The San Jose Sharks were quiet yesterday, signing only the 34 year old Paul Martin to a four year contract worth $4.85M per season.
While it addressed the need of a top four defender, it wasn’t quite what anyone expected as far as the age of the defender combined with the term. The potential – again with the potential – for this contract to be very good hinges on Martin’s ability not to decline too much (at all) in the next two seasons.
Martin is a quality defender still at age 34, though it remains to be seen what he’ll look like at 36, 37 or 38. This is a definite improvement to the Sharks defensive group and it’s almost a guarantee that he will be Brent Burns’ new partner.
Aside from Martin coming in and boosting the quality of the defense on San Jose he’ll also help the stability. The top four defender pairings will look like this right now:
Vlasic-Braun Martin-Burns
The only thing that can change, really, will be who patrols the blueline on the third pairing with Brenden Dillon – which means minimal line shuffling and more time for Dillon to get better with a common partner.
It was a day of very safe dollar signings by NHL GM’s, with no really awful contract handed out for the first time in history. I think Wilson could have done a little better with Martin’s deal given what happened elsewhere with other players – something like 3 years instead of four, or 4.25-4.5 instead of 4.85 – but the upgrade was needed and sometimes that comes at a cost.
Martin definitely wasn't my first choice, but the Sharks should be generally set at defense for at least year one and two of his deal.
The Paul Martin signing and the Martin Jones trade should be enough to get the Sharks back to the playoffs because I highly doubt they would have been as bad as last year anyway. What it doesn’t do, though, is make them a Cup contender. They still have holes – namely, the depth up front. I’d really like to have at least one player bumped off the roster in favor of a better available free agent. I’d seriously consider trading Tommy Wingels for a draft pick to make more than one beneficial signing.
Wilson still has a touch over $5.6M (according to CapFriendly.com) which is more than enough money to go out and get help.
Here’s my remaining UFA target list in no particular order.
Eric Fehr Sean Bergenheim Cody Franson Alex Semin David Booth
I left Franson there because if the Sharks did make a trade clearing space and could add Franson along with some forward help they would significantly increase their chances to compete on a deep playoff run.
Doug Wilson, I’m guessing, went back to sleep after he signed Paul Martin and woke up only to re-sign AHLer John McCarthy. He’s going to need to stay awake now because this team is on the path to go all-in-to-win, but they’re going to need more help.
Any combination of Ben Smith, Mike Brown, Tommy Wingels and Barclay Goodrow is not going to provide a good enough fourth line, and trying to shelter any of them higher is just silly.
It’s time to get back to work Doug and finish filling out this roster so this team can compete for a Stanley Cup.
Thanks for reading.