The 2023-24 player reviews keep marching on. Today we’re looking at someone we all pretty much thought would still be on the roster next season – Mikhail Sergachev. Up until last month Sergachev was thought of as part of the “new” core of players that Julien BriseBois would build around after he signed him to an 8-year extension just two summers ago. Well, Sergy is going to be the cornerstone of a defense alright, just in Utah.
The Basics
Name: Mikhail Sergachev
Position: Defense
Counting Stats: 34 Games, 2 Goals, 17 Assists, 22:33 TOI
Extra Stats (5v5): 49.64 CF%, 47.99 SF%, 34.0 GF%, 49.98 xGF%, 50.92 HDCF%, .889 On-ice Save Percentage, 1.54 iXG
2023-24 Contract: First year of an 8-year, $68 million contract
Contract Status: Signed through 2030-31 with The Utah Hockey Club
The Charts
The Review
If we were actually handing out grades for the season, Sergachev would receive an incomplete. Limited to just 34 games due to a couple of major injuries, including a broken leg, it wasn’t quite how the Russian defenseman wanted to kick off his big new contract.
After a 2022-23 season that saw him take a huge leap in regards to his overall play it seemed like he was on the path to taking over as the Lightning’s best defenseman. He had spent some time on the top power play unit and was on the ice for a career-high 23:49 minutes. At just 24, and with Victor Hedman heading into the next phase of his career, the path seemed set for Sergachev to take over the role as the number one defenseman.
Even before he got hurt, it seemed like that path had hit a bit of a roadblock. Hedman reclaimed his spot on the top of the power play and Sergachev seemed to struggle with consistency. While the narrative of him being a turnover machine is vastly overrated (Victor Hedman, Max Crozier, Matt Dumba, and Haydn Fleury all had a higher giveaway rate) it always seemed that his gaffes were a lot more damaging.
Throughout the season Sergachev struggled with clearing the zone cleanly, but as the chart from All Three Zones below shows, the majority of the Lightning defense did as well. In fact, when polled against the rest of the league, Sergachev was just about average.
Whatever deficiencies he displayed in his own zone he usually made up for in the offensive zone. Unfortunately, last season he wasn’t quite popping the net like he had in previous seasons. Part of it was due to less time on the power play (he averaged 1:46 of ice time in 2023-24 compared to 2:33 in 2022-23) but most of his offensive stats at 5v5 were also down. He wasn’t shooting as much and the puck wasn’t going in as often. His shooting percentage of 2.56% was a career low.
It’s possible that those numbers would have leveled out if he had been able to play a complete season, especially considering that most of his games came when the entire team was kind of scuffling along. The broken leg denied him the chance of righting his season and left him with just 19 points on the season. His loss also left the Bolts scrambling for pairing for the rest of the season as Jon Cooper tried to fill the 20-minute a night hole left by his absence.
One stat that stood out was that in his limited action, Sergachev was only credited with 27 hits, leading to a career-low 2.56 hits per 60 minutes. That’s almost half of what he averaged in his previous seasons with the Lightning. The physical nature of his game was always something that set him aside and it was noticeably lacking last season.
Sergachev leaves the organization in second place in points scored as a defenseman with 257. He also ranked second in assists with 209 and hits with 670. His 48 goals scored was fifth among defensemen all-time. Had he stayed with the team for the entire length of his contract, there is a good chance that he might have challenged some of Victor Hedman’s franchise-leading totals. Instead, he will be setting records for Utah and the Lightning will be banking on replacing his unique skills with more traditional defense from Ryan McDonagh.
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