Report: New Jersey Devils listening on Yegor Sharangovich

Tom Fitzgerald is fielding calls for the 25-year-old winger, according to The Athletic.

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Yegor Sharangovich’s days as a member of the New Jersey Devils may be coming to an end.

General manager Tom Fitzgerald is reportedly taking calls on the 25-year-old winger as we enter the heart of the off-season storm.

I’ll defer to The Athletic for more details:

Devils GM Tom Fitzgerald is starting to take calls on young forward Yegor Sharangovich, who is coming off a 13-goal, 30-point season. He’s a pending restricted free agent with arbitration rights, and the Devils may not be able to afford him, especially as they continue to try to sign Timo Meier to an eight-year contract.

This shouldn’t be all that surprising to anybody who closely followed the Devils this season.

Sharangovich just set career lows in goals, points, average ice time, and really seemed to fall out of favor with Lindy Ruff in the second half. Not unreasonably so.

Playoffs included, Sharangovich scored only one goal over his last 25 games. Taking things back even further, he scored just three times following Christmas break.

That’s simply not going to cut it for a guy who averaged 14:33 on a great team during that 44 game(!) stretch.

Forget about what other forwards on the team were doing – Ryan Graves and Damon Severson legitimately averaged as many, or more, goals per 60 minutes as Sharangovich in that time. And those are defensemen who play a ton of minutes on the penalty kill.

While Sharangovich has it in him to provide more – we’ve seen it in the past – that level of production is obviously nowhere close to good enough.

It’s an example of the limitations Sharangovich has.

He is capable of riding shotgun with a player like Jack Hughes and being productive. Since the beginning of 2021-22, Sharangovich has averaged better than 2.2 points per 60 with Hughes as his center. Good stuff!

The problem with Sharangovich is the level of production we’ve seen when away from No. 86.