The Sharks are tough to pin down. They'll have a full season of a fully integrated Karlsson, which is a plus, but it's hard to judge whether he'll be 100% with his skating. Contrast that with Vlasic, who could either have a bounce back year or continue to decline. If so, you have to hope for significant contributions from guys like Tim Heed and Brendan Dillon, which is setting yourself up for disappointment. At forward, they lose key leadership in Pavelski and maybe Thornton, but I honestly think that if you put Timo Meier in Pavelski's spot you might actually do even better than you would have with Pavelski there. The Labanc deal is fantastic, but then you have the rest of the forward corps and it's frankly pretty awful, with Nyquist and Donskoi gone. They have no depth. And then there's the ever pertinent question about whether Martin Jones can be anything close to league average - I'd bet he doesn't.
So yeah, it'll actually be pretty interesting to see if having that thin a lineup puts the Sharks at risk of missing the playoffs. Having a top forward tandem of Couture / Kane doesn't seem like a good idea.
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