Barn Burner: How Yegor Sharangovich has shown progression at the centre position this season

On Friday’s episode of Barn Burner, Boomer, Pinder, and Rhett took a look at Yegor Sharangovich after his impressive four point performance in Thursday evening’s 6-3 victory over the Tampa Bay Lightning.

With his two goals and two assists last night, Sharangovich set a new career high in goals with 25 and sits just one point shy of his career high in points of 45, which he set while with the New Jersey Devils in the 2021-22 season.

Sharangovich, while a being a natural winger, has been an experiment at the centre position for a while now with stints down the middle in New Jersey and now Calgary. At times, it hasn’t looked like the fit has been quite right but recently the 25-year-old has looked a little more comfortable in the role. In the segment, the fellas broke down the development they have seen from Sharangovich at the centre position.

“If this guy can be a centre boy does that change things.” said Pinder, “Look, the production isn’t what it was, you need a few more half nights of last night than the zero, zero, zero with one shot type of performances but you can look back to the deadline. They started in Boston and since then he’s got four goals in his last three games, he’s got five in his last four. Is the guy settling in or is it a hot shooting streak? We’ll see.”

“Either way, it’s is a guy you know in a pinch who can play who can play the position now,” Boomer said of the versatility the player has shown so far this season. “Going into next year if he’s back on the wing then that’s fine, you’ve addressed your centre needs or whatever but you know you will have some comfort if you needed to put him in the centre.”

Pinder: “And for example, his first four games at centre coming out of the All-Star break [he had] a combined five shots. He has four last night alone. It looks like there’s some comfort there. It also looks like he’s found something with Huberdeau who remains a point per game guy in the New Year since Sharangovich has been there. That’s not nothing.”

The chemistry between Huberdeau and Sharangovich has certainly been growing as the season has gone on. They connected for a beauty in Thursday nights game to give the Flames a 2-1 lead:

Coming into this season, the Flames had arguably one of the deeper centre cores in the league with Backlund, Kadri and Lindholm as their top three down the middle. With Lindholm gone now, Flames GM Craig Conroy has the task of restocking the pool to fill in what was lost in the trade. If Sharangovich can continue to progress as a centre, it could make his general manager’s life a lot easier.

Boomer: “It’s not can he be your number one centreman but if he can be a centreman and still provide the offence you know he can give you then it kind of does change your whole top nine strategy potentially.”

Pinder: “It really does. It doesn’t mean they won’t try to still add young centres but if he was not a centre and it was like man he’s sticking out like a sore thumb here, that makes Craig Conroy’s shopping list a lot more tricky this summer. Centres are the hardest thing to add, you know you got two good ones but they’re thirty-three and thirty-five. If Sharangovich at 25, 26, 27 wants to be a centre and not just a winger that can score, that changes a ton for this group.”

Boomer: “I guess I’m curious too though when you start getting into games that matter and you’re going up against the other elite centres in the Western Conference.”  How does he line up against a Kopitar? You go down the list of centres in the west. I don’t know, maybe that’s not where you put him.”

Pinder: “I mean he would be their third best defensive centre so you would have a lot of heavy lifting with Kadri and Backlund because they’re great two hundred foot centremen. You don’t need him to be that. I would sort of put a comp to Sean Monahan. Who would you rather have? [Sharangovich] is a much better skater, they’re both good shooters, neither of them are good in their own zone, you load them up in the o-zone and try to give them soft match-ups at home. He’s not a number one centre but if he can be a two B or three centre that’s a tidy bit of work.”

Watch Friday’s episode in full here:

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