To MTL:
14th overall pick ‘24
To SJ:
1st round pick ‘24 (from Jets)
Choice of 2 of Harris/Kovacevic/Mesar/Barron
Thoughts?
Thoughts:
- I get you’d want to capture some value out of guys that are trending expendable for Montreal. So how do they profile for the Sharks needs?
- Being young and an NHL defender isn’t enough for the Sharks to seriously deprecate the 14th overall. The concrete needs are specifically top 4 RD. Barron, Kovacevic, and Harris all have some track record at the NHL level, but are they trending towards top 4 difference makers? The Sharks probably have decent potential solutions for their third pairing. Personally, for the short term I’m totally fine using UFA or the odd cap savings trade to source decent vet placeholders for top 4 roles, with far less importance placed on youth.
- At a glance, Mesars profiles pretty similarly to what the Sharks already have in Bordeleau, Guschin, and to a lesser degree Robbins. These are players that don’t really mesh well with Grier’s stated goal of being hard to play against, or the moves he’s made to target bigger players with a heavier game.
- Moving from 14th to ~27th hurts from the Sharks perspective, essentially moving out of the 5-15th tier where there’s not a clear consensus on prospect rankings to the next tier of prospects that are considerably less interesting. From 14 the Sharks can either sit back and take the BPA/faller from that tier or put some package together to move up a few slots and get a player they really like.
- From Montreals perspective this doesn’t seem to hurt at all as all of the players offered seem easily replaced or unlikely to be in future plans.
Beyond just getting young NHL roster players (and likely bottom of the roster players at that) what is actually motivating the Sharks to make this move?