Curtis Pashelka

And, you know, the Sharks, you look at kind of the Sharks depth chart and, you know, not to say that, you know, one of those players, McKenna or Stenberg, couldn't be a real valuable addition to the team.

They do have plenty of wingers at the moment, even a couple of guys in the minors that they like as well.

It'll be interesting to see what they do, but I would not be surprised if they go after defensemen with maybe Chase Reed being the top pick in that spot.

Like you said, the Sharks only have two defensemen signed for next season, Dmitry Orlov and Sam Dickinson.

Shakir Mukumudulin is an RFA, and he's expected to be brought back, too.

But you don't quite know what you have, really, in terms of having guys ready to go, AHL players ready to go to start the next season.

So the free agent class, we'll kind of see what develops there.

I think that, like you said,

Maybe the more enticing route or maybe the route where it gets you more of a high-end

uh defenseman is to is to trade uh a player off your roster a player off your or a prospect or even you know mike rears even talks about you know maybe using one of their first two no maybe their second first round pick this year you know the one they got from the oilers and the jake wallman trade that's that's definitely going to be in play too in terms of trying to add like you said shore up that that defensive core and and uh you know someone who could not only just be here for a year or two but you know grow with this young core of players that they have and

is going to be under team control for several more seasons.

So it's not going to be an easy task for the Sharks to sort of fill that bill, but they definitely feel that they've got cap space to do it, and they've got some prospects and assets to try to do that as well.

I wouldn't be surprised, too, if they bring back Vinny D'Arne as a depth role.

It looks like Mario Ferraro is going to be allowed to test the markets, and Nick Letty and John Klingberg, two of the other Sharks' defensemen,

that they have this year are going to be going to free agency as well.

So, but a lot of questions, but I think the Sharks feel they've got a pretty good plan going forward.

Yeah, I mean, like every manager at this stage in life,

at this stage, you know, every general manager is going to say, hey, we're open to it.

We're open to listening.

But it's actually doing it is quite another thing.