The Sharks kept the 27-year-old with no NHL games and waived the one with 13
San Jose's first real camp cut took four of the eight players who had dressed for both exhibitions. The coach explained the hardest call in one sentence. Ethan Cardwell's waiver window closed at 11 a.m. Thursday.
Jimmy Huntington is 27 and has never played an NHL game. He is still in San Jose's camp on Thursday. Ethan Cardwell, who has 13 NHL games and two goals, all for the Sharks, is not, and Ryan Warsofsky explained the choice without dressing it up.
"We kind of know who (Cardwell) is as a player, and we were going down to one group today to get some more accomplished," the coach told Curtis Pashelka of the Mercury News.
That is the whole cut in one sentence. Camp at this stage is not a talent show. It is a staff buying information, and a player it has already watched 13 times in the NHL has less left to tell it than one it has watched zero times. (This is unfair to Cardwell in exactly the way a job interview is unfair to the candidate whose references already called back.)
The club's release sent ten players to Barracuda camp and put three on waivers: Cardwell, Tye Felhaber and Libor Hajek. Camp is down to 36, with 23 forwards, 10 defensemen and three goalies. The opener is Oct. 1 against Florida at SAP Center. An NHL roster holds 23, so about 13 more names come off this list inside a week.
Here is the useful way to read who went. San Jose has played two exhibitions, Sunday at Anaheim and Tuesday against Vegas, and eight players appear in both box scores. One is goalie Matt Davis, who backed up on Tuesday without playing. Wednesday's cut took four of the eight: Andre Gasseau, Carson Wetsch, Cardwell and Davis. The four still in camp are Eric Pohlkamp, Nolan Allan, Huntington and Patrick Giles.
Dressing twice in three days was never a promotion. It was an audition with a deadline, and for half the group the deadline was Wednesday.
The split inside that half is not random, either. Gasseau and Wetsch are waivers-exempt, so sending them to the Barracuda costs San Jose a phone call and nothing else. Cardwell is not exempt, and neither is Huntington. Pashelka lists six players left in camp who would need waivers to go down: Giles, Huntington, Alex Barre-Boulet, Brett Leason, Allan and goalie Eric Comrie. So the Sharks had two non-exempt forwards on the same bubble and had to pick which one to expose to 31 other clubs. They exposed the one with the NHL games.
Warsofsky gave the reasons for the other side of that ledger.
"Jimmy Huntington's had a really good camp. He's gotten better each day. He's been effective in the games," he said. "Leason's come in, he's big, he's got experience on the wing, can take face-offs. Want to get another look at him."
Huntington scored at Anaheim, and he brought 48 points in 71 games for the Barracuda last season. Leason is the opposite kind of candidate. He has 226 NHL games, and the new collective bargaining agreement caps anyone past 100 at two exhibition appearances. He dressed at Anaheim and sat against Vegas, so he has exactly one left, and it is either tonight or Saturday in Las Vegas. Whichever game the staff spends it on, that is the last look it gets.
Cardwell, back from surgery on a torn labrum that cost him the last four months of last season, went on the wire with a deadline of 11 a.m. PT Thursday. By noon neither the club nor the league had announced a result. Warsofsky said the club would not "lose sight" of him, but a coach does not run the waiver wire. If he cleared, he joins Felhaber and Hajek with the Barracuda; if somebody claimed him, that is the price of the information.
Anaheim is at SAP Center tonight at 7 p.m. The thing to watch is whether Huntington and Pohlkamp dress again. Neither has played an NHL regular-season game, and they are now the only two players in camp without one who have dressed for both exhibitions. A club with 13 cuts to make in a week does not spend a third preseason game on a player it has finished deciding about. (It would also settle an August call that at least one Shark with no NHL games dresses for all four exhibitions. Pohlkamp and Huntington are the last two alive for it.)
Cardwell's references already called back. Huntington's are still on the line.
Sources: San Jose Sharks, "Sharks reduce training camp roster," Sept. 23, 2026, and the updated camp roster linked from it; Curtis Pashelka, Mercury News, Sept. 23, 2026 (updated Sept. 24), for the waiver deadline, the waivers-exempt and waiver-eligible lists, Cardwell's injury and all quotations; NHL game boxscores for 2026010009 (Sept. 20 at Anaheim) and 2026010032 (Sept. 22 vs. Vegas); NHL player records for Cardwell, Huntington, Leason, Pohlkamp and Davis; NHL club schedule for the Oct. 1 opener.
