Mikhail Sergachev

This Season So Far

The 2023-24 season has not started. The empty row above is his, and both it and this paragraph fill in on their own from the morning after he first plays: what he has done, what it is worth against his own last season, and the run he is on when the two disagree.

Last Season

10 goals and 54 assists in 79 games — 64 points — at 23:49 a night. Plus-13, 156 shots at 6.4 per cent, three on the power play, two game-winners, 53 penalty minutes.

64 points is a career high by 24 and 23:49 a night is the most ice time on the club.

53.4 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 74th percentile — the best of any Tampa Bay defenceman — across 1,463 minutes, with his ice at 72-59 against an expectation of 69.79-60.86.

He started 57.3 per cent of his shifts in the attacking zone, the 82nd percentile.

The Finesse Game

156 shots at a median of 50 feet, with 71 per cent of his attempts from beyond forty.

Beyond forty feet: 115 shots on goal and eight goals — 6.96 per cent, more than double the league rate for defencemen of 3.17. From twenty to forty: 28 shots and two goals, 7.14, below the league rate of 8.83. Inside twenty: eight shots and none.

Eight of his ten goals came from beyond forty feet, at more than twice the positional rate, on the fifteenth-largest volume in the league.

And he slaps 48 of his 225 tracked attempts — 21.3 per cent, the second-lowest share of the four Tampa Bay defencemen who played a thousand minutes. Victor Hedman slaps 28.9 per cent and converts at 3.39; Erik Cernak slaps 24.2 and converts at nothing from 58 shots; Nick Perbix slaps 20.5 and converts at 2.50.

One blue line, four men, slap shares from 20.5 to 28.9 per cent, and long-range conversion running 6.96, 3.39, 2.50 and 0.00 — in almost exactly the reverse order. The book has now shown this in five chapters and this is the neatest single table of it.

100.2 mph at the 97th percentile, and the 54 assists are still the larger part of the file.

The Physical Game

6-3 and 212 pounds, and 3.20 miles a game at the 91st percentile at a top speed of 22.1 mph, the 43rd, with 0.6 bursts above twenty a game at the 30th.

The familiar first-pair shape: a great deal of ground covered, none of it especially fast.

53 penalty minutes in 79 games and 266 in 441 career games. He plays a physical game at the net front and takes the minors that go with it.

He is punishing along the wall and in front of his own goal, and at 212 pounds with twenty-four minutes a night that is a large part of what the club is paying for.

The Intangibles

Ninth overall in 2016, seven seasons, 441 games, 238 points across Montreal and Tampa Bay, and two Stanley Cups.

46 goals and 192 assists. The progression is steady rather than sudden: 40 points in 2021-22 and 64 in 2022-23, at twenty-three and twenty-four.

He is twenty-five, plays the most minutes on a club that has won two championships, and has just recorded a 64-point season at twenty-four.

What the file describes is the succession. Hedman is thirty-two and had his first ordinary year; the man playing more minutes than him is twenty-five.