Romanov is a complicated player to evaluate due to typical Russian buffoonery with the way they handle some young players.
I think you have to throw stats right out of the window with him in the KHL. In my opinion he looks much better than Sergachev did against players his own age.
Sergachev was not deserving of winning OHL dman of the year which was reinforced when he didn't win it the following year. There was no way he should have beaten Dermott in 2015-16. Unfortunately the CHL has alot of meat heads who have a say in these votes and they allowed their awe of some of his exploits shape their opinion.
So far we do know that Romanov has looked better than Sergachev in international tournaments albeit small sample sizes. I guess my point is that both players have great physical tools but Romanov clearly has the superior tool box. It is just tough to put any kind of limit on Romanov's offensive upside when he is dominant against his peers but completely hidden and misused by his KHL team.
I still firmly believe that Sergachev would have been an enormous failure in Montreal because he is so dumb and would have been eaten alive by the media for his all too often mindless gaffes. No denying his skill but he is likely going to be a very polarizing player like Malakhov was.
I agree that with Romanov you have to throw the stats out the window, or at least take them with a huge grain of salt. And I didn't see Sergachev in the OHL at 17 so I can't really say, I did see him at 18 and early on I thought he was struggling and looked lazy, disinterested as he was perhaps sulking about being sent down.
That said I find some around here have been dismissing his offensive skills since the trade when he clearly has produced very well in the NHL at a young age. Sergachev at 19 had double the points that Mete has in 120 games, not fair to compare them as we all know if you flip them that stat would look different but I'd be willing to bet that while fans would be on Sergachev, he would have a good bit more then 20 career points in 120 games played. The problem of course would be his D as you would likely have to put him with Weber and shelter him as much as possible.
Romanov hopefully has anything close to Sergachev's offensive skills we are in business, as he clearly is better defensively, higher IQ, harder worker, better physical game. What Romanov can turn into is a huge wild card for the Habs future imo, as having him turn into a very solid 2nd pairing D would be great but if he can be better then that then that would be massive since it's a major hole that needs to be filled and one that's very difficult to fill
