How Will Karlsson and the Sharks Approach the Upcoming Season?

The San Jose Sharks dealt Brent Burns, who was the greatest defenseman in their franchise history, to the Carolina Hurricanes this past offseason. Perhaps the second greatest defenseman in team history, Erik Karlsson, remains on the team.

He recently shot down any trade rumors, so there are no question marks he’ll be in the blue and teal this season.

Ever since coming over from the Ottawa Senators, Karlsson has struggled to stay on the ice. He was much more durable in Ottawa, never missing more than 11 games in a season from 2010-2018.

The only exception was the 2012-2013 season where he played in 17 games. That year was a lockout-shortened season in which Karlsson suffered an Achilles tendon injury.

Injuries have plagued Karlsson, so how will he and the Sharks proceed?

His recovery was impressive, returning to the ice in ten weeks instead of a normal four to six-month recovery time frame.

In 2018-2019 and 2021-2022, Karlsson’s only two full “normal” seasons in San Jose, he hasn’t played more than 53 games.

Karlsson said he wants to be more proactive in avoiding injuries in this upcoming season. What exactly does that look like? Does he plan on playing a less physical game? Karlsson’s blocks and hits have gone down since that first season with the Sharks when he had 69 and 44, respectively.

Last season, Karlsson had 45 blocks and 18 hits, but it is interesting to note that he had 69 blocked shots in the shortened 2020-2021 season prior, identical to the 2018-2019 season. His hits were down by over half, with 20 in 2020-2021 compared to the 44 in 2018-2019.

Is he planning on reducing his ice time? Being on the wrong side of 30 with an injury history, it wouldn’t be too hard to imagine that might be a consideration.

Karlsson averaged 23:28 of ice time last season, which was his lowest since his rookie year back in 2009-2010 and far off from the career-high of 28:58 he had back in 2015-2016 in Ottawa.

He projects to be a top pairing defenseman for San Jose this season, and the departure of Burns makes it almost impossible to diminish Karlsson’s own role on the blue line.

Let’s go back to those trade rumors. Even if Karlsson denies requesting a trade, is he untradeable? He carries an absolute monster cap hit at $11,500,000 and still has five years left on his current deal including this upcoming season.

Even if the salary cap continues to rise, the game is still recovering financially from two years of shutdowns, bubbles, and limited crowds. All his on-ice problems aside, teams can’t afford Karlsson.

Replace Karlsson with reigning Norris and Conn Smyth winner Cale Makar and that price tag would still make a trade prohibitive for almost every single team.

Karlsson and the Sharks are going to have to learn to live with each other. The club should be rebuilding, but seems to avoid the topic and is hoping it’ll eventually fall into more of a “reset”.

No matter if it’s a surprising rebound or a rebuild from the ground up, Karlsson has to be there. The question now is will he be healthy?