To put things into perspective, Serg went from 70.2% offensive zone starts at even strength in his rookie year to 53.8% last season. Despite that he scored the same number of ES goals (6) and slightly increased his ES assists (from 18 to 20.) Granted he also went from averaging 13:29 of ES ice time to 16:10 and his ES GF/60 did dip slightly from 3.2 to 3.1, but I think it’s fair to say that Serg’s offensive productivity at even strength at the very least did not decrease by any significant degree from his rookie season, and when you take the difference in zone starts into account you can make a strong case that he was actually more efficient with his ES scoring.
The real drop offensively was on the power play, where he went from three goals and 13 assists to zero goals and six assists. Some (though not all) of that can be chalked up to him going from averaging 1:51 of PP ice time his rookie year to 1:30 last season - with our top unit being more efficient our second unit had less opportunity. The fact that teams had more data on his tendencies and could therefore better coach their PK units on how to play against him likely also factored into it. In any event I don’t think a decrease in power play effectiveness in his second season is anything to be worried about.
As far as his defense is concerned he went from averaging 2.4 GA/60 at even strength to 2.5; given that he was playing significantly more and harder minutes his second season that doesn’t exactly point to a drop in defensive effectiveness. The same can be said of his CF% going from 54.3% to 53.7% - the slight decline in both of those metrics is more than outweighed by the increased length and difficulty of the ice time with which he was entrusted. He also increased his blocks by 45%, going from 64 to 93. His takeaways decreased slightly from 21 to 18, but his giveaways decreased more from 60 to 50 (an improvement in ratio from 1:2.86 to 1:2.78) and when combined with his increased ice time meant that he was a less eventful player with regard to turnovers in either direction - not necessarily a bad thing, though we’d certainly like to see him continue to improve that ratio going forward.
I could keep going but I think I’ve made my point. Serg still has a lot to work on, but in his second season at only 20yo he greatly increased the number and difficulty of the minutes he played and still managed to perform statistically at a comparable level to his rookie year; where his numbers dropped they did not do so significantly (aside from his power play offense) and he showed improvement in a number of areas. Obviously we want to see more of that next season, but both statistically and from having watched him play all season I see no reason to panic regarding his progression and no reason to be concerned with either his short term or long term prospects.
