Corey Masisak of The Athletic: San Jose Sharks president Jonathan Becher said that there isn’t a rush to name a permanent general manager.
Becher said they are early in the process. They got their long list of candidates down to 20-25 and have been screening them. They have held preliminary phone talks with 10 to 12 candidates. They have scheduled some video calls and will eventually get down to in-person talks.
There are still some potential candidates whose teams are still playing and will need to wait to get permission to speak with them.
“The more we talk to people, including what I think (the media) would consider non-obvious candidates, the more we learn a little bit more,” Becher said. “This is a good part of the process for right now, because we are learning a lot more about what we want in the GM by just pressure-testing different potential candidates. My guess is that by the end of May we’ll have sort of the model down almost exactly and by that point my guess is it’s really only four or five serious candidates.”
Becher said they are not interested in tanking for the next three to seven years to collect a bunch of draft picks.
Curtis Pashelka of The Mercury News: San Jose Sharks interim GM Joe Will said that he has no problem with talking to teams about trading defensemen Brent Burns or Erik Karlsson this offseason. Will to The Mercury News earlier this week.
“We do need to, anytime, look at getting better however we can and nothing is off-limits. But having said that, they’re exceptional players and we have a lot of very high-end players. Ideally, we’d like to include everybody in what we’re doing here, but again, we’ll just see what happens moving forward as we bring in a new (general manager).
“Nothing’s imminent. No changes are imminent or anything like that, but open to discuss. Yeah, I think if you want to get better, you have to discuss it.”
President Jonathan Becher has said a new GM may not be in place until late July or early August.
Trading either Bruns or Karlsson could net them a legit top-six winger or clear out enough salary cap space to add one in free agency or in another trade.
Trading either won’t be easy. Burns has three years left at $8 million per with a three-team trade clause. Karlsson is under contract through 2026-27 at $11.5 million and has a no-movement clause.
The Panthers are on the road against the Capitals and are
-185 on the moneyline with Betway
