SAN JOSE — Barclay Goodrow made a big splash in his first training camp with the Sharks two years ago, landing a spot on the team’s opening night roster. Now, after a year in the minor leagues, he’s determined to punch his ticket back to the NHL with a harder, grittier game.

Goodrow is among the small group of forwards vying for one of the open spots on the Sharks roster in camp this fall, competing with the likes of Timo Meier, Marcus Sorensen and Nikolay Goldobin. Although Goodrow isn’t a former first-round draft pick, like Meier or Goldobin, or a highly-touted European signee, like Sorensen, he’s “knocking on the door” in training camp after reinventing his game with the AHL Barracuda last season.

“We should be talking about him, too, like we’re talking about [Kevin] Labanc and these guys. He’s knocking on the door,” head coach Peter DeBoer said. “He’s one of the guys in our system that has some special things: he’s a big-bodied guy, he can kill penalties, so there’s a lot to like about Barclay.”

After taking training camp by storm two years ago, Goodrow has become somewhat of an afterthought in Sharks territory because of the plethora of young talent bubbling up through the farm system.

In 2014-15, the Sharks rushed Goodrow into the NHL after a strong showing in training camp because, quite frankly, they didn’t have a lot of options. The forward group consisted of players like Adam Burish, James Sheppard and Tyler Kennedy and the pipeline was relatively dry, giving Goodrow a clear path to the NHL.

But the picture is a lot different this year.

Goodrow is a bigger, stronger, more mature player, but he’s competing with a slew of top prospects who have the speed and skill that’s so desired in the modern NHL.

As a result, he’s hoping to stand out by bringing a different skillset to the rink.

“There’s some super skilled guys out there that play a different game than what I bring,” Goodrow said. “I like to play physical and go into the corners. Every team needs guys like that.”

But Goodrow wasn’t always a traditional power forward. In junior hockey, he was a top line point scorer with the Ontario Hockey League’s North Bay Battalion, but in the NHL he needed to play with more sandpaper to carve out a role for himself, which he failed to achieve in his rookie season.

After suiting up for 60 contests as a rookie, Goodrow was reassigned to the AHL after just 12 games last year with clear instructions from DeBoer and his staff: develop a harder game.

Within a month of his reassignment, Goodrow found himself in head coach Roy Sommer’s doghouse, demoted to the Barracuda’s fourth line during a road trip to Charlotte in late November.

Goodrow called the experience a “wakeup call”.

“That was a time I had to look in the mirror and say, I’ve got to change something about my game because this isn’t where I want to be,” Goodrow said. “You want to be playing top minutes, helping the team, and at that point I wasn’t. That’s when I turned my game around.”

In his next game, Goodrow played like a wrecking ball. He threw hits seemingly every time he chased the puck into the corners, he drove to the net when he had the puck and won battles all over the ice.

It wasn’t long before the changes in his game were reflected in his numbers. In his first two games after being promoted back to the top line, Goodrow collected four goals and seven points, igniting a run in which he’d record 22 points in 22 games, earning an invitation to the AHL All-Star Classic.

Goodrow finished the season with 39 points (20g, 19a) in 57 games.

“It was good for me,” Goodrow said, reflecting on his reassignment to the AHL. “That’s not what you want, but you’ve got to take the positives out of it. I got more ice time, I was able to get my confidence back and just be a more consistent player.”

Now, Goodrow’s trying to prove in camp that the hard game he developed with the Barracuda can translate to the NHL. He caught DeBoer’s eye in the Sharks preseason opener against the Vancouver Canucks on Tuesday by scoring a goal near blue paint and throwing his body around on the forecheck.

“I do like that,” DeBoer said. “We need that, that fits in with our identity as a team. He’s a guy that has some intriguing talents that we don’t have an abundance of down there, so he’s a guy that’s going to get a long look.”