Last Week’s Poll
Last week the question was: Should the Sharks keep Thornton/Marleau beyond current deals? Here are the results a week later at around 1,300 votes.
Just Thornton – 37% No to both – 33% Yes to both – 24% Just Marleau - 6%
Not surprisingly, Marleau received very little love from the crowd. In the end, Joe Thornton was voted to stay by a slim margin.
What to do with Mirco Mueller?
Having Mueller play with the Sharks this season will present an uneven L-R combination that can be avoided if he simply plays the season in the AHL with the Barracuda.
While Mueller didn’t play bad last season it remains to be seen if he – or Dillon – can be trusted enough to play their off side. It’s not something that all defenders can do as effectively as the side they normally play and with Dylan DeMelo and Matt Tennyson both right handed shots the Sharks do have the option to let Mueller work on the intricacies of his game at the AHL level while the big club lines themselves up for a shot at the playoffs.
San Jose, really, has no time to waste figuring out whether or not a Dillon-Mueller pairing is going to work or be a complete disaster this year, so an AHL assignment for 2015-2016 with Mueller shouldn’t be dismissed.
As far as playing sporadically throughout the season with San Jose, I’d vote against it. I’d like to see Mueller get comfortable with his game at the AHL level for a full season before coming back to the NHL. If he does come up he’ll be in the same mindset that he was most likely of last year, which is that he had to prove something every shift or he’d be a healthy scratch.
On the business side of things, having Mueller play out a full year in his ELC with the Barracuda all but ensures he won’t be overpaid on his next contract – that is, of course, unless he blows the doors off in 2016-2017. That’s unlikely to occur given the state of the defense won’t be changing too much between this year and next.
Mueller has a potential future on the second pair of the Sharks blueline and a season in the AHL won’t hurt his development and it will give the Sharks front office the upper-hand in negotiations when his deal expires.
Are the Sharks any better by having Mueller play over Tennyson/DeMelo at the expense of potential comfort mistakes by whoever plays RD on the third pair? For a team looking to win right now there really isn’t any time for in-season growing pains at the NHL level. The West is tough and teams around the Sharks got better, they can’t spend 20,30, 40 games trying to figure things out.
What say you? Where should Mirco Mueller play in 2015-2016?
Thanks for reading.