Recapping my pre-season predictions: ‘Yegor Sharangovich hits 50 points’

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Or this one:

And here is an absolute rifle of a one-time slapshot, just for fun:

All three of those clips represent the kind of goals that Sharangovich was scoring for most of the season and why he became a very valuable asset, especially on the power play.

The Flames’ power play has been abysmal for the last two seasons. However, the acquisition of Sharangovich in the Toffoli trade and Andrei Kuzmenko in the Elias Lindholm deal gave power play and assistant coach Marc Savard the chance to work with some weapons that can shoot the puck from anywhere and have a good chance of going in.

The interesting part about Sharangovich’s season is the regularized adjusted plus-minus analytics weren’t as high on his production as the box score or many people are. On the man advantage is where he really took charge, according to Evolving-Hockey’s data, but at even strength, he was not as effective as he should have been:

Sharangovich, despite not grading out well by RAPM at even strength, finished with some solid total value metrics. He was 10th in goals above replacement (GAR) and, even better, second in expected goals above replacement (xGAR), only behind MacKenzie Weegar.

There are important decisions to be made about Sharangovich’s future with the Flames, but after the season he had both in the goal-scoring department and points department — he tallied the most points in a single season by a Belarusian player in NHL history, the record previously being held by Mikhail Grabovski set in 2010-11 with the Toronto Maple Leafs — it would be hard not to seriously consider bringing him back on a longer-term deal if possible.

But that’s in the hands of general manager Craig Conroy and his staff. So for now, Sharangovich will just have to go about his business, using his filthy wrist shot to fool goaltenders and continue scoring goals with a flaming ‘C’ on his chest.