San Jose Sharks
San Jose does not have great defense. To make things worse, they had some bad goaltending last season. From someone who watches a lot of Sharks hockey it seemed every time there was a breakdown defensively it ended up in a goal. If San Jose could upgrade their goaltending it could vault them back up the standings.
Both of their current goalies last season had a GAA over three. That’s not a winning recipe if you ask me. Martin Jones had a 3.03 GAA and a .896 save percentage. Aaron Dell had a 3.01 GAA and a .907 save percentage.
Jones has been the starter for the last few seasons and he got the majority of the starts last season as well playing in 41 games. He had the third worst Goals Saved Above Average among goalies who played 2,000 or more minutes with a -14.88 rating. Odd thing here is Holtby had the worst at -16.81.
Everyone who watches enough of this team knows that goaltending has to get better or just get a better goaltender. The defense is not good, put a good defense in front of Jones and he has shown he’s good enough to take teams deep into the playoffs.
However, if the Sharks were to somehow get Holtby and put a good defense in front of him, the sky in the limit. Holtby with good defenses has won Vezina Tophies and Stanley Cups. Jones has not done that and I would say is unlikely to do that. (At least the Vezina part)
The problem here is the salary cap. Martin Jones has a cap hit of $5.75 million. Signing another goalie to a similar or higher cap hit isn’t ideal. The Sharks have just over $14 million in space to both sign Holtby and fill out the rest of their roster.
General Manager Doug Wilson however is no stranger to pulling off big moves. He’s traded for Joe Thornton, he’s traded for Brent Burns and he’s traded for Erik Karlsson. If Wilson sees an opportunity, he’ll give a good effort to get it done.
It’s not going to be the easiest option, but if San Jose doesn’t get brought up in the Holtby lottery I’m not sure what you’re looking at.