Sharks Lock Up Graf Two Days After Celebrini, Completing Their Core-Building Week

San Jose re-signed Collin Graf on Friday to a three-year, $12.75 million contract, closing out a 72-hour stretch in which the Sharks locked up two members of their young forward group. Graf's deal came two days after Macklin Celebrini signed his five-year, $94 million extension — the richest per-season contract in NHL history at $18.8 million annually.

Graf is a different kind of piece than Celebrini, obviously. He finished the season at plus-7, one of the few forwards on the roster to end up on the right side of that ledger, and he's done it without ever being drafted. The Sharks are betting that durability and defensive reliability in the forward group matter as much as upside, which tracks with everything this front office has done this summer.

The broader offseason picture is worth noting here. San Jose has added three defensemen — Jacob Trouba, Michael Kesselring, and Darnell Nurse — selected Ivar Stenberg second overall, and now has both Celebrini and Graf under contract for multiple years. The departures of Colin White and others have cleared the roster of the previous core. What's left is younger and, the front office clearly believes, more structurally sound.

Whether it's enough to get them out of the 39-43 range is the actual question. The Sharks won close games last season at a rate that should have put them in the playoffs; they just couldn't stop the blowouts. Locking in your young forwards is necessary. It's not, by itself, the fix.