the Bay Area.)
Grier this past June lucked out in the lottery, with the second pick falling into his lap, and he used it to select smooth Swedish forward Ivar Stenberg. The rookie is living large these days on a No. 2 trio with Alexander Wennberg and Kiefer Sherwood.
Over the last four drafts, all with Grier in charge, the Sharks made six Round 1 picks, four of those in the top four, including the sensational/generational Celebrini (No. 1, 2024). Other prime-cut picks included Will Smith (No. 4, 2023) and Michael Misa (No. 2, 2025).
The bedraggled Nordiques, who departed for the Rocky Mountains in the summer of 1995, led the draft with three No. 1 selections across three consecutive years, including Mats Sundin (1989), Owen Nolan (1990), and Eric Lindros (1991). Over their final eight drafts, 1987-94, the Nordiques made nine picks in the top 12, not including perhaps the top selection in Quebec-Colorado history, Joe Sakic, who was still on the board at No. 15 in 1987.
Lindros refused to sign in Quebec, ultimately leading to the franchise filching the sublime Peter Forsberg in trade with the Flyers. Lindros ultimately was inducted into the Hockey Hall Fame … as was Sakic, as was Sundin, as was Forsberg.
Sakic, then age 26, and Forsberg, 22, reported to the first Avalanche training camp in the fall of 1995 and led the team in scoring en route to winning the Stanley Cup the following June.
No small footnote to it all: There’s no knowing if Sakic and Forsberg, as brilliant as they were, would have hoisted the Cup that June, if ever, had GM Pierre Lacroix not traded for the great Patrick Roy that December. It took a goalie. It always takes a goalie.
Roy was still there, and still stellar, when Lacroix later traded for ex-Bruins great Ray Bourque, leading to a second Cup triumph in June 2001.
“It’s go time,” Grier said on the eve of this season’s start, focusing on avoiding the recent October pratfalls. “We can’t afford to wait for guys who aren’t quite ready.”
Celebrini, prior to his leg injury, chalked up five assists in his opening two games (just short of 45 minutes of ice time). No slow warm-up for him.
The young, rich talent up front led Grier over the summer to focus on adding size and snarl to the back end, particularly with the acquisition of ex-Ranger (via Anaheim) Jacob Trouba as a free agent. Trouba’s presence back there offers cover for all those prime, young forwards. Grier also dealt with Edmonton for Darnell Nurse and with Buffalo for ex-Northeastern backliner Michael Kesselring. That’s a lot of back end heft, the trio ranging 6 feet 3 inches to 6-5 and averaging 215 pounds.
The goalie — it’s always about the goalie — remains a question mark. No. 1 Yaroslav Askarov, the one-time prized Nashville asset, has yet to prove an elite difference maker. Alex Nedeljkovic is a stout backup, but never has shown signs of being a workhorse. As things stand, if the Sharks finally shake the protracted DNQs, they’ll enter the postseason with Nedeljkovic their lone stopper with any playoff experience (Carolina, 2021).
The true mirror image of Quebec-Colorado now would see Grier bring in Connor Hellebuyck, the US Olympic gold medalist who remains suspended by the Jets after he chose not to attend training camp in light of his standing trade request. He’s going somewhere, eventually. If it’s San Jose, “Helly” could be Californa’s second golden gate of a bridge — this one to a Cup.
IN REMEMBRANCE
Cup-winning defenseman Odelein dies at age 58
RIP former Canadiens blueliner Lyle Odelein, who succumbed last weekend to a heart attack, years after an innocuous, if not bizarre, mishap on the golf course. He was 58.
Per multiple reports, “Odie,” a member of Montreal’s most recent Stanley Cup-winning team (1993), some eight years ago was pricked by a cactus needle during a round of golf in Arizona. Thus began his physical woes of polyneuropathy.
The cactus needle set off a parade of horribles, including a near-fatal blood infection and multiple organ failures that led to transplants of the former rugged defenseman’s liver, kidneys, and aortic valve.
Always a willing scrapper in his playing days, with a career 2,316 penalty minutes, the Quill Lake, Saskatchewan, farm boy soldiered on in the years after the ordeal.
Odelein (1,056 NHL games) enjoyed a long NHL run after his six-plus seasons with the Canadiens. Some of his best days came during his two-season stay in Columbus, where he was the Blue Jackets’ inaugural captain upon being whisked away from the Coyotes in the June 2000 expansion draft.
“If he saw that maybe one of the younger players was struggling with their confidence, he wouldn’t hesitate to come talk to the coaches and make sure we knew about it, that maybe a different way could work,” then-coach Dave King noted over the weekend to The Athletic’s Aaron Portzline.
King also praised the oft-underappreciated Odelein for his puck skills, physicality, and his ability to make the first pass to break through a forecheck.
Following his retirement from the Penguins in 2005-06, Odelein and his wife remained in Western Pennsylvania, where they owned a number of Supercuts franchises.
Here in the Hub of Hockey, the ever-smiling Odelein remains best remembered for his days with the Canadiens. He was in Montreal’s top four backline mix on the ’93 Cup team with Eric Desjardins, Mathieu Schneider, and Patrice Brisebois, all backed by Roy in net.
ETC.
Laviolette approaching longevity milestone
The Bruins on Saturday night in Los Angeles will get their first look at the Kings in the post-Anze Kopitar era, and with Franklin’s own Peter Laviolette directing their bench.
Laviolette, 61, long ago was on a sure path to take over the Boston bench, after two seasons directing AHL Providence and a year on the varsity staff as one of Pat Burns’s assistants. Burns was canned that 2000-01 season, with Mike Keenan taking over as interim, and then-GM Mike O’Connell opted to hire Robbie Ftorek rather than promote Laviolette.
Ftorek, whose only NHL head coaching job was more than a decade earlier in Los Angeles, was fired late into his second season and never worked again in the NHL.
The LA job is Laviolette’s seventh as an NHL bench boss. On Tuesday, with the Oilers in town, he’ll coach career game No. 1,599, overtaking Ken Hitchcock for the No. 8 spot on the NHL’s all-time career coaching list. He is on target this season to reach No. 6, currently held by fellow Yank John Tortorella (1,628).
Tortorella, who grew up in Concord, directed the Lightining to the Cup in 2004, followed by Laviolette with the Hurricanes in 2006.
Quiz: Name the lone other American-born coach to have coached a minimum 1,000 NHL regular-season games.
Dravecky signs on
The Islanders signed an entry-level contract with Slovak defenseman Vladimir Dravecky, the 18-year-old son of the former AHL Manchester blue liner of the same name.
The junior Dravecky, playing his second season of junior (OHL Guelph), was chosen No. 141 by the Islanders in this past June’s draft. He was born in Manchester, N.H., during his dad’s two-season stay with the Monarchs.
Meanwhile, pops Dravecky, 41, continues to skate on, suiting up again with Trinec Ocelari in Czechia’s top pro league. Trinec has won five Czech titles in Dravecky’s long run on the roster and he has played in five IIHF World Championships with Team Slovakia.
If the Islanders’ prospect ever makes it to Long Island, his three-year ELC will pay him an average of just over $1 million per year. The NHL’s altered financial universe increasingly will encourage clubs to hustle kids into the show as a means of staying under the salary cap. Not all those kids will be ready for primetime, but ready or not, money will dictate.
The NHL is not a development league, as Bruins coach Marco Sturm noted again in recent days, but the evolving financial dynamics guarantee that many clubs will be forced to accept the growing pains of cheap(er), developing labor on the roster.
Loose pucks
Odd fit recently, seeing Conor Garland, a Scituate native and Boston Jr. Bruins product, riding fourth line for the Blue Jackets with former Bruin Danton Heinen and Ryan Lomberg. The versatile and smart Garland, 30, can be effective on any line, including on the power play. But the Blue Jackets, after acquiring him in trade from the Canucks last season, extended him for a hefty six years/$36 million. Two weeks into that payout, that’s an overpay for a fourth-line role. Per puckpedia.com, Garland has total trade protection for the first three years of the deal. Perhaps an offer to return home would render moot his no-trade provision. The Blue Jackets also recently had to absorb Adam Fantilli’s $13.75 million cap hit, which could increase their incentive to move a $6 million fourth line-winger … Highly touted Gavin McKenna, chosen No. 1 by the Maple Leafs in this June’s draft, tallied his first NHL goal Tuesday in his fourth game. In the hyperventilating Maple Leafs environment, the wait was interminable. Auston Matthews and Jack Roslovic had the helpers on goal No. 1, which helped pace a 5-4 win over the Predators. Remains to be seen if the wunderkind wing should have jumped right in or if better to have joined in the spring after a second season at Penn State, where last year he led the Nittany Lions with 15-36–51 in 35 games … The Panthers sound relieved that Aleksander Barkov’s latest injury will keep the franchise pivot out of the lineup for but 6-8 weeks (after missing all of last season with a mangled knee). We’ll see. Could be they are providing the best spin available. Sam Reinhart stepped into the 1C role, flanked by newcomer Brady Tkachuk and ex-Bruin Brad Marchand, only to see Marchand crumple up and be helped off the ice with an injury to his left leg during the Panthers’ 2-1 win Tuesday in LA … A week into the new season, Penguins forward Egor Chinakhov, acquired in the December deal that sent Heinen to Columbus, owned the hardest shot (98.89 miles per hour), with Darren Raddysh, the key offseason addition to the Toronto backline, topping the entire NHL herd with six shots above 90 m.p.h. None of his 11 shots to make it to the net in four games made it by the goalie … Quiz answer: Marshfield’s Mike Sullivan, Bruins coach from 2003-06, coached his 1,000th regular-season game on opening night here this season with his Rangers. The ex-Boston University forward (Class of ’90) was behind the Penguins bench for their Cups in 2016 and ′17 … Former Bruins goalie Malcolm Subban, pick No. 24 in the 2012 draft and P.K.’s younger brother, is back playing for a second season with Pardubice in Czechia’s top pro league. He’s there with fellow ex-Bruins Tomas Nosek, Jakub Lauko, and Vladimir Sobotka. Subban, 32, entered weekend action with a line of 4-0-0/1.75 goals-against average/.919 save percentage … The best late pick in that 2012 draft turned out to be Union College defenseman Shayne Gostibehere, chosen No. 78 by the Flyers. Through NHL games of Thursday, he had 466 points, second only to Toronto’s Morgan Rielly (fifth among the entire 2012 draft class). Now age 33, Gostisbehere put his name on the Cup in June with the Hurricanes … Insomniacs considering hypnosis as a therapy might turn to the website hellebucks.com. It keeps up-to-the-second track — much like the whirring tickers that denote US national debt — of how much Hellebuyck has forfeited in pay while suspended. The former UMass Lowell stopper has five years remaining on the deal he signed with the Jets, worth an average payout of $8.5 million per season. As of early Friday evening, his lost earnings approached $425,000, piling up at $38,660 per day — about $3,000 more than a Mass. resident pays these days for a full year (all included) at UMass Lowell. Full tuition includes a free ticket to River Hawks home games.
Kevin Paul Dupont can be reached at kevin.dupont@globe.com.