Sharks Called Shots

At least one San Jose player who has never appeared in an NHL regular-season game dresses for all four of the Sharks' 2026-27 preseason games.

Grant Lombard

Resolves in 9 days, Sep 26, 2026

This follows from the arithmetic in the piece rather than from a read on any individual prospect, which is why it is worth scoring. Nineteen of the 41 players San Jose lists are at 100 or more career NHL games and the new collective bargaining agreement caps each of them at two exhibition appearances, so at most 38 of roughly 80 lineup slots across four games can go to that group. The other 22 have to fill the rest, and 11 of the 22 have never played an NHL game. Against the call, and it is a real risk: four games divided across 22 eligible bodies is under two each, so a staff that rotates evenly can hold every one of them to two and never play anybody four times. Injury or a reassignment to the Barracuda before September 26 does the same thing to any individual candidate. The named candidates on the list at filing are Ivar Stenberg, Filip Bystedt, Quentin Musty, Andre Gasseau, Carson Wetsch, Jimmy Huntington, Eric Pohlkamp, Mattias Havelid, Leo Sahlin Wallenius, Phillip Sinn and Kyle Keyser.

Dmitry Orlov records more power-play time on ice than Luca Cagnoni in San Jose's regular-season opener against Florida on October 1, 2026.

Dom Cahill

Resolves in 15 days, Oct 2, 2026

Orlov played 203.5 power-play minutes last season, the most of any San Jose defenseman, and was on the ice for 32 of the club's 54 power-play goals. Cagnoni has 25.9 power-play minutes in his NHL career across nine games in two seasons. For the call: Grier's own July reasoning for signing Nurse, Trouba and Kesselring was so the club would not have to rush its young defensemen, and he spoke about Cagnoni in August in conditionals. Against it: both times San Jose has called Cagnoni up it has put him on the power play immediately, at first-unit rates, which is a decision somebody made twice on purpose. One opening-night box score settles it.

Neither Filip Bystedt nor Quentin Musty is on San Jose's active roster for the Sharks' 2026-27 regular-season opener against Florida on October 1, 2026. Scored off the roster San Jose dresses and reports for that game: if either man appears in the box score, or is listed on the club's active roster rather than as a healthy scratch sent to the AHL, the call is a miss. Both absent is a hit. If the opener is postponed or the season does not begin on schedule, the row resolves against San Jose's first regular-season game actually played.

Dom Cahill

Resolves in 21 days, Oct 8, 2026

Nolan Allan is on San Jose's opening-night NHL roster for 2026-27.

Dom Cahill

Resolves by Oct 15, 2026

The mechanism, not the performance, is the whole basis. PuckPedia lists Allan's waivers eligibility as Eligible and Luca Cagnoni's as Exempt, both read 2026-08-30, so San Jose can move Cagnoni to the Barracuda at no risk and cannot move Allan without exposing him to the other 31 clubs. Sheng Peng reached the same conclusion in NBC Sports Bay Area on July 24, writing that because Allan is not waiver-exempt he appears to be a good option for the seventh defenseman while Eric Pohlkamp goes to the Barracuda. FOR the call: two of the four public lineup projections filed since July 1 name Allan the seventh defenseman outright (Peng July 24, Professor Hockey July 12), his $875,000 cap hit is the cheapest way to hold a seventh defenseman, and a club that has already committed $30.37M to six defensemen has every reason to keep the free one it would otherwise lose. AGAINST it: he did not play a single NHL game last season and Hockey Reference's San Jose page lists ten defensemen who did, none of them him; Eric Stephens listed the extra man as Pohlkamp or Allan rather than Allan alone; Libor Hajek is also waiver-eligible per PuckPedia, so the same argument is available to a veteran the club may prefer; and the Sharks could still add outside depth, which Peng's own July 17 piece said there was realistically room for.

Ivar Stenberg appears in 11 or more of San Jose's first 13 regular-season games in 2026-27.

Dom Cahill

+150a hit pays 1.50 units, a miss costs 1.00

Resolves by Oct 28, 2026

The AGAINST half first, because it is the strong one and it is why this is priced as an underdog. San Jose has started four high picks in the last two seasons and only one of them would have cleared this bar. Sam Dickinson did not dress for the 2025-26 opener and debuted in game two. Michael Misa, the second overall pick in 2025, did not dress for six of the first 13, debuting in game three. Igor Chernyshov did not play an NHL game at all until December 16 and spent 41 games with the Barracuda. Will Smith, fourth overall, did not dress for three of the first 11 in 2024-25. All four counts are from the league's own game logs. On top of the record: the preseason has been cut from six games to four, a third less runway than this club gave itself in either of the last two Septembers; Stenberg is exempt from waivers, so a demotion is free and reversible in a way it is not for Zack Ostapchuk or Collin Graf; and Professor Hockey, the outside deployment read this beat weights heaviest, said on September 1 that the roster is deep enough to healthy-scratch Stenberg and still run a very good top nine, and that he expects San Jose to send him down after two bad games rather than ride them out. FOR the call: no San Jose pick inside the top four has actually been sent to the American Hockey League for a meaningful stretch, and the scratches, not the demotions, are what the record shows, which is a lower bar to clear than it looks; Stenberg's second Swedish Hockey League season was 33 points in 43 games against six in 31 for his brother at the same age and club, and Elite Prospects ranks it third among draft-eligible seasons in that league's history; the wing behind him is Tyler Toffoli at 34 and Mason Marchment at 31, on a club that has missed the playoffs seven straight seasons and cannot afford to develop slowly at a position it just paid $12,750,000 a year to cover; and DailyFaceoff's July 4 lines and Professor Hockey's August 28 power-play board both place him inside the top nine. Priced at plus 150, roughly a 40 percent call. CORRELATION DISCLOSED: this row points the same direction as the open 2026-06-24 row holding that Stenberg is an NHL player in 2026-27 at roughly 50 points, so a hit on one is not independent evidence for the other. The instruments are different and can resolve in any combination: he can appear in all 13 and still fall well short of 50 points, and he can miss five of the first 13 and still reach it across an 84-game season.

Kiefer Sherwood averages under 1:45 a night on the power play across San Jose's first 20 games of 2026-27.

Dom Cahill

Resolves by Nov 30, 2026

The claim is that the projected second-unit seat does not survive contact with a ten-deep forward group. FOR it: San Jose gave Sherwood 1:08 a night on the power play across his 28 games here last season, against five forwards at 2:54 or more (Celebrini 3:39, Wennberg 3:20, Smith 3:18, Toffoli 2:56, Eklund 2:54), so the club had already ranked him behind the group; Eklund and Klingberg leave, but Mason Marchment, Ivar Stenberg and a full season of Michael Misa arrive, so the queue is not shorter; Professor Hockey, projecting point totals on August 12, raised the possibility that Sherwood gets no power-play time at all under the eight-forward squeeze; and Sherwood's own value is a forecheck and hitting profile (129 hits in 28 games, 4.61 a night) rather than a man-advantage one. AGAINST it: two published projections put him on the second unit, Peng at San Jose Hockey Now on August 7 and Professor Hockey on August 28, the latter reasoning that last season's PP2 finished as Misa, Chernyshov, Eklund and Sherwood and that keeping Sherwood high changes least; he scored 23 goals across 72 games last season, a career high, which is a real argument for man-advantage minutes; and $5,750,000 a season is the kind of cap hit a coaching staff feels obliged to deploy on special teams.

Barclay Goodrow averages less than 1:55 of shorthanded ice time per game across San Jose's first 20 games of 2026-27, down from 1:55 across all 82 games in 2025-26.

Dom Cahill

Resolves by Dec 1, 2026

The baseline is exactly 1:55 a night across 82 games, from Hockey Reference's San Jose 2025-26 time-on-ice table. San Jose conceded 9.9 goals per sixty with him on the ice shorthanded, the highest rate of the five forwards under contract for 2026-27 who averaged at least a minute a game killing penalties (Ostapchuk 9.7, Wennberg 8.7, Dellandrea 8.4, Graf 5.4), with no shorthanded goals or assists of his own. The kill finished 76.42 percent, 26th of 32, against a league average of 78.87. This is a call about DEPLOYMENT, not about the player: the claim is that the coaching staff moves the minutes, not that Goodrow declines further. For the call: the club's own 2026-27 scorecard sets a success condition of a top-20 kill with the Goodrow and Wennberg tier reduced; DailyFaceoff's July 4 projected lines have him as an extra rather than in the twelve; and Professor Hockey said on August 12 it would be coaching malpractice if he played all 84 games. Against it: he dressed all 82 last season, he is an alternate captain in a contract year, Ryan Warsofsky is himself in the final year of his deal and veterans are what coaches reach for in October, and an injury to Graf or Wennberg hands those minutes straight back to him.

Jacob Trouba has the highest shorthanded ice time per game of any San Jose defenseman across the club's first 20 games of 2026-27.

Dom Cahill

Resolves by Dec 1, 2026

The three defensemen who led San Jose's shorthanded ice time per game in 2025-26 are all gone: Mario Ferraro at 3:22, Vincent Desharnais at 3:13 and Timothy Liljegren at 2:19, with no ties anywhere in that column, from Hockey Reference's San Jose time-on-ice table. The three defensemen still under contract ranked seventh, eighth and tenth of the ten who dressed: Sam Dickinson 0:54, Dmitry Orlov 0:46, Luca Cagnoni 0:00. The kill finished 76.42 percent, 26th of 32, against a league average of 78.89, both re-derived from Hockey Reference's 2025-26 league table. FOR the call: Trouba killed 3:04 a night across 81 games for Anaheim last season, within eighteen seconds of what Ferraro did in San Jose, and no other man on the projected blue line comes close, Darnell Nurse having killed 1:29 a night in Edmonton and Michael Kesselring 0:49 in Buffalo. AGAINST it: Nurse is the more expensive player and coaches hand penalty-kill minutes to the men they trust rather than the men who did it elsewhere; Dickinson at 20 is the club's likeliest internal riser and a jump from 0:54 to two minutes is one coaching decision, not a leap; and a right-shot injury reshuffles every special-teams pair at once, which is the piece's own second point.

San Jose allows fewer than 3.54 goals per game across the first 20 games of 2026-27, an improvement on the 3.54 it allowed across all 82 games of 2025-26.

Dom Cahill

Resolves by Dec 1, 2026

The baseline is 290 goals against in 82 games, 3.54 a game, from Hockey Reference's San Jose 2025-26 team page. Re-derived from the same source's league table, that 290 is the third-most of 32 teams, behind Vancouver's 314 and Toronto's 295, with no team tied. The league average was 3.08. This is the whole bet the summer made: seven of the ten defensemen who dressed are gone and 68 percent of the blue line's minutes have been handed to men who played somewhere else. FOR the call: the club's team save percentage was .881 against a league average of .889, so regression in goaltending alone moves this number without a defenseman playing better, and both goaltenders return; and Jacob Trouba and Darnell Nurse each played more than eighty games of top-four minutes last season, which is more established NHL defending than the group they replace. AGAINST it: a defense that has never played together is usually worse in October than it is in February, so a 20-game window catches this group at its least organised; the two right-shot defensemen are the only two on the roster, so one injury changes the pairs entirely; and Michael Kesselring played 34 games at 13:24 last season, which is not the workload of a settled top-four defenseman.

Luca Cagnoni averages under 0:30 a game of shorthanded time on ice across San Jose's first 20 games of 2026-27.

Dom Cahill

-120a hit pays 0.83 units, a miss costs 1.00

Resolves by Dec 1, 2026

Every public projection of Cagnoni's season argues about the power play and none of them says anything about the kill, which is the half that decides whether he dresses 70 times or 30. FOR the call: Hockey Reference has him at 0:00 a night shorthanded across his three games last season, against 0:54 for Sam Dickinson and 0:46 for Dmitry Orlov; the three defensemen who led San Jose's shorthanded ice time in 2025-26 are all gone and the club replaced them with men who kill, Jacob Trouba having killed 3:04 a night for Anaheim and Darnell Nurse 1:29 for Edmonton; and Mike Grier's stated reason for adding Trouba, Nurse and Michael Kesselring was so the club would not have to give its young defensemen too much too soon, which he repeated about Cagnoni by name to Max Miller on August 14. AGAINST it: Dickinson went from nothing to 0:54 as a 19-year-old rookie, so the staff plainly will use a young left shot on the kill; a defenseman who holds a job for 20 games normally picks up some shorthanded ice simply from bench management and pair rotation; and one injury to Trouba or Kesselring reshuffles every special-teams unit at once, which is the fastest way this call loses.

Michael Kesselring averages more than 0:51 a game of power-play time on ice across San Jose's first 20 regular-season games of 2026-27.

Dom Cahill

+130a hit pays 1.30 units, a miss costs 1.00

Resolves by Dec 1, 2026

The case AGAINST is written first and it is the reason this is priced as an underdog rather than a conviction. San Jose's blue-line power-play minutes are severely top-heavy: two men, Dmitry Orlov and John Klingberg, took 82.1 percent of them in 2025-26, and the other eight defensemen who dressed split what was left, five of them combining for 12:39 across the whole season. There are two unit jobs and three plausible occupants, and two of the three shoot left. Orlov is the incumbent at 202:55 and is in a contract year; Ryan Warsofsky is in the final year of his own deal with no extension announced, and a coach in that position tends to play the veteran he already trusts. Kesselring has never averaged a minute a night on the power play in four NHL seasons, so this row asks him to beat his own career high in his first 20 games with a new club, immediately after a season Buffalo limited to 34 games with a knee and then a high ankle. My own open row of August 19 says Orlov finishes 2026-27 leading all San Jose defensemen in total power-play time, and that row and this one can both be right, but it does say the incumbent holds. FOR the call: Klingberg's vacated 36.9 percent share was a right shot's, which is the argument this desk published on August 19 and which nobody outside has answered; Professor Hockey's August 28 opening-night board puts Cagnoni on the first unit, Kesselring quarterbacking the second, and Orlov on neither; and the bar itself is low in absolute terms, because a genuine second-unit job on this club paid Klingberg 2:57 a night and Orlov 2:28. The row is close to binary. If Kesselring holds a unit he clears 0:51 inside ten games; if he does not, he finishes near zero. It resolves off one column of one box-score summary.

Collin Graf is not among San Jose's top eight forwards in total power-play time on ice across the club's first 20 regular-season games of 2026-27.

Dom Cahill

-125a hit pays 0.80 units, a miss costs 1.00

Resolves by Dec 1, 2026

The case AGAINST is written first and it is why this is priced at -125 rather than as a conviction. San Jose signed Graf on July 31 for three years and $12,750,000, a $4,250,000 cap hit against the $941,667 he played 2025-26 on, and the open house row of the same date says he reaches 50 points, whose entire premise is that the usage rises; a club does not normally quadruple a forward's price to leave him on the same 29 seconds a night. A seat is genuinely vacant: Professor Hockey's August 28 opening-night units leave Tyler Toffoli, who took 232:26 on the power play last season, off both, and somebody occupies what he had. Over a 20-game span an injury among the eight forwards ahead of Graf is closer to likely than not, and he is the obvious first replacement on merit, having led all San Jose forwards with a full-season role in individual expected goals per sixty at five-on-five, 0.84 across 1,054 minutes on MoneyPuck's season file. The club also has cause to change something: the same anchor's numbers have San Jose 25th in expected goals per sixty on the man advantage against 16th in power-play percentage, so the process was worse than the result. FOR the call: the deployment record is a full season long and unambiguous, 39:38 across 81 games, 0:29 a night, tenth among forwards, while he finished third on the roster in goals, which is a coaching staff that watched the evidence and did not move; three forwards who played fewer than half a season each took more power-play time than he did across his full one; Professor Hockey's August 28 units name ten players and Graf is not among them, and unlike Toffoli's absence, which he flags as notable, Graf's does not come up at all; and the four forwards on his projected second unit are Michael Misa, Igor Chernyshov, Ivar Stenberg and Kiefer Sherwood, three of whom are development priorities the club has reasons of its own to feed. The rank bar is deliberately set at the unit boundary rather than at a per-game rate so that it asks one question, whether Graf takes a power-play job, and not how generously it is used.

Igor Chernyshov averages more than 2.00 shots on goal per game across San Jose's first 20 regular-season games of 2026-27.

Dom Cahill

+140a hit pays 1.40 units, a miss costs 1.00

Resolves by Dec 1, 2026

The case AGAINST is written first and it is why this is priced as an underdog. His 1.64 last season was not one number, it was two, and they agree: 1.80 across the first fifteen games from December 16, and 1.58 across the closing twelve from March 24, two separate stints with different linemates and a two-month gap between them. Six of his 28 games ended with no shot on goal at all. The role is the structural argument underneath that: he played most of his minutes on Macklin Celebrini's off wing in the low slot, where the job is tipping and retrieving rather than shooting, and a winger doing that job correctly takes fewer shots than his ice time suggests. The bar also asks him to fix two things at once rather than one. He put 46 of 71 unblocked attempts on net against roughly 57 expected from his shot locations on MoneyPuck's model, so attempts have to rise by MORE than 22 percent for shots on goal to rise by 22 percent, unless the accuracy moves too. And there is no guarantee the minutes come: he averaged 15:03 last season and San Jose added Mason Marchment at $6,750,000 and re-signed Collin Graf at $4,250,000 this summer, both of whom want top-six wing minutes. FOR the call: he is 20 turning 21 with two years left on an entry-level deal and a full training camp for the first time, having arrived last season on December 16 as a call-up; San Jose traded William Eklund and his 176 shots to Ottawa in June, which vacates real top-six wing volume; Professor Hockey's August 28 opening-night board puts him on the second power-play unit, where shot volume per minute is highest and he already scored three goals in 30:47 of man-advantage time; and the shot quality is not in question, since he ranked 19th of the 426 forwards who played 400 minutes in expected goals per unblocked attempt, so nothing about his selection argues he should shoot less. The row resolves off two columns of one box-score summary and a division.

Sam Dickinson averages more time on ice per game than Darnell Nurse across San Jose's first 20 games of 2026-27.

Dom Cahill

+170a hit pays 1.70 units, a miss costs 1.00

Resolves by Dec 1, 2026

The AGAINST half first, because it is the strong one and it is why this is priced as an underdog. The gap is four minutes and thirteen seconds and it has to close inside one year: Nurse averaged 20:58 across 82 games for Edmonton last season and Dickinson 16:45 across 72 for San Jose. Nurse is the most expensive defenseman on the roster at $9,250,000, holds a full no-movement clause this season, and Professor Hockey's July 12 pairings read of Ryan Warsofsky is that he "would default to" a veteran "in any clear-cut scenario" and will give Nurse and Jacob Trouba the highest-leverage minutes on the strength of their experience. Nurse also killed penalties at 1:29 a night against Dickinson's 0:54, and special-teams time is the cheapest way for a veteran to hold a lead in a per-game average. FOR the call: DailyFaceoff's July 4 projected pairs, which predate the Celebrini and Graf signings, put Dickinson with Trouba on the top pair and Nurse with Dmitry Orlov on the second; Dickinson reached 16:45 at 19 years old behind Mario Ferraro, John Klingberg, Timothy Liljegren, Vincent Desharnais, Nick Leddy and Shakir Mukhamadullin, and all six are off the roster; Nurse's ice time has fallen in four of the last five seasons and his own club had him at a nine-season low; and Dickinson already took more power-play time per game last season, 0:18 against 0:14, so the special-teams argument does not run one way. Priced at plus 170, roughly a one-in-three call. It does not duplicate my own August 8 row, which is about the DIFFICULTY of Dickinson's zone starts against Nurse's rather than the VOLUME of his minutes: he can start deeper in his own end and still play less, or play more and still start deeper, so the two rows can resolve in any combination.

Sam Dickinson averages 1:00 or more of power-play time per game across San Jose's first 20 games of 2026-27.

Dom Cahill

+240a hit pays 2.40 units, a miss costs 1.00

Resolves by Dec 1, 2026

The AGAINST half first, and it is the reason this is priced as an underdog. Dickinson averaged 0:18 a game on the power play last season, about 22 minutes across 72 games, per Hockey Reference's time-on-ice table read 2026-09-13. Professor Hockey's August 28 opening-night power-play board puts Luca Cagnoni at the point on the first unit and Michael Kesselring on the second, and leaves Dickinson off both. Dmitry Orlov is in a contract year and ran the unit that finished 2025-26. That is three defensemen ahead of him for two slots, from the source this beat weights most on deployment. This site has also published the argument that the vacated point job was a right-shot job, and Dickinson is a third left shot, which cuts against him on the same reasoning. FOR the call: John Klingberg announced his retirement on September 11, and Klingberg was the club's busiest power-play defenseman last season at 2:57 a game across 56 games, so 2:57 and Orlov's 2:28 are the only established usage on the roster and one of those men is gone. Dickinson attempted 199 shots last season and got 36.2 percent of them to the net, which is the mechanical case a staff would be trying to fix by giving him the reps. The bar of 1:00 is deliberately set at 'on a unit more often than not' rather than at a full second-unit share, because an occasional look would not be evidence of a changed role.

Michael Misa averages at least 1:00 of shorthanded ice time per game across San Jose's first 20 regular-season games of 2026-27. Scored from Hockey Reference's 2026-27 San Jose time-on-ice table, the shorthanded TOI column, restricted to the club's first 20 games; games Misa does not dress do not count toward the average, and if he dresses for fewer than 10 of the 20 the row is void. His 2025-26 figure across 45 games was 0:00.

Dom Cahill

+210a hit pays 2.10 units, a miss costs 1.00

Resolves by Dec 15, 2026

San Jose scores 2.0 or fewer goals per sixty minutes at even strength with Zack Ostapchuk on the ice across the club's first 25 games of 2026-27, no better than the 1.6 he posted across 59 games in 2025-26.

Dom Cahill

Resolves by Dec 20, 2026

The baseline is 1.6 goals for per sixty at even strength across 59 games, from Hockey Reference's San Jose 2025-26 time-on-ice table. That is tied with Ty Dellandrea for third-lowest of the thirteen San Jose forwards who dressed at least 40 games, ahead of only Barclay Goodrow at 1.5 and Ryan Reaves at 1.4. The same table has his goals-against rate at 2.7, tied with Collin Graf for the lowest in that group, so this is a call about one half of his game and not about the player overall. FOR the call: both public line projections put him back with the wingers the low rate came with, DailyFaceoff's July 4 lines giving him Toffoli and Dellandrea and Fear the Fin's June 29 read giving him Goodrow and Dellandrea, and neither includes Adam Gaudette, whose arrival on the line is the change Professor Hockey credits for the post-Olympic-break improvement. His offensive zone start share was 33.8 percent at even strength, third-lowest of the thirteen, and nothing about the club's projected deployment suggests that rises. AGAINST it: Professor Hockey's read is that the post-break version over the final 27 games is the real one, and if that is right the rate should already be higher than 1.6; a 25-game even-strength sample is roughly 225 minutes, where a two-goal swing moves the rate by about half a point, so this is noisy in both directions; and an injury in the top nine that pushes Ostapchuk up the lineup would lift the number for reasons that have nothing to do with the bet.

Ivar Stenberg is an NHL player in 2026-27, full stop, with rookie output around 50-plus points.

Grab Some Pine

Resolves by Apr 10, 2027

Test runs October through April. He signed his entry-level deal July 3 and every published opening-night projection has him in the top nine, but role is not production and the number is the bet. One anchor projection lands under it, at roughly 48.

Collin Graf finishes the 2026-27 season with at least 50 points.

Grant Lombard

Resolves by Apr 10, 2027

He put up 46 in 81 games with 38 power-play minutes all year. The entire case for the raise is that the usage goes up. If the role arrives and the production does not clear 50, the Sharks bought the season he already had at four times the price.

Luca Cagnoni plays fewer than 42 regular-season games for the San Jose Sharks in 2026-27. Scored off his official NHL regular-season games-played total for San Jose only: 41 or fewer is a hit, 42 or more is a miss, including if he reaches 42 after being recalled from the Barracuda, and including if he is traded (games for another club do not count).

Grant Lombard

Resolves by Apr 30, 2027

This is the runway argument reduced to one player's usage, which is the only part of it a stranger can score. Cagnoni is 21, has three career NHL games, put up 43 points in 67 AHL games, and is in the final season of his entry-level contract with restricted free agency arriving in July 2027. It is genuinely at risk in both directions rather than a formality: PuckPedia's own depth chart lists him second among San Jose's left-shot defensemen, ahead of Sam Dickinson, so the projection sitting in public is that he plays a lot. Against that, six defensemen are under contract, four of them hold 93.8 percent of the blue line's $30,373,750, and Cagnoni is waivers exempt while all four veterans are not, which makes him the cheapest body to move in an October crunch. An injury to Nurse, Trouba, Orlov or Kesselring is the most likely way this call loses, and that is the correct way for it to lose.

Sam Dickinson finishes the 2026-27 NHL regular season with a LOWER even-strength offensive zone start percentage (oZS%) than Darnell Nurse. Scored off Hockey Reference's 2026-27 San Jose Sharks team page, Advanced Stats table, oZS% column, both men read from the same table on the same day. Dickinson strictly lower is a hit; equal or higher is a miss. If either man plays fewer than 20 regular-season games for San Jose, the row is unresolvable rather than a miss.

Dom Cahill

Resolves by Apr 30, 2027

Filip Bystedt plays 20 or fewer NHL regular-season games in 2026-27. Scored off his official NHL regular-season games-played total for the season, from any single source that carries it: 20 or fewer is a hit, 21 or more is a miss. Zero games counts as a hit. Games for any club count, not only San Jose, so a trade does not make the row unresolvable.

Dom Cahill

Resolves by Apr 30, 2027

San Jose scores fewer than 276 goals in the 2026-27 regular season. Scored off the Sharks' official regular-season goals-for total, from any single source that carries it: 275 or fewer is a hit, 276 or more is a miss. Shootout-winner goals count or do not count as that source counts them, and empty-net goals count. 276 is the top of the availability-adjusted band this piece argues for, so the row tests the ceiling of my own reading rather than the projection I am arguing against.

Grant Lombard

Resolves by Apr 30, 2027

Michael Misa finishes the 2026-27 regular season with fewer than 60 points. Scored off his official NHL regular-season point total for the season, from any single source that carries it: 59 or fewer is a hit, 60 or more is a miss. Points for any club count, not only San Jose, so a trade does not make the row unresolvable. Misa is the single largest rate increase asked of any returning player on the board this piece examines, from 0.47 points per game as a rookie to 0.71.

Grant Lombard

Resolves by Apr 30, 2027

Dmitry Orlov finishes the 2026-27 regular season leading all San Jose defensemen in total power-play time on ice.

Dom Cahill

Resolves by Apr 30, 2027

The season-long version of the same call, and the harder one, because it survives a single healthy scratch or a bad October. Orlov is 35 on a rebuilding team, and there is a 19.0 percent on-ice shooting percentage inside last season's number that nobody repeats on command. Against the call: if San Jose runs five forwards on the first unit, as two of the three voices in Peng's projection floated, the defense's power-play minutes collapse for everyone and this resolves on scraps.

Ty Dellandrea's time on ice per game for San Jose in 2026-27 finishes below 13:00, down from 14:11 in 46 games in 2025-26.

Dom Cahill

Resolves by Apr 30, 2027

The whole piece is a deployment argument and this is its scoreable form. Dellandrea was tenth in ice time per game among the nineteen forwards San Jose dressed last season, at 14:11, while posting the worst even-strength expected-goals-against rate of the seventeen forwards with a real sample (2.98 per sixty on MoneyPuck) and shooting 1.09 times a game, a rate only Reaves, Ostapchuk and Goodrow were below. The club then spent the summer adding Marchment and re-signing Ostapchuk to four years, which is a deeper forward group competing for the same minutes. So the call is that the specialist gets used as a specialist: penalty kill, defensive-zone draws, and less of everything else. Against the call, and it is a real risk: DailyFaceoff's July 4 projected lines have him on the fourth line with Toffoli and Ostapchuk rather than out of the lineup, a fourth-line center on a team killing as many penalties as San Jose did last season can clear 13:00 without ever taking a shift he has not earned, and one injury to a center in November puts him back at fourteen minutes for a month. The 13:00 line is set a full minute and eleven seconds below his own baseline on purpose, so a small drift down does not score this RIGHT; it takes an actual change in role.

Adam Gaudette dresses for fewer than 60 of San Jose's 84 regular-season games in 2026-27, down from 66 of 82 in 2025-26.

Dom Cahill

Resolves by Apr 30, 2027

This is the piece's thesis in scoreable form. Five sources published seven projected San Jose forward lineups this summer and Gaudette is in the top twelve of two of them: Sheng Peng's July 24 fourth line and one of Sharks Hockey Digest's three July 6 versions. DailyFaceoff on July 4 does not reach him, Professor Hockey on July 7 calls him the thirteenth forward, and Eric Stephens on July 15 lists him a healthy scratch. All seven predate the July 31 Collin Graf re-signing and all seven already carried Graf, so the one move that could have opened a forward spot closed instead. Gaudette is also not waivers exempt, so a thirteenth forward here cannot be shuttled to the Barracuda to keep playing; he sits. Against the call, and it is a real risk: 60 of 84 is 71 percent of a season and he played 80 percent of one last year, an eighty-four-game schedule creates more games for everyone, and Professor Hockey's own reasoning on his August 12 board is that Gaudette is the thirteenth forward who becomes the twelfth the moment anybody is hurt, and San Jose needed nineteen different forwards to get through last season, which says the injury door opens for somebody every year. The 60 line is set about eight games below a straight pro-rating of last season's 66 in 82 (which comes to roughly 68 in 84) precisely so that ordinary attrition does not score it RIGHT; it takes an actual demotion in role.

Macklin Celebrini finishes the 2026-27 regular season with at least 70 even-strength points for San Jose, after 82 in 2025-26.

Dom Cahill

Resolves by Apr 30, 2027

The piece's argument is that the even-strength half of his 115 points is the half that describes the player, so it should be the half that repeats. He posted 82 even-strength points in 82 games last season, a rate of 3.44 per sixty even-strength minutes, second among the nineteen centers on NHL Network's August 24 top-twenty list who played in 2025-26 and ahead of Connor McDavid's 3.28. Setting the bar at 70 rather than at 82 prices in the two arguments the piece makes against itself: a PDO of 102.9 that will not repeat in full, and an offensive-zone start share of 58.7 percent that a deeper 2026-27 forward group may not hand him again. Against the call: 70 even-strength points is a number only three of those nineteen cleared last season, and any real injury absence takes it off the table quickly.

San Jose's power play finishes the 2026-27 regular season converting 23.00 percent or better, after 21.18 percent in 2025-26.

Dom Cahill

Resolves by Apr 30, 2027

This is the variable the piece says will decide how Celebrini's point total reads next spring. San Jose scored 54 power-play goals on 255 chances last season for 21.18 percent, 16th of 32 and 0.07 of a point above the 21.11 league average, while Edmonton converted 30.63 percent and McDavid banked 54 power-play points to Celebrini's 33. A move to 23 percent would be a genuine step rather than noise, and it would raise Celebrini's total without anything changing about the even-strength scoring this piece measures. Against the call: the unit lost John Klingberg's right-shot point ice, and 23 percent is a high bar, cleared by only 11 of the 32 clubs last season.

Quentin Musty plays at least one NHL regular-season game in 2026-27, after playing zero in 2025-26.

Dom Cahill

Resolves by Apr 30, 2027

The baseline is zero. Musty has never appeared in an NHL regular-season game, and spent all of 2025-26 with the San Jose Barracuda: 61 games, 21 goals, 24 assists, 45 points, minus-14, 168 shots, read at the American Hockey League's own skater statistics. This row is deliberately NOT the same claim as my August 12 row, which says he is off San Jose's active roster for the October 1 opener. A player can miss the opener and play fifty games, and this piece argues he does exactly that: the door that opens in September leads to a checking job he is graded poorly for, and the recall in December leads to the scoring job he is graded well for. Corey Pronman's August 18 pipeline write-up has him at above NHL average for shot and hockey sense and below NHL average for skating and compete. The in-house template is Igor Chernyshov, recalled last season for 28 games at 15:03 a night. Against the call: San Jose has fifteen forwards under contract before Musty is counted, he is waiver-exempt so a recall is never forced, Professor Hockey's August 12 board leaves him off the 21-man roster and files him as a possible later call-up rather than a lock, and the 2024-25 precedent for this organization is that a healthy first-round forward can spend a whole season one level down without ever being tried.

Alex Nedeljkovic makes 30 or more starts for San Jose in 2026-27.

Dom Cahill

Resolves by Apr 30, 2027

The claim is that last season's split repeats rather than resolving in the younger goaltender's favor. FOR it: Nedeljkovic started 34 of San Jose's 82 games last season, 41.5 percent, and outperformed Yaroslav Askarov on every public measure in the Hockey Reference table (.896 to .883, 2.87 to 3.63, a .618 quality-start rate to .426, and plus 0.6 goals saved above average to minus 16.9, the fifth-worst mark of the 41 goaltenders who started 30 or more games, nobody tied); his four seasons before San Jose ran .901, .895, .902 and .894, a narrow band the .896 sits inside; and PuckPedia carries him at $3,000,000 for both 2026-27 and 2027-28 against Askarov's $2,000,000 for one year, so the club has paid the backup more than the starter and signed him longer. AGAINST it: Askarov is 24 to Nedeljkovic's 30 and was acquired to be the number one, so a normal improvement curve takes starts back; San Jose gave Askarov all 47 of his appearances as starts last season while Nedeljkovic came in cold six times, which is a club still treating Askarov as the starter; and 30 starts of 82 is a low bar to clear only if the tandem stays roughly even, so any genuine Askarov step forward resolves this WRONG.

Eric Pohlkamp plays 10 or more NHL regular-season games for San Jose in 2026-27.

Dom Cahill

+160a hit pays 1.60 units, a miss costs 1.00

Resolves by Apr 30, 2027

The claim is that the right side of this blue line is thin enough that the club reaches past its own depth chart before Christmas. FOR it: Pohlkamp is one of five right shots among the nine defensemen San Jose named to its Rookie Faceoff roster, by Elite Prospects, while the club's established blue line carries two right shots in Michael Kesselring and Jacob Trouba against left shots in Darnell Nurse, Dmitry Orlov and Sam Dickinson; Elite Prospects lists him on the 2026-27 San Jose roster at $1,050,000 rather than on the Barracuda; and he arrives off a Hobey Baker finalist season on Denver's national title team, which is the profile a club promotes early rather than parks. AGAINST it: he has played zero professional regular-season games, so ten NHL games would be a very fast first year; Curtis Pashelka, who has the beat, writes that he is 'more likely to start the season with the Barracuda'; and San Jose signed Libor Hajek and carries Nolan Allan and Luca Cagnoni, so an injury on the right does not automatically produce a Pohlkamp recall rather than a left shot playing his off side.

Alexander Wennberg finishes the 2026-27 regular season with more power-play points than Michael Misa.

Dom Cahill

-185a hit pays 0.54 units, a miss costs 1.00

Resolves by Apr 30, 2027

Misa takes Wennberg's line and the question is whether he takes the power play with it. FOR the call: both published opening-night projections put Wennberg at the net front on the first unit and Misa on the second, Sheng Peng's at San Jose Hockey Now on August 7 and Professor Hockey's on August 28; Wennberg averaged 3:20 a night on the power play last season, second on the whole roster behind Macklin Celebrini, against 1:09 for Misa; and Wennberg scored 15 power-play points in 80 games against Misa's 4 in 45. AGAINST it: Misa is a 19-year-old second overall pick being handed the second-line center job, which is the profile a club promotes to the first unit the moment it stalls; Wennberg's eight power-play goals were a career high against a previous best of four and came at a 19.4 percent shooting rate against a career 11.4; and Professor Hockey's own August 13 point projection cut Wennberg to 40 partly on the reasoning that he loses the first unit, which is the exact way this call loses even though the same source later projected him onto it.

Mason Marchment finishes the 2026-27 regular season with an even-strength offensive zone start share below 60 percent for San Jose.

Dom Cahill

-175a hit pays 0.57 units, a miss costs 1.00

Resolves by Apr 30, 2027

Marchment's 2025-26 even-strength offensive zone start share was 62.8 percent across 68 games, a career high by nine points over his prior best of 53.8, and 69.1 percent across his 39 games in Columbus after the trade. FOR the call: his career line before last season reads 49.2, 50.5, 53.8, 52.9, 51.6, so 62.8 is the outlier and not the baseline; and no San Jose skater on the club's 2025-26 advanced table reached 69 percent in all situations at any games played, the team high being Will Smith at 62.1 across 69 games, so the deployment Columbus gave him does not currently exist on this roster. AGAINST it: San Jose is paying him $6,750,000 a season to score and has Barclay Goodrow, Zack Ostapchuk and Ty Dellandrea available to absorb defensive-zone starts; Ryan Warsofsky sheltered Sam Dickinson's pairing hard last season and has shown he will concentrate starts; and two published opening-night projections put Marchment on the first power play, which is the usage pattern that travels with soft five-on-five starts.

San Jose's penalty kill finishes the 2026-27 regular season ranked higher among the 32 NHL clubs than San Jose's power play.

Dom Cahill

+200a hit pays 2.00 units, a miss costs 1.00

Resolves by Apr 30, 2027

The AGAINST half first, because it is strong and it is why this is priced as an underdog rather than a coin flip. The power play returns Macklin Celebrini, Will Smith, Michael Misa, Dmitry Orlov and Mason Marchment and adds Michael Kesselring, and it was already 16th on the sixth-most opportunities in the league, so the personnel argument for it improving is better than the personnel argument for the kill improving. The kill, meanwhile, lost Vincent Desharnais and Mario Ferraro, two of the men who actually played it, and Barclay Goodrow is still on the roster. A separate open row on this ledger says the power play converts 23.00 percent or better this season, which would very likely put it inside the top ten, and if that row hits this one probably misses. FOR: the kill was 26th at 76.42 percent, which is roughly four percentage points of room, while the power play at 21.18 percent is already near the middle and has far less; Jacob Trouba, Darnell Nurse and Kesselring are all penalty killers arriving at once on a unit that went shorthanded 246 times; and every one of the five clubs that finished top five in the NHL last season killed at 80.32 percent or better while three of the five ran a power play worse than San Jose's. Priced at plus 200, roughly a one-in-three call.

Alex Barre-Boulet finishes the 2026-27 AHL regular season with more regular-season points than any other San Jose Barracuda skater. METHOD FIXED IN ADVANCE: read the Barracuda's final regular-season team scoring list at sjbarracuda.com/stats, or the club's team page at theahl.com, after the last regular-season game. Regular season only, so Calder Cup playoff points do not count. Points he scores in the NHL do not count. A tie at the top scores this WRONG.

Posey Thompson

-135a hit pays 0.74 units, a miss costs 1.00

Resolves by Apr 30, 2027

FOR: he has led his AHL club in points in each of the last two seasons, for two different organizations, Laval in 2024-25 and the Colorado Eagles in 2025-26, and last season he did it while finishing second in the entire American Hockey League with 70 points in 70 games and being named to the league's First All-Star Team on April 16. His production has not decayed with age: 435 points in 428 career AHL games is 1.016 per game, and last season at 28 he scored at 1.000. AGAINST, and this is real rather than decorative: San Jose stocks the Barracuda with prospects it is paid to develop and prospects get the power play, which is the unit he has run at every stop and where he took 10 of his goals last season; two seasons of leading a club is thin evidence; he is new to this organization; and the single likeliest way this loses is San Jose keeping him on the NHL roster long enough that he never plays enough AHL games to lead anyone in anything, which is the outcome my own article argues is unlikely and would make the article wrong in the same motion. WHY THE PRICE IS -135: implied 57.4 percent. Short of even money because two seasons of evidence plus a career rate above a point a game is the strongest scoring record on that roster by a distance, and nowhere near the floor because a call-up, an injury or a prospect running hot each break it on their own, and those are three independent ways to lose against one way to win.

Yaroslav Askarov finishes the 2026-27 NHL regular season with a save percentage of .900 or better for San Jose.

Dom Cahill

+180a hit pays 1.80 units, a miss costs 1.00

Resolves by Apr 30, 2027

THE AGAINST HALF FIRST, and it is why this is priced as an underdog rather than as a lean. Askarov has never posted a .900 season in the NHL. His career mark is .887 across 63 regular-season games, and the largest of those samples is last season's .883 on 47 starts. The bar itself is not a formality: only 13 of the 27 goaltenders who started 40 or more games in 2025-26 finished at .900 or better, so it is close to a coin flip even for men who have already done it, and he has not. The size of the required move is the sharpest argument against. .883 to .900 is 17 points of save percentage in one summer, and MoneyPuck says the deficit it has to come out of is 18.91 goals below expectation, second-worst in that same group of 27, and the low-danger component alone is 23.12, which is LARGER than the whole season's deficit because the high-danger work was a credit against it. Nothing in front of him obviously fixes that: San Jose allowed 290 goals, third-most in the league, gave him the highest shots-against rate of any 40-start goaltender at 30.99 per 60 minutes, and the blue line it rebuilt around Darnell Nurse and Jacob Trouba carries two men whose defensive ratings on file are poor, on a top four that has never played together. FOR the call, and it is a genuine other side. The ceiling is demonstrated rather than projected: in November 2025 he was third in the NHL in save percentage among the 37 goaltenders who made six or more starts that month, and he made ten starts to the six and seven of the two men above him. The damage is in the category that moves most. He was 12.76 goals BETTER than expected on high-danger attempts, middle of the 27, and it is the low-danger number that carries the deficit, which is the half of a goaltending season that regresses hardest toward the mean. He is 24 with 63 NHL games, he saved .896 across 13 NHL starts in 2024-25 and .923 across 22 American Hockey League games the same year, and his most recent full season is his first as a professional starter at this level. NO CORRELATION DISCLOSURE NEEDED against the two open rows this desk already holds on the crease: the 2026-08-31 row is on Alex Nedeljkovic's START COUNT and the 2026-08-30 row is on the CLUB's goals against per game through 20 games. Askarov can clear .900 while Nedeljkovic starts 30, and the club can beat 3.54 on the strength of its skaters. The instruments are different and can resolve in any combination.

Keaton Verhoeff does not sign an NHL entry-level contract with San Jose on or before May 31, 2027, and returns to North Dakota for a third college season.

Dom Cahill

-140a hit pays 0.71 units, a miss costs 1.00

Resolves by May 31, 2027

The case AGAINST this call is the strong one and it is why the price is short of a conviction. Professor Hockey, reviewing San Jose's July 2 development-camp scrimmage, read Verhoeff as a player whose entry-level deal could come "at the end of his sophomore year," which is exactly the window this row closes in; a ninth-overall pick finishing a second college season at 19 is the standard moment for that signature, and the recent top-ten college defensemen have gone two years and out rather than three or four. FOR the call: San Jose's own most recent college defenseman, Eric Pohlkamp, played four seasons at Denver before he signed, so this club has shown no hurry with the type; the NCAA's new five-year eligibility model lengthens a college career rather than shortening it; North Dakota gives him every minute he wants on a blue line that also carries two other first-round picks; and San Jose has no opening on the NHL right side while Michael Kesselring and Jacob Trouba are both under contract, so a signature in the spring of 2027 buys him an American Hockey League season rather than an NHL job. It resolves off a signature, which a stranger can check in thirty seconds.

San Jose signs Will Smith to a new contract of five years or fewer on or before July 1, 2027.

Grant Lombard

Resolves by Jul 1, 2027

Both halves are live and neither is a formality. On term: six of the seven young extensions signed between June 26 and July 29, 2026 came out at exactly five years, and the new CBA cuts the maximum from eight to seven, so five is where this market sits. On timing: Grier told Sheng Peng on July 30 that San Jose wants Smith locked up long-term this summer, and the club has since finished Graf and Celebrini. If Smith reaches July 1, 2027 unsigned, or signs for six years or more, this is wrong. No partial credit for getting the term right on a contract that does not exist.

Macklin Celebrini's $18.8 million average annual value is NOT the highest in the NHL on July 29, 2027. Scored off any active standard player contract carrying a higher AAV on that date, signed by any player on any club, and counting a signed extension that has not yet taken effect. A hit means at least one such contract exists; a miss means $18.8 million still stands alone at the top.

Grant Lombard

Resolves by Jul 29, 2027

This follows from the piece's own argument rather than from a hunch about a particular player. The upper limit went from $95.5 million to $104 million to $113.5 million in three seasons, which moves the 20 percent individual ceiling from $19.1 million to $20.8 million to $22.7 million. Records set against a rising cap do not age. The two most recent ones prove it: Kirill Kaprizov's $17 million did not survive a full season, and Leo Carlsson's $18 million lasted about three weeks before Celebrini passed it. Against the call, five-year deals at the ceiling are still rare, most extensions of this size are signed in July and August rather than mid-season, and the specific players who could clear $18.8 million next summer are not yet identifiable, so this is a structural bet and not a roster read. It loses cleanly if the league's next tier of contracts continues to land at 16 to 17 percent of the cap in AAV rather than chasing the raw dollar record. **Added 2026-07-29, same night, from Leo's audit:** the $22.7 million forward ceiling assumes the CBA's 20 percent individual maximum survives the changeover in September. This call resolves on July 29, 2027, which is after that, so a rule change is a live risk to the mechanism the call leans on. It does not invalidate the call, since a higher ceiling and no ceiling both make it easier and only a LOWER cap on individual salary would protect the record. Recorded because a take should carry the assumption it rests on rather than have it discovered at scoring.

Graf's next contract after this one carries a cap hit above $6.5 million.

Grant Lombard

Resolves by Sep 15, 2029

The three-year term is the call I think costs them. It spends the leverage of an expiring entry-level deal and puts him at the table in 2029 with arbitration rights, two more top-six seasons behind him, and a cap sheet this site already had straining that summer. The five-year version would have deleted that negotiation and bought a UFA year at the back. Scoreable against the actual signed cap hit, whether or not it is San Jose paying it.

Doing both the Trouba signing and the Nurse trade is an overcommitment whose bill lands around 2029, right as the title window opens.

Grab Some Pine

Resolves by Jul 1, 2030

Either move alone was defensible; the blue line genuinely had to be fixed. Wrong if the Sharks extend the core in 2029 and can still add without subtracting. Right if that summer is spent moving Trouba or Nurse to make room. Revisit every offseason through 2029-30.