‘We’re all excited for the future’: Head coach Warsofsky discusses key off-season for Sharks
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San Jose Sharks head coach Ryan Warsofsky has already had an exciting start to the National Hockey League off-season.
Warsofsky, the youngest coach in the NHL, led the United States to a gold medal at the World Hockey Championship, the country’s first gold at the event in 92 years.
Now, the 37-year-old switches gears to focus on a key preseason for the Sharks, who are looking to make a leap after finishing last in the league for the second-straight year. Warsofsky and general manager Mike Grier have already begun discussing several ways to attack the off-season and improve around Macklin Celebrini and the corps of talented young stars.
"We've started building towards 2025-26 with free agency, the draft, trades, all the makings of improving our team. We're right back at it,” Warsofsky said on TSN Radio. "We talked a lot about guys that are free agents coming up here on July 1. There's a lot of discussion between myself, Mike, and the staff, whether that's on players, or what we want to look like identity-wise.
"You try to build your team in every way possible. Through trades, free agency, and through the draft, especially.”
Celebrini emerged as a rising star in his rookie season, scoring 25 goals with 63 points in 70 games as he was named a finalist for the Calder Trophy as rookie of the year. The 18-year-old also gained valuable experience at the world championships, recording three goals and six points in eight games for Canada playing alongside Sidney Crosby.
Will Smith, who was a part of the gold medal-winning USA team, and William Eklund are also part of the Sharks’ future core, along with London Knights stars Sam Dickinson and Kasper Halttunen.
With the foundation in place, Warsofsky says the next step is to instill the proper habits into a very young roster learning the ropes of the NHL on the fly.
"The big thing is playing with winning habits. The habits and the foundation that we need to play with will win in this league,” said Warsofsky. “You look at the teams at the end, Florida and Edmonton. The habits that they play with, how to play with a lead, how to play within your shift, how to manage the details of the game. A lot of it is teaching these young players how the game is won at the end of the day.
“The NHL is a hard league to win in. It's a fine line between winning and losing. It takes time, but by no means are we letting them run the roost here. We want to put some good foundational habits in place because we know the future is extremely bright.”
The Sharks finished with a 20-50-12 record (52 points) in Warsofsky’s first season at the helm, missing the playoffs for the sixth consecutive season. However, it was a slight improvement for the club, which finished with just 47 points in 2023-24. The young coach has already identified the key area for the Sharks to improve upon next season.
"The next step for us is to start winning those one-goal games," he said. "I think we set a record for being up a goal and ending up losing the game. Those are the improvements we need to make and continue to harp on with the younger players."
The Sharks lost 10 times in regulation last season after holding a lead in the third period. No other team in the league had more than four. The team also had five overtime or shootout losses after leading in the third.
Their eight regulation losses this season when leading at the end of the second period were the most for any team in eight years and tied for the most in the NHL in any season since at least 1970-71.
Armed with the second-overall pick in the upcoming NHL draft, Warsofsky believes that now is the time to begin adding around their group of young stars.
“That's probably the next step in our build, to start adding,” Warsosky said.
“We added [Tyler] Toffoli last year, and we brought in Barclay Goodrow for some leadership. I think Mike has a really good plan on how he wants to attack the off-season. We'll let that run its course, and I think we're all excited for the future."