SAN JOSE – Defenseman Luca Cagnoni had just stepped off the plane in San Jose after a pair of games in Tucson when he saw that he had received a text message from Jimmy Schuldt, the Barracuda captain who had just finished a short stint with the Sharks.
“Go light it up,” Schuldt wrote.
That was how Cagnoni, one of the AHL’s top offensive defensemen this season, found out he was going to the NHL for the first time, as the Sharks recalled their prolific 2023 fourth-round draft pick and returned Schuldt to the Barracuda after he played four games.
“My heart was beating all last night, and it was actually kind of hard to sleep,” Cagnoni said Tuesday. “Just super happy to be up here.”
In his first practice with the Sharks, the 5-foot-9. 180-pound Cagnoni on Tuesday was paired with 6-foot-7, 226-pound Vincent Desharnais. He also skated on the Sharks’ top power-play unit with forwards Macklin Celebrini, Will Smith, Tyler Toffoli, and Alexander Wennberg.
“He can move, that’s for sure. He’s a little water bug out there,” said Desharnais of Cagnoni, who reminded him of his former Providence teammate, Buffalo Sabres defenseman Jacon Bryson, who is 5-foot-9 and 177 pounds.
“Short, but really fast. Can make some really nice plays. That’s kind of what we just talked about. Let me do the heavy lifting, and then just make sure that your boots are moving and you make some nice plays. I’ll take care of the physicality.”
Cagnoni’s promotion was hardly a surprise given how well he has played in the AHL and the state of the Sharks, who wanted to give the British Columbia native a taste of the NHL with one month to go before the end of the regular season.
In his first year of professional hockey, the 20-year-old Cagnoni is second among all AHL defensemen with 47 points in 56 games. Nine of his 13 goals with the Barracuda have come on the power play, with his skills on the man advantage a significant reason why he had 18 points in his first 18 pro games.
“It gives me a lot of confidence,” Cagnoni said of being added to the first power play unit. “I’ve just got to go out there and prove that I belong there. That’s what it comes down to.”
Cagnoni’s strong start to the year came after he opened some eyes at the team’s development camp this summer, during the Rookie Faceoff event in Los Angeles, and at Sharks training camp, where he had four points in four preseason games.
Sharks coach Ryan Warsofsky said Cagnoni, who has always been a heady player and a terrific skater, took a huge step forward from one year to the next with his assertiveness, confidence, maturity, fitness, and strength.
“He’s done a total 180 from just a couple years ago from being drafted and in his first training camp,” Warsofsky said. “He’s almost a different player in a sense. So he’s put a lot of work in, and he’s earned this opportunity.
“It’s one of the biggest transformations I’ve seen that I can think of and recall,” Warsofsky added later. “I just remember he was such a deer in the headlights, and now his personality’s come out.”
Cagnoni, who didn’t turn 20 until December, could have been returned by the Sharks to the Portland Winterhawks of the WHL but was told early into the Barracuda’s season that he would be staying in San Jose and not returning to junior.
“It was a huge summer for me,” said Cagnoni, adding that in the two months after development camp, “I just put in a lot of time and came back a different player. On ice wasn’t really a problem, but just maturing off the ice, came back, and then the opportunity was kind of there, and I just took it.”
Cagnoni’s skillset is something that, at least right now, the Sharks lack at the pro level.
While Shakir Mukhamadullin and Timothy Liljegren have offensive parts to their games, neither put up the kind of numbers in the AHL that Cagnoni has. Jake Walman was the Sharks’ top offensive defenseman this season but was traded to the Edmonton Oilers on March 6 for a conditional 2026 first-round draft pick.
In five games without Walman, the Sharks have only three combined assists from their defensemen.
Learning how to defend in the NHL will no doubt take time for Cagnoni. But the Sharks want him to play to his strengths.
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“His tool set is something that we don’t have a lot of, in the sense of being a puck-moving defenseman, running a power play, bringing some offense to our group,” Warsofsky said. “So I think that’s the biggest thing, is something that we don’t really have a lot of.”
Throughout his hockey career, Cagnoni has risen fast and defied expectations.
Cagnoni went from being passed over in the 2019 WHL Bantam Draft to being 10th in points among all of the league’s defensemen three years later. After the Sharks drafted him, Cagnoni, the following year, became the first WHL defenseman in over three decades to record at least 90 points in a season.
He signed an entry-level contract with the Sharks in May of last year and, confident in his own abilities, was determined to make the AHL. Now he’s living a dream.
“It’s been such a fast year. I honestly can’t even tell you how quickly it’s gone by, all the moments and all that,” Cagnoni said. “It’s been a pretty unreal first-year pro.”
