SAN JOSE — You could hear the roar from The Alameda.
Inside the SAP Center on Friday night, the noise wasn’t just loud; it was the sonic equivalent of a jet engine engaging its afterburners. The Sharks, a franchise that has spent the better part of this decade in a hibernation so deep it bordered on comatose, aren’t just awake.
No, they’re chugging Red Bulls and crushing the empty cans against their foreheads.
Lost amid the euphoria of the first relevant Sharks season in a good long while is the fact that this team is still a collection of kids figuring things out on the fly.
And boy, can they fly.
It took all of seven minutes and 37 seconds for San Jose to hang three goals on the board on Friday. According to the Sharks, it was the fastest fulfillment of the “Free Tacos” promotion in franchise history.
I’ve seen microwaved burritos take longer to heat up than this Sharks offense did in its 3-1 win over the Rangers on Friday.
The multi-point registerers in that opening flurry were Macklin Celebrini, Will Smith, and Colin Graf.
For those keeping score at home, the last time the Sharks scored three goals that quickly to start a game was in 2011. Back then, Celebrini was five years old. Smith was six. Graf was a relatively ancient nine. They were probably more concerned with SpongeBob than the Stanley Cup playoffs.
Now? They’re turning NHL defenses into traffic cones.
That top line’s youth isn’t a detriment — it’s a weapon. They play with the kind of audacity that only exists before life beats the optimism out of you. They are, in turn, creating existential crises for opponents with blind backhand tape-to-tape passes and audacious full-ice breakouts.
But here is the scary part for the rest of the league: It’s not just the marquee names that are on the ascent.
Celebrini and Smith might be leading the way and stealing the attention, but the rest of this Sharks’ rebuild is operating at an accelerated pace as well.
This team is giving 18-year-old Michael Misa more shifts each night. A month ago, Misa looked two steps behind, like a freshman trying to find his locker on the first day of high school. Now? He’s only a half-step off, and there are shifts where the geometry of the game clicks into place and you can see the Ryan Nugent-Hopkins-like skill.
The addition of end-to-end bomber Kieffer Sherwood is likely to create even more space for Misa, allowing the 2025 first-round pick to go from a guy with deft skill to an obvious game-changer.
Then there’s Sam Dickinson —the Sharks’ 2024 other first-round pick — who suddenly looks like he’s been killing penalties for a decade.
And all the while, this team is using Graf, all of 23, like a sage veteran — he’s always making the smart play and jumpstarting the squad when the hyper kids crash. (As they all do.)
You have Pavol Regenda, who at 25 is essentially a senior citizen by Sharks standards. But he had 19 NHL games under his belt coming into this season. In his last 13 NHL contests for the Sharks, he has established himself as a legitimate top-six power forward. On Friday, he drew two penalties and scored a backhanded goal from the slot that was so disgusting that Misa, Celebrini, Dickinson, and Smith should have needed parental permission to watch it.
And in net? You have 30-year-old Alex Nedeljovic. He’s now a certified goon, but he was a certified wall Friday, and he’s playing arguably the best hockey of his career. That’s nice in and of itself, but it’s also pushing 23-year-old phenom Yaroslav Askarov to be at his best every time he gets the crease. It’s a competition, sure, but it’s the kind that lifts all boats and keeps the Sharks’ goalie of the future on his toes — which is always a good thing.
Even William Eklund, the 23-year-old “old guard” of the franchise, looks better these days, establishing himself as a dirty-work All-Star with All-Star mitts to match.
This team doesn’t just have momentum; they are careening toward league domination like an Olympic alpine skier.
And frankly, we needed this.
Look around the Bay Area sports landscape right now. It’s a bit of a drag, isn’t it?
The Giants seem to have no interest in keeping pace with the Dodgers in the National League West. (They’re really going to start both Drew Gilbert and Casey Schmitt?)
The Warriors are down bad, in the worst of ways; we’re in the final days of that once-incredible empire.
Meanwhile, the 49ers are in a deeply peculiar state of limbo. Plus, anytime you check your phone, you expect to see a report saying another one was hurt.
In a market starved for juice, the Sharks are a crate of top-shelf, freshly squeezed oranges.
The joy, the positivity, and the wonderful naivety of this group are something to cherish. This ascent is going to be an exceptionally fun ride.
Because the here and now is pretty great already: Celebrini was getting MVP chants in the first period on Friday.
And you know what? They were warranted, even though he’s 19 years old.
What happens when he’s 25? Thirty?
We’re on the precipice of something earth-shaking in the South Bay, and yet the mere sight of a full Shark Tank feels like enough to call this season a rousing success.
The Sharks are the seventh-youngest team in the NHL, but when you weigh their points-per-year, they are even younger than that.
They don’t know they’re not supposed to be this good yet.
Typical brash teenagers — they’re not even asking for permission to beat these other teams.
They just keep skating. They just keep scoring. And they — from Celebrini on down — just keep getting better.
San Jose, enjoy the tacos.
But savor this team even more.
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