The players who become 3rd and 4th line guys in the NHL still produce well in the AHL that's the thing...a guy like Coleman was a .7 points per game player with 46 points in 66 games. He was a bit older but none of our prospects were really close to that in Binghamton this season. Bastian was kind of close with 38 in 62 .61 ppg and he'll be 23 next week. And he has been in the top 6 for a large portion of his AHL career.
Sharongovich with 25 points in 57 games was a .438 ppg player this season at 22 and total AHL career of 125 games and 42 points for .336 points per game at 21 and 22 years old...Matteau for comparison did 53 points in 128 games as 20 and 21 year old player for .414 ppg.... players with any real NHL potential typically don't put up less than a half point per game in the AHL...I am not trying to delineate with .5 ppg...but good players, even potential 4th liners produce at the AHL level is really the point.
Bastian was at most middle six in Bing since he’s never played on the top line or had much power play opportunities for most of the year. The scoring binge he had at the end of the year actually was from his getting power play time so people might be reading into it that scoring a bit too much (unless he’s getting on the PP). He plays defensive minutes in general and honestly has likely been dragged down by a streaky McLeod at times, because Mikey, above all, has some real questionable offensive upside in the NHL.
Now Coleman spent four years in college, was 23 when he went pro and didn’t play a game in the NHL until his D+6 so I’m not sure how he represents a quick maturation process as a prospect. He was also drafted 75th in a deep draft where 59.2% of the picks played in the NHL so it wasn’t even a super crazy late find. Ray apparently felt his scouts needed challenges because they mostly had a lot of even later picks than that to work with considering all the losing we did.
Sharagnovich, an overager picked 141st, was a product of an Belarus national juniors program who was playing the KHL, which is a rather unconventional path to the NHL to say the least. He showed improvement in Bing and people who followed the team had good things to say about him but he has seemed like an afterthought. He didn’t seem to get any power play time even when he was getting more playing time in the top six as a center when Street was out in January. He scored and assisted on several shorties so he was getting plenty of PK time which lines up with
@Guadana Coleman comparisons.
But now as much as you want to focus on his points per game, Sharangovich’s goals per game are currently the 2nd highest for a 22 year old in KHL history. Number one is Wild prospect Kaprizov from last season, so Radulov, Gusev, Panerin etc currently trail behind. Now obviously he might not keep up that pace and, yeah, he weirdly only has 3 assists. 28 games is a good chunk though, the hope is he can keep scoring at least close to this pace and start getting more assists. He’s also wearing an ‘A’ at age 22 which is a pretty unique honor for someone that young in the KHL.
Most don’t make the NHL as a full time player anyway so, yeah, of course a lack of scoring punch in the AHL isn’t a great sign for anyone. There are late bloomers : Connor Garland, Tyler Bertuzzi, Yanni Gourde, Phillip Danault etc plus numerous lesser players who proved to be still useful at some point. Obviously the key for prospects is seeing some sort of positive development, or knowing the potential reasons why we aren’t really seeing it at that moment, so I’m not sure why Sharagnovich’s flurry of goal scoring in the KHL is a cause for bellyaching here. He’s a big fast boy (listed at over 200 lbs) who could potentially add a scoring big body to bottom six so cheer up buckaroo.
Yegor Sharangovich
22-Year Old KHL Players - Regular Season Stats
