With the San Jose Sharks looking to acquire future assets after a disappointing season, one of their notable trade deadline moves this year was sending Brenden Dillon to the Washington Capitals. In exchange for Dillon, the Sharks received a second-round pick in this year’s draft and a third-round pick in 2021.
It was a necessary deal for San Jose to make, as Dillon was in the final year of his contract and is likely to get a raise in the offseason. The Sharks aren’t in the cap situation to make a new contract work and moving him to get back future assets was the clear route to take. He’s also turning 30 years old this year and considering Brent Burns and Marc-Edouard Vlasic are well into their 30s and Erik Karlsson will be 30 in two weeks, the Sharks can’t keep locking up aging defensemen.
That said, trading Dillon has left a sizeable gap on the Sharks' blue line. He was logging 19:22 per game, including 17:17 at even strength, which was a higher even strength TOI/GP than Vlasic and the highest amongst the Sharks’ left-handed defensemen. Dillon was strong defensively and had scored 22 points per season in each of the last two years.
Once Dillon was traded (and Erik Karlsson was injured), Radim Simek and Mario Ferraro took on much larger roles. Simek was playing 14:33 per game at even strength before Dillon was traded and just 16:05 per game total, which was over three minutes less compared to what Dillon had been playing. In a limited sample size of 11 games after Dillon was traded, Simek saw a massive increase in usage, averaging 20:54 per game, nearly five minutes more per game than he had been playing before Dillon was dealt. After the trade, Ferraro was playing 20:31 per game, compared to his 15:11 before the Dillon trade, an increase of 5:20 per game.
There’s still a large hole to fill on the left side in the top-four and we don’t know if Simek or Ferraro will be able to take on that task. Simek has been decent in his 89 total NHL games and while he was very strong defensively in the 2018-19 season, he wan’t great this season and it’s not certain that he’ll be able to play big minutes full-time. Clearly, based on his four-year contract extension, the hope is that he can be counted on in a larger role going forward. Ferraro, on the other hand, is coming off his rookie season in the NHL and probably isn’t ready to take that step.
It’ll be interesting to see how losing Dillon affects the Sharks, as we didn’t see much of the team playing without him this year, but it’s clear that other players will need to step up in his absence.
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Here’s today’s poll question (results and discussion will be posted Monday):
How do you feel about San Jose's defense after trading Dillon?
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