Revisiting the Yegor Sharangovich trade

CJ Turtoro dives deeper into the deal that shipped Sharangovich to Calgary.

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By CJ Turtoro (@CJTDevil)

During the offseason, Tom Fitzgerald made a step he deemed necessary to add some veteran production to a team with playoff aspirations and traded a buried-on-the-depth-chart Yegor Sharangovich for a proven producer in Tyler Toffoli.

Sharangovich went on to have a career season, putting up 59 points (blowing past his previous career high by 13) and leading the Flames in goal-scoring.

Meanwhile, the Devils traded Toffoli at the deadline to salvage some value from the acquisition on the flailing playoff-less season but failed to net a 1st rounder for their trouble (they landed a 2nd and a 3rd from Winnipeg).

The Devils gave up a 60-point, 25-year-old who is signed through next year at $3.1M and is ready to produce now, and all that they netted for their sacrifice is Winnipeg’s 2nd round pick in the 2025 draft. 

This is the narrative you’ll see circulating on Twitter/X. You’ll see it for a lot of players that fans wish were here (Kyle Palmieri, Blake Coleman, Adam Henrique, etc.), but, given his age and likeability, Yegor seems to be a particularly salient instance of managerial malfeasance to NJ’s faithful.

In my opinion, this is revisionist in some areas and plainly wrong in others. We’ll look at two major points here: 1) Yegor’s “breakout” and; 2) the Toffoli trade value.

Yegor’s “breakout”

Let me start out by saying I love Yegor Sharangovich. I love his game, I love his skillset, I love his adorable life and family and personality. I want to be friends with him. Don’t send him this article, plz.

Having said that, the idea that he’s suddenly found another gear and entered a totally new tier of value this season is untrue, particularly at even-strength. Below are Sharangovich’s even-strength production numbers in terms of both totals and per 60 minutes.

When at even-strength, Yegor set a career-high in shooting percentage. That’s it. He had more primary assists, secondary assists, and expected goals in each of his previous two seasons in New Jersey than in his first season in Calgary.

And, when we look at rates, even the goal number seems less impressive. His 1.2 goals per 60 only just barely eclipsed that of his rookie (1.1) and sophomore (1.0) campaigns in New Jersey.

He had a shooting slump in 2023 and a shooting boom in 2024, which is probably why people perceive it as a breakout. But, compared to his average, his point rate (1.8 vs 1.8) is the same, his primary point rate (1.5 vs 1.4) is only marginally higher and that’s due to his goal rate (1.2 vs 0.9) significantly over achieving his xG rate (0.7 vs 0.8).

Now, to be fair to Yegor, he genuinely did find another gear in the power play where he scored 17 points after only scoring 6 his entire New Jersey career.

This was not only a windfall in terms of totals but also represented a doubling of his Devils rate. If you want to blame the management/coaching on one thing, it’s not finding a way to leverage Yegor’s offensive ability on the power play in the pre-Meier days.

In the post-Meier days, however, it’s sort of hard to say we’d even use him on PP1. Who of Jack, Luke, Nico, Meier, and Bratt would he replace? And when Meier was injured, Yegor’s replacement (Toffoli) was just as productive as Yegor was.

So let’s give him credit for the power play production and the impact his shooting would have on his teams’ xG-to-goal conversion rate.

After accounting for those, his total value in terms of goals above replacement was 3.1.

That does represent a bump from his slumping 22-23, but it’s lower than both his actual breakout sophomore campaign (9.1) and even his upstart rookie campaign (3.2).

You can find the breakout if you go to his xGAR as opposed to his GAR, which was at a career high driven almost entirely by his EVO (even-strength offense), which, in turn, was driven primarily by the mechanism mentioned above – EV Sh%.

Now, I do think Yegor is a very skilled shooter, and it’s certainly possible that he sustains some of that efficiency, though, likely, not all of it.

I’m moreso trying to demonstrate that getting better results in one very specific area does not constitute a “breakout”.

And make no mistake, it was indeed one specific area.