EVERETT — Mirco Mueller is an NHLer.
At least for now.
The Everett Silvertips defenseman is beginning the NHL season with the San Jose Sharks as he’s officially made their opening-night roster.
San Jose finalized its roster for Wednesday night’s opener against the Stanley Cup-champion Los Angeles Kings, and Mueller is one of the seven defensemen who will be with the team when it gets its season underway in L.A.
“It’s fantastic,” Everett coach Kevin Constantine said. “For the player himself, he deserves it. On the defensive side he carried us last year in terms of how many minutes he played, so we felt he was ready for something like this. We were pretty confident he had a strong chance of sticking this year, whether he makes it the whole way or just gets some games.
“We were not planning on him being back because we believe in him as a player. He’s a good kid, a good player, and it’s good for our program, too. The development process worked the way it’s supposed to. A kid with talent comes in and learns how to play the game and gets himself prepared for the pro game. It’s good for our organization that the process has worked recently for guys like (Ryan) Murray and Mueller. It’s good for everybody.”
Mueller, a 19-year-old from Winterthur, Switzerland, spent the past two seasons with the Tips. When last season ended it was thought he would anchor Everett’s defense during the 2014-15 season.
However, during the offseason San Jose shed itself of veteran defensemen Dan Boyle and Brad Stuart without replacing them, thus opening up the possibility that a young defenseman like Mueller, the team’s first-round pick (18th overall) in the 2013 NHL draft, could earn a spot with the Sharks.
Mueller bypassed Everett’s training camp and preseason to head directly to San Jose, and he’s been given every chance to impress the Sharks brass. He played in six of San Jose’s seven preseason games — the only one he didn’t play in was a split-squad contest that took place simultaneously to the one he played in. He averaged 19 minutes, 57 seconds of ice time in the five San Jose games for which data is available, including ample time on both the power play and the penalty kill.
He had one assist, no penalty minutes and an even rating during the preseason.
When San Jose assigned defenseman Taylor Fedun to the American Hockey League’s Worcester Sharks on Monday, then followed by sending defensman Taylor Doherty to Worcester on Tuesday, it assured Mueller a spot with the team on opening night.
“(Chris) Tierney, (Barclay) Goodrow and Mueller have all played exceptional, and they’ve earned the right to be here right now,” Sharks coach Todd McLellan told the San Jose Mercury News.
When Mueller appears for San Jose he will become the 12th former Silvertip to appear in the NHL.
“It’s not a surprise or a shock to me by any means,” Everett general manager Garry Davidson said Tuesday from the Western Hockey League board of governors meeting in Calgary, Alberta. “We anticipated he’d have a good chance. They moved a couple defensemen and made the move to younger guys, and Mirco is a first-round pick with the ability to play in the NHL. Now they have to figure out if that time is now or later.”
Mueller could still wind up back in Everett. Since he is a 19-year-old who was drafted out of the WHL, Mueller is ineligible to play professionally in the minors this season. Therefore, should the Sharks get a look at Mueller during regular season games and conclude he isn’t quite ready for the NHL, the only place he could be reassigned is Everett.
Mueller can appear in nine games with San Jose before the first year of his three-year entry-level contract kicks in. He can still be sent back to Everett after appearing in 10 games, but NHL teams are less likely to return players to the WHL after burning a contract year. San Jose’s 10th game is Oct. 26 against Anaheim, though any games Mueller is scratched for don’t count toward his contract.
Davidson said he hasn’t heard anything new from the Sharks with regards to Mueller’s long-term status for this season.
“I haven’t heard a bit,” Davidson said. “They didn’t interfere with us, and we’re not going to interfere with them. They have a job to do. He’ll either come up a little short and come back our way, or he’ll do what I think he’s capable of doing, which is sticking there.”
As for the Tips, they already executed their contingency plan for Mueller sticking in the NHL, acquiring Russian winger Nikita Scherbak from Saskatoon two weeks ago to fill their vacant European roster spot. Scherbak and Russian center Ivan Nikolishin currently occupy Everett’s two European roster slots. Should Mueller be reassigned to Everett at a later date, one of the three would have to be traded.
Meanwhile, the Tips are adjusting to life without Mueller.
“There’s times when we miss him because you could count on him to do so much for us,” Constantine said. “He could break the puck out almost without a team plan because he skated so well. He could often use this hockey sense and his skating to get the puck out of our end.
“We miss a little bit of that, and we miss his penalty killing with his long arms and quick feet. There’s a lot of parts of our game where a guy like him is missed. But it’s an opportunity for eight other guys to grow in the process. He chewed up a lot of ice time, so other people get that ice time now and it’s their turn to develop.”
Check out Nick Patterson’s Silvertips blog at http://www.heraldnet.com/silvertipsblog,
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