The open secret all season is the Sharks have been looking to
bolster their blue line. And Friday the team made a long-awaited
move by acquiring Carolina’s Ian White for a second-round draft
pick in 2012.
SAN JOSE
The open secret all season is the Sharks have been looking to bolster their blue line. And Friday the team made a long-awaited move by acquiring Carolina’s Ian White for a second-round draft pick in 2012.
The trade means the Sharks finally have the type of right-handed-shooting, puck-moving defenseman they have been craving.
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“That’s been our goal for a while,” Sharks general manager Doug Wilson said. “There’s not many of them out there. It’s like looking for left-handed pitching. Those guys are few and far between.”
White, 26, has modest numbers this season — two goals and 14 assists with a minus-6 rating playing for the Calgary Flames and the Hurricanes. While he’s not a big-name defenseman, Wilson believes he will be a good fit for the Sharks.
The trade for White wasn’t the only move the Sharks made on a busy day. In a separate deal, San Jose shipped defenseman Derek Joslin to Carolina for future considerations. That clears the way for the Sharks to recall soon highly touted defenseman Justin Braun from Worcester, Mass.
The Sharks hope that Braun, another right-handed shooter who had nine points in 15 games with San Jose earlier this season, will have the same sort of late-season impact that forward Logan Couture made a year ago.
“We feel very strongly about Justin, and it’s always been part of our plan to get him back up here for a while,” Wilson said. “When he’s here, we’ll have added two big defensive pieces.”
White, who expects to be in San Jose for Saturday’s game at HP Pavilion against Colorado, played 39 games for the Hurricanes since being traded by Calgary in November. For his career, the 6-foot, 200-pound defenseman has 133 points and 220 penalty minutes in 378 NHL games.
While White had fallen out of favor in Carolina, Wilson described him as a defenseman capable of adding offensive punch to a Sharks lineup that has had trouble scoring goals.
“He’s a good puck-mover, a good first-passer,” Wilson said. “He plays the point on the power play. He’s very competitive. He’s kind of an overachiever. We think he’s a good player at creating offense, moving pucks and shooting pucks.”
White, who will become an unrestricted free agent in July, sounded happy to be heading back to the Western Conference and getting the chance to play with former teammates Jamal Mayers and Kyle Wellwood. He also was encouraged to hear the Sharks envisioned him as a bigger offensive contributor than Carolina did.
“I think I’m playing well right now, and I’m at the top of my game,” said White, who will be playing on his fourth NHL team. “But sometimes different coaches want to play you in different situations.”
The acquisition of White came as the NHL trade market is heating up in advance of the Feb. 28 deal deadline. On Friday, Toronto’s highly coveted defenseman Tomas Kaberle was traded to Boston.
“It’s interesting how teams who were looking have moved up their deals,” Wilson said. “There’s only so many apples on the tree. And once you identify what you want, you go get it.”
Wilson said the trade reflects how the Sharks accepted his recent challenge to get their act together. After a six-game losing streak, the Sharks are on an 11-2-1 run that has pulled them back into the thick of the Western Conference race.
“This group really has earned the right for us to add some pieces to help,” Wilson said. “They have played closer to the expectations that we’ve all had for them.”
—The Sharks made a flurry of other roster moves Friday. Defenseman Nick Petrecki and forward Tommy Wingels, who were called up Thursday, have seen sent back to Worcester. Forward Benn Ferriero and defenseman Matt Irwin were called up.
Also, defenseman Jason Demers was sent to the ECHL Stockton affiliate. But that was described as strictly a procedural move forced by the other roster shuffling. He is expected to be back in the lineup against Colorado.
—Defenseman Marc-Edouard Vlasic, who left Thursday night’s game against Washington in the first period with an upper-body injury, didn’t practice Friday. But he said the injury is “not terribly serious.”
Still, it’s unclear if he will be in the lineup Saturday.
—Joslin, a 2005 Sharks draft pick, is sorry to be leaving San Jose. But Joslin believes he’ll get the chance in Carolina to prove that he’s a regular NHL player.
“San Jose is so good, and there’s so much talent here,” Joslin said. “It was just a numbers game for me to crack the lineup. But I’m looking forward to the opportunity over there.”
— Story by Mark Emmons, San Jose Mercury News
