Playing Ryan Reaves over Michael Misa is a mistake for the Sharks
Among the horrendous things that happened to the San Jose Sharks in the first game of the 2025-26 season, one of them happened before the puck was even dropped.
Going up against the Vegas Golden Knights on Thursday night, the Sharks elected to scratch second-overall pick Michael Misa and fellow prospect Sam Dickenson. Instead, San Jose put in aging veteran Ryan Reaves.
It’s not worth pondering whether the two youngsters would’ve helped the Sharks avoid losing in overtime to the defending Pacific Division champions. However, the team probably would’ve received more quality shifts than Reaves, who played a whopping 6:31 in the contest.
On Friday’s edition of Daily Faceoff LIVE, Tyler Yaremchuk and Carter Hutton explain why refusing to play two of the franchise’s future stars for a sluggish veteran.
Tyler Yaremchuk: The Ducks were maybe the trendsetters in this whole thing with the way they handled Leo Carlsson in his rookie year, kind of saying like, ‘Not load management, but he ain’t playing every night. We’re going to take it easy on him and not overload him in his first year.’ I think that’s all fine, but I also look at a Sharks team who is starting their season on home ice. You know the fan base is excited to see Misa and Dickinson, and you leave them up in the press box so you can play Ryan Reeves for 6 minutes and 31 seconds. I think it’s dumb.
I get development. Throw your fanbase a bone. You’re not going to be good no matter what happens in this first game, and Misa and Dickenson are not going to have their careers or their confidence shattered by whatever would happen in an opening night game. If anything, it’s a good experience.
Carter Hutton: This is like a tone setter for your organization and where you’re at. As the season starts to drift on and there’s more and more games, there’s only one first game, right? So, to be part of that is so important. These younger guys are impacted by this, right? I think there’s a little bit of pride.
They want to be involved. You don’t want to be a healthy scratch. So I think risk-reward at this point would have made more sense in my book to see them play on a team where you are rebuilding and this is your future. You already have enough young guys in the lineup…I love Ryan Reeves. Played with him. Great guy. But his foot speed is not getting anywhere. It’s not like he’s not being an impact. There’s not going to be a fight in this game. In the sense of it’s not really a trend-setting game for their season. So, that being said, I’m sure we’ll see them soon. But I would have liked to see them out of the gate, especially at home on a big night.
You can watch the full segment and entire episode here…