Trade rumors swirl around NHL captain for the first time in his 12+ year career.

One of the National Hockey League's well respected captains finds himself in a very unfamiliar position. 

The San Jose Sharks are coming off an extremely exciting summer for the organization and both the players within that team as well as the fan base is currently riding high after a series of shrewd looking moves from general manager Doug Wilson. The Sharks locked up forwards Logan Couture and Evander Kane to long term deals guaranteeing that they will have some big offensive weapons for the foreseeable future and then they shocked the world when they managed to seemingly come out of nowhere and snatch up Ottawa Senators superstar Erik Karlsson is a blockbuster trade. 

The moves have been universally praised but as the Sharks bolstered their roster and secured their long term future they may have also pushed some of their more established players to the sidelines, or the back burner, or perhaps even out the door entirely. One player who surprisingly does not have a new deal at this time is the organizations current captain, veteran forward Joe Pavelski. Pavelski is certainly on the wrong side of his career at 34 years of age and he is coming off arguably his worst season in recent memory and that may have made the Sharks very reluctant to sign him to a new contract.

“When you don’t have all of your tools, it’s tough,” he said as per Kevin Kurnz of The Athletic. “There are certain one-time shots, (or) one-touch shots that maybe you can’t do at times. It just takes away certain plays, or makes certain parts of the game just a hair slower.

“As the season went on, it felt better. Felt like I could do more. I think it showed probably a little bit, too.”

While this is purely speculation on my part I am 100% certain that Wilson's top priority now is to sign the aforementioned Erik Karlsson to a long term contract and avoid the star defenseman potentially walking away as a free agent at the end of this season. Although Pavelski could in theory also walk away as a free agent in the exact same time frame there seems to be no urgency at all to sign the career Shark to a new deal, in fact there may be no interest at all on the Sharks behalf.

Pavelski's agent recently spoke to Kurnz regarding what contract talks have taken place thus far between both himself and the organization and his comments appeared to indicate that the writing could be on the wall for Pavelski.

“Since there hasn’t been a whole lot of talks about a contract extension at all, I would say that they are lukewarm or tepid, at best," said agent Dan Plante. “It’s really kind of non-existent, so maybe non-existent is a better word.”

Now for the first time that I can remember Pavelski is the subject of trade speculation, although I think there is a strong chance the Sharks would hold on to him if they felt they had a legitimate chance at winning a Stanley Cup Championship this season. At 34 years old there would likely still be a fairly strong market for Pavelski, whether or not a trade actually materializes however could depend greatly on exactly how the Karlsson situation plays out in San Jose.