The Open Job On San Jose's Power Play Is Not The One Luca Cagnoni Is Being Given

Take every skater San Jose dressed last season, with no minimum on games played, and pull out the eight who logged the most power-play time per game. Sort them highest first. Then cross out the two who are not in the building any more.

Macklin Celebrini at 3:39 a night. Alexander Wennberg at 3:20. Will Smith at 3:18. John Klingberg at 2:57, and Klingberg is not on San Jose's cap sheet any more. Tyler Toffoli at 2:56. William Eklund at 2:54, and Eklund was traded to Ottawa in June. Luca Cagnoni at 2:47. Dmitry Orlov at 2:28.

Two names come off a list of eight, which is the whole reason there is anything to argue about. The seventh name played three games.

The projection#

On August 7, Sheng Peng published his opening-night power-play units at San Jose Hockey Now, with commentary from Jack Han and the former NHL defenseman Jason Demers. The first unit is Cagnoni at the point, Smith on the left flank, Celebrini on the right, Toffoli in the high slot and Wennberg at the net front. The second is Michael Kesselring quarterbacking behind Ivar Stenberg, Mason Marchment, Kiefer Sherwood and Michael Misa.

Ten names. Orlov is not one of them.

That is the piece. Everything else here is an attempt to work out whether it should be.

Four of the five projected first-unit forwards are exactly the four returning forwards who played the most power play last season. The forward half of this is not a projection at all, it is a continuation. The only chair that changes hands is the one at the point, and the man being moved out of it is not the man who left.

Whose ice is actually open#

Klingberg's is. He played 165.5 power-play minutes across 56 games, he was on the ice for 16 of San Jose's 54 power-play goals, and he is a right shot, which is what makes his absence a specifically shaped hole rather than a general one. San Jose still has two right shots on the blue line, Jacob Trouba and Kesselring, and between them they played 55.4 power-play minutes last season against Klingberg's 165.5. Cagnoni is not one of them. He shoots left. So does Orlov. The projection takes the one left-shot defenseman who ran this power play and replaces him with a different left-shot defenseman, and the right-shot chair Klingberg actually vacated goes to Trouba, to Kesselring, or to nobody.

Orlov's ice is not open. He played 203.5 power-play minutes across all 82 games, the most of any San Jose defenseman, and he was on the ice for 32 of those 54 goals. San Jose scored 9.4 power-play goals per sixty minutes with Orlov out there and 5.8 with Klingberg out there, which is the gap between a unit that works and a unit that is waiting for the horn.

So the club has one hole and one incumbent, and the projection fills the hole by removing the incumbent.

The three defensemen San Jose signed or traded for in July played 74.8 power-play minutes between them last season. Klingberg played 165.5 by himself. Whatever the summer was for, it was not for this.

What the club has said, which is not nothing#

Mike Grier has been asked about Cagnoni and answered in the shape of a man managing expectations. Speaking to Max Miller of Sharks Hockey Digest in a story published August 14, the general manager said: "He's had two good years in the AHL, and when he came up, he played well at the end of the year," and then, "For him, we got some size back there now, so if he does make it, the team would probably insulate him a little bit."

Read the conditional. Not when he makes it. If.

It is also the same reasoning Grier gave in July for signing the veterans in the first place, to the Bay Area News Group: a part of the reason to bring Kesselring, Nurse and Trouba in was so the club would not feel it had to rush the young defensemen and give them too much too soon. First unit power play at 21 is the definition of too much too soon, or it is nothing.

Nobody from this site was in either room.

Three arguments against me, and the first one is real#

One. Both times San Jose has called Cagnoni up, it put him straight on the power play, at first-unit rates. In 2024-25 he played six games and 17.5 power-play minutes, which is 2:55 a game. Last season he played three and 8.4, which is 2:47. Twenty-five minutes and fifty-four seconds is a career total that fits inside a single period, and the sample is an anecdote with a decimal point. But deployment is a decision somebody made twice, on purpose, with the alternative sitting on the bench, and that is a different kind of evidence from a projection. It is the best argument on his side and it is not close.

Two. Orlov is 35 and there is a shooting percentage inside his number. San Jose shot 19.0 percent on the ice when he was out there on the power play and 11.2 percent when Klingberg was. Nobody controls that gap and nobody repeats it on command. Strip the percentage out and the case for the incumbent gets quieter, and a 35-year-old on a rebuilding team is not obviously the answer to a question about next April.

Three. Two of the three voices in that projection floated running five forwards on the first unit. Demers said he is not opposed to it. Han said the personnel is there. If San Jose does that, the point is not Cagnoni's or Orlov's or anybody's, the whole argument above dissolves, and the man who loses out is whichever defenseman was going to be there. Peng calls these his own opening-night projections, which is a forecast rather than a decision somebody in the room has made.

The call#

San Jose's power play finished last season at 21.18 percent on 255 opportunities, against a league average of 21.11. That is seven hundredths of a percentage point from exactly average, which is a fact about a team that has to be better than average and a fact about how little room there is to get this chair wrong.

The honest read is that Cagnoni makes the roster and gets the second unit. Professor Hockey, whose July 12 read was that this club does not have a clear-cut power play option and who on August 16 said he expects Cagnoni to be given the first look at an NHL job on the strength of two Barracuda seasons, is describing a roster spot rather than a power-play spot, and those are two different arguments that keep getting told as one.

Orlov opens the season at the point on the first power play, on October 1 at home against Florida. He is the only defenseman on this roster who has run a Sharks power play across a full season, and a club that spent its summer buying insulation does not spend opening night pulling it out.

Sources: Hockey-Reference's 2025-26 San Jose Sharks team pages and the individual player pages for every skater named, for power-play time on ice, on-ice power-play goals, on-ice shooting percentage, handedness, games played and biographical detail; Hockey-Reference's team page for San Jose's 54 power-play goals, 255 opportunities and 21.18 percent, and for the league average of 21.11; the NHL's own club schedule for the October 1 regular-season opener against Florida; Sheng Peng, San Jose Hockey Now, August 7, for the projected units and for the Han and Demers remarks; Max Miller, Sharks Hockey Digest, August 14, for the Grier quotes on Cagnoni; Curtis Pashelka of the Bay Area News Group, July 23, for Grier on the reason for the veteran signings.