Over the next few years, there will be a steady flow of young players finding their way into the San Jose Sharks’ lockerroom. Between Will Smith, Quentin Musty, David Edstrom and the two 2024 first-round picks, the Sharks finally have a dearth of young, talented prospects preparing to join the NHL.
William Eklund marks the start of that youth movement. It’s a heavy weight to put on a 21-year-old, but this season, he bore it well.
Eklund’s 2023-24 production
After a few teaser seasons, Eklund finally played a complete season with the big club.
| Games Played | G | A | Pts | +/- | TOI/G |
| 80 | 16 | 29 | 45 | -45 | 18:39 |
Eklund scored 45 points in his first full season and ended with 16 goals. Those goals were impactful ones. Eklund led the team with five game-winning goals, the most on the team. Two of those goals came in overtime, again, the most on the team.
Special teams helped boost the young forward’s confidence this season. Eight of his goals came on the power play, another category in which the young forward led the team.
In total, Eklund played 1492:58 of ice time over 80 games, giving him top-six minutes for a majority of the year.
Taking on penalty-kill responsibilities
Most of this isn’t different from the other seasons he played with the Sharks. During his previous short stints, Eklund always received time on the power play and quality minutes. This season, however, Head Coach David Quinn assigned a new responsibility to the young forward: the penalty kill. Eklund played 68:58 on the penalty kill, sixth among Sharks forwards.
According to Natural Stat Trick, he was credited with four takeaways and zero giveaways during his time on the PK.
The move helped round out his overall game. Where Eklund already excelled offensively, now, he was tasked with protecting the net as well. The move benefited his overall game.
When you look at Eklund’s regularized-adjusted plus-minus chart for this season courtesy of Evolving-Hockey, you see that he was near league average on both the defensive and offensive side of the puck.
Eklund showed personal growth
Offensively, fans have a lot to cheer about when it comes to Eklund. Yet, the more exciting product of Eklund’s first full season may be the personal growth that he showed during a brutal losing season.
Oftentimes, it’s not the good times that show the true mettle of a player but the bad times. Eklund was not always producing the way he or the coaches wanted. There was more than a month of games between December and January where Eklund had not scored a goal and only had four points for his efforts. But he battled through it, and credit to the coaches for allowing him to do so.
The young forward never shied away from the media after a tough loss. He owned his part, and never piled onto other players. He was honest and respectful. He took the next step forward as a potential leader of the future Sharks.
He capped it all off with one of his best games of the season. On April 6, he scored the game-winning goal in overtime, securing a Sharks win and his first-ever NHL hat trick.
He also earned himself a new hat.
Eklund’s future with the Sharks
Eklund has two more seasons left on a contract that has a $863,333 per season cap hit. It looks like a discount deal for a player who could take a huge step forward next season when he lines up alongside players like Smith and the number one overall pick yet to be named.
45 points was very good for his first full season. It will be very exciting to see how he can build on that in his second full season in the NHL.
So far, it looks like not only is he here to stay for the short-term, but he’ll likely be a key piece of the Sharks when the team once again returns to the playoffs.
Editor’s Note: Over the next few weeks, we will be rolling out the player reviews for the San Jose Sharks. We realize there were a lot of guys rotating into and out of the lineup and some of the key depth players were traded. As a result, Fear the Fin plans to focus on the players who are 1) still with the Sharks and 2) played 20 or more games for San Jose this season.
