Filip Bystedt Fixed His Faceoffs For A Job Two Sharks Already Hold

Here is one instruction and it takes ten seconds.

Take the eight forwards San Jose has under contract for next season whom the Sharks' own 2025-26 statistics list at center. Sort them by the share of their faceoffs they won. Then draw a line across the list at fifty percent and count the names above it.

There are two, and they are the fourth line.

Now the other half of it. Scott Wheeler, writing for The Athletic on April 8, put Filip Bystedt seventh in San Jose's prospect pool and named the thing that had changed about him: he "has made necessary progress in the faceoff circle as well and is now over 50 percent in the AHL."

That is the skill. It is also the skill San Jose already has two of, in the two jobs at the bottom of the lineup.

The player and the wall#

Bystedt is 22, San Jose took him 27th overall in 2022, and last season he scored 22 goals and added 38 assists in 65 games for the San Jose Barracuda, led that team in points, and made the American Hockey League's All-Star Classic. He has never played an NHL game.

Corey Pronman ranked him ninth in the Sharks system on August 18, tiered him as a middle-of-the-lineup player, and projected him as a third-line center, adding that he "isn't overly physical, but he's reliable without the puck and can play on the PK." Wheeler's projection is a shade lower, a good bottom-six center. Neither man has any window into what San Jose intends to do, and both are describing a player who belongs in an NHL lineup somewhere.

The lineup he is not in has Macklin Celebrini at 1C, Michael Misa at 2C on DailyFaceoff's July 4 projection after 45 games at 18, and Alexander Wennberg at 3C. Below them sit Ty Dellandrea, Zack Ostapchuk and Adam Gaudette, all signed, all cheap, and two of the three better at the dot than anybody above them. Logan Couture is expected on long-term injured reserve.

So the fourth center's chair is the only one open, the two men standing nearest it already do the thing Bystedt just learned to do, and he can be sent to the Barracuda on any morning of the season at no cost, because he is exempt from waivers and the men in front of him are not.

Best case#

He takes the job in camp and holds it into November.

San Jose's fourth line is a checking assignment, not a scoring one. A 22-year-old who wins draws, kills penalties and is hard to take the puck from is not an upgrade on that line's ceiling. He is an upgrade on its floor, and floors are what a club chasing a playoff spot actually buys.

The honest best case is measured in games, not points. If he plays enough of them, San Jose's decision next July, when his entry-level deal expires and he becomes a restricted free agent, gets made on NHL evidence rather than on a second reading of the same AHL season.

Worst case#

Not that he is bad. That nobody finds out.

He opens on the Barracuda, scores at something near the 0.92 points per game he managed last season, and San Jose arrives at July 2027 holding a 23-year-old first-round center with three North American seasons, two of them dominant at the wrong level, and zero NHL games. The waiver exemption that makes his demotion free is what makes this outcome likely: a club weighing two close options takes the one it can undo.

Three arguments against this, and the last one is the strongest#

One. The chart has no denominator behind its percentages. Celebrini's 48.6 came across all 82 games, most of them against the other team's best center. The two men above the line played bottom-six minutes, which means fewer draws and easier ones. A raw win rate does not adjust for who you are taking the faceoff against, and neither am I.

Two. Over 50 percent in the AHL is over 50 percent in the AHL. A center who wins 51 percent against American Hockey League opposition can land at 44 against NHL opposition without anything having gone wrong.

Three. Pronman flatly contradicts the knock on him. The criticism of Bystedt for years has been defensive-zone awareness, losing track of the back door. The most recent published evaluation of him says the opposite, and calls him a penalty killer. That is the exact quality this job requires.

What to watch early, and it is one cell in a box score#

If he is recalled, do not read his point total. Read his faceoffs taken.

A forward on the wing takes zero draws, or two. A center takes eight or ten. That one column separates the two futures here more cleanly than anything else available in October, because moving him to wing is the compromise this roster has always invited, and it wastes the thing he spent two seasons fixing.

The second cell is shorthanded time on ice. If he is getting a minute and a half of it in his first week, San Jose is trying him as a bottom-six center for real. If he is getting nine even-strength minutes and no penalty kill, he is filling a hole until somebody heals.

The stakes#

San Jose has not reached the playoffs in seven seasons, since 2018-19, and the roster is finally good enough that the question is a real one. Teams on that line do not miss because their thirteenth forward was ordinary. They miss in the six weeks when a center is hurt and the man who replaces him cannot win a defensive-zone draw at one in the third period. San Jose has that man. He is on the club's own farm team in the same city, and San Jose has spent two years declining to look.

I called on August 12 that neither Bystedt nor Quentin Musty is on the roster for the opener against Florida on October 1, and that Bystedt plays 20 or fewer NHL games this season. Both are still open. The first I would bet on again today. The second is the one that will hurt, because everything above says he should get more.

Previously in this series: The Sharks 25, No. 24, Adam Gaudette.

Sources: San Jose Sharks 2025-26 final skater statistics; San Jose Barracuda and American Hockey League 2025-26 statistics; PuckPedia and CapWages contract pages; The Athletic, Scott Wheeler, April 8, 2026; The Athletic, Corey Pronman, August 18, 2026.