Before he takes the podium to announce Macklin Celebrini as the No. 1 pick in what could be a sea-changing day in San Jose, Sharks general manager Mike Grier has been busy in re-shaping his club.
Grier has often said that he wants the Sharks to be tougher to play against and it’s clear he was disappointed with their competitive level at times during their bottoming-out season. Addressing the forward group, he put in a waiver claim for two-time Stanley Cup-winning grinder Barclay Goodrow to bring him back where he started and traded for young checking forward Ty Dellandrea and winger Carl Grundstrom (trading defenseman Kyle Burroughs in that deal).
Neither scored much last season, but Goodrow — assuming he’ll work past the anger of the Rangers putting him on waivers and having the Sharks on his no-trade list — and Dellandrea should be part of a refreshed bottom-six group and aid in their penalty killing. Grier turned his attention to the defense and grabbed minutes-munching Jake Walman in a pure salary dump by Detroit.
On the eve of the draft, Grier swapped first-round picks with Buffalo and moved up three spots to the No. 11 position. It should leave the Sharks in a place to grab a defenseman or forward with higher upside, which could happen given the wide variance projected after Celebrini.
Artyom Levshunov, Zeev Buium, Cayden Lindstrom, Anton Silayev and Tij Iginla are likely to go high once Celebrini is off the board. But the Sharks could now be looking at Beckett Sennecke, Carter Yakemchuk, Zayne Parekh, Sam Dickinson, Berkly Catton and Cole Eiserman as possibilities. Either way, Grier and his staff aren’t sitting on their hands in what figures to be a busy summer.
