Rumor: Potential player for player trade between the Rangers and Sharks.

Rangers and Sharks a good fit.

HockeyFeed
HockeyFeed
Published 4 years ago
Rumor: Potential player for player trade between the Rangers and Sharks.
NHL

Last Wednesday the San Jose Sharks announced that they had fired head coach Peter DeBoer following a rather disappointing start to the 2019 - 2020 National Hockey League regular season. That start has been made all the more difficult to swallow due to the fact that the Sharks first round draft selection is currently owned by the Ottawa Senators, who would greatly benefit from a Sharks collapse this season and a high draft pick as a reward. 

I have no doubt there are a number of factors that led to the eventual termination of the long time Sharks head coach in DeBoer, however it is hard to look at the Sharks this season and not immediately point at least one finger at their current goaltending situation. For the second consecutive season goaltender Martin Jones has simply not been good enough for the Sharks and no amount of coaching is going to fix that. The 29 year old veteran has 27 games under his belt this season but his 3.30 goals against average and .888 save percentage are simply not numbers one would expect of a goaltender in a starting position in the National Hockey League.

It has become clear to many that the Sharks must make a move to upgrade their current situation in goal but doing so in midseason with the restrictions of the NHL salary cap is easier said than done. However New York Rangers insider Larry Brooks believes that there could be a good fit here between the Sharks and the rebuilding New York Rangers, a Rangers team that could have interest in San Jose Sharks forward Kevin Labanc.

From Brooks:

So, this one might well make sense, but only if the Rangers are confident enough in Igor Shesterkin to move Alexandar Georgiev. And that is Georgiev to San Jose, which has had the NHL’s poorest save percentage since the start of last season, both overall and five-on-five, in exchange for 24-year-old Brooklyn-born winger Kevin Labanc.

Georgiev of course has been tearing it up for the Rangers this season with some even believing that the youngster has overtaken Rangers star Henrik Lundqvist in net. Through 15 games this season he boasts a 2.69 goals against average and a .923 save percentage and those are the kind of numbers the Sharks could really benefit from. Whether or not the Sharks will be willing to give up a very talented young forward on one of the best contracts in the NHL however is another matter entirely.

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