Sharks Eat Up Potential Free Agents

Well, the San Jose Sharks are being rather decisive before the Entry Draft and it's making waves through the news world this week. Earlier in the week, they announced that they will not be going forward with goaltender Evgeni Nabokov, allowing him to go to unrestricted free agency. On Thursday, they decided to retain the services of Patrick Marleau, who was set to become an unrestricted free agent on July 1st, and get the new contract out of the way with potential restricted free agent, Joe Pavelski.

Both Marleau and Pavelski signed 4-year deals on Thursday, Marleau for $6.9 million per season and Pavelski for $4 million per season.

Marleau was definitely a question mark to return with the Sharks in 2011, after a breakout year with the club, salary cap issues and unrestricted free agency, but it looks like the new salary cap number was beneficial for him. In 2010, Marleau finished with 83 points (44 goals and 39 assists) in all 82 games, making him just a smidgen better than a point-per-game in the year. With the forward lines looking eerily similar for 2011, I would be forecasting close to a repeat year for Marleau in 2011.

Pavelski, on the other hand, was only headed to restricted free agency, so the urgency to get him signed on for the 2011 season was a little less, but still very important. Pavelski had a really good playoff run with the club and also put up some points in the regular season, 51 points (25 goals and 26 assists) in 67 games.  I think there will be a lot of same-thinking people out there believing that Pavelski had matured a bit more in the playoffs, making him a better fantasy player in 2011.

Forwards	Defense	Goalies
Joe Thornton	Dan Boyle	Thomas Greiss
Patrick Marleau	Kent Huskins
Dany Heatley	Jason Demers
Ryane Clowe	Douglas Murray
Joe Pavelski	Marc-Eduoard Vlasic
Torrey Mitchell

So, with the cap ceiling heading up to $59.4 million in the 2011 season, we can now do some better measuring here with the San Jose Sharks. Above, they now have 12 players signed on, who are regulars to the line-up, at an annual salary cap hit of $45.5 million, leaving the club roughly $13.9 million to help fill in a maximum of 11 spots, including a solid number one goalie.  Already, you can argue the Sharks have their top two line signed on, five out of six defensemen and their back-up goalie, so adding depth and a starter doesn't seem like such a daunting task with all the cap space they have left.


These deals are certainly good for the Sharks, especially since it takes out all of the uncertainty of their Summer's top prizes, except their goaltending.  The Sharks' scoring should be in pretty good shape for the year, which definitely wasn't an issue in 2010, so I think we'll be seeing another solid year.  I would suggest making some Sharks a priority on your list of players to choose from in the 2011 pools.  They should be pretty good.