Yegor Sharangovich was a huge positive for the Calgary Flames in 2023-24

In a group of players that needed bounce-back seasons, Yegor Sharangovich was one of them, and boy, did he deliver. The Flames wanted to get younger and acquire raw talent that could be used in plenty of different offensive scenarios, and they are getting what they bargained for after a stellar 2023-24 season for the young winger. Without him and his lethal shot, the Flames offence would have been in a more dire situation than it was coming into the season.

The 25-year-old Belarusian played in many different leagues for many different teams before making his way to the Flames roster. He started with Dinamo-Raubichi in the MHL in 2015-16, where he scored 12 points in 30 games. The year following, he played for the U20 Team Belarus team before making his way to the KHL. With Team Belarus, he scored 28 points in 38 games with 15 goals.

Sharangovich played for Dinamo Minsk in the KHL, scoring just 12 points in 47 games during his draft season. He was also an alternate captain on Team Belarus for the U-2o World Junior Championships, where he scored five points in six games in the tournament. He was put on the radar of some teams as a mid to late-round selection. And he was just that, being selected in the fifth round of the 2018 NHL Entry Draft by the New Jersey Devils with pick 141.

After being drafted by the Devils, he came over from the KHL and started his career with the Binghamton Devils in the American Hockey League. In his first season, he played 68 games and scored a mere 17 points. But he did see production growth in 2019-20, his second and final year in the AHL, scoring 25 points in 57 games.

As life took a turn with the Covid-19 pandemic, so did Sharangovich’s hockey career, as he ended up back in the KHL playing for his old team, Dinamo Minsk, on loan while the NHL and the rest of North American sporting leagues figured out how they were going to operate with the necessary precautions and restrictions in place. While he was on loan (and an alternate captain with Dinamo), Sharangovich scored 25 points in 34 games, which is impressive for anyone in the KHL. And because of that, he went up to a young Devils lineup and began his NHL career.

In his first season (the 56-game season), Sharangovich scored 16 goals and tallied 14 assists for an even 30 points in 54 games. But 2021-22 would be his best season to date as the NHL returned to some form of normalcy, playing a full 82-game schedule for the first time since the pandemic hit. He scored 46 points in 76 games, which was fourth on a not-so-great Devils team behind Jesper Bratt, Nico Hischier, and Jack Hughes. Sharangovich’s 24 goals that year were third behind Bratt and Hughes, who were tied for the team lead with 26.

After that season, though, Sharangovich experienced a bit of a drop-off in production, scoring just 30 points in 75 games during the 2022-23 season. He saw his shooting percentage dip to a career-low 9.9% (in his first two NHL seasons, they were 14% and 14.4%, respectively), which, for obvious reasons, put his goal-scoring on a downturn. The coaching staff also began to prioritize other players over him. In his first two seasons, Sharangovich averaged 16:48 and 16:30 of time on ice, respectively. But his average dropped to 14:25 in 2022-23, likely leading to even more issues.

On June 27, 2023, Sharangovich was traded from the Devils along with a 2023 third-round pick for Tyler Toffoli.

Looking to regain confidence, rebound in the box score, and prove everyone who said the trade was a steal for the Devils wrong, Sharangovich lit up the scoresheet in 2023-24. He hit the 30-goal mark for the first time in his career with 31 goals, and he finished with 59 points in 82 games, 13 more than his previous career-high. He was second on the team in scoring only behind Nazem Kadri, who also had an excellent season and finished with 75 points. But the young winger’s 31 goals sat atop the goal leaderboard for the Flames, one ahead of Blake Coleman, who also hit the 30-goal mark.

It’s safe to say trading for him as a “reclamation project,” giving him one of the best passers in the NHL both on his line and on the same power-play unit and playing him a career-high 17:19 on average did great things for his confidence and ability to put pucks in the back of the net.

The future of Sharangovich is still up in the air. My colleague Robert Munnich wrote a great article about what the Flames can do with the winger this off-season. He examined all of the different possibilities and offered his two cents about what he believes is the best option for the Flames. Testing the waters for a contract extension seems like the right move here. Even though it doesn’t feel as if Sharangovich’s point-scoring ceiling is much higher than 2023-24, if it is at all, there’s still tons of value to having his shot in the top six and on the top power-play unit. Now that he is more familiar with the city, the team, the fans, management, and everything else, he would be the perfect player to keep around as the club goes through a transitional period.

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