The Tampa Bay Lightning have re-signed restricted free agent defenseman Mikhail Sergachev to a three-year contract worth $14.4 million with an annual average value of $4.8 million per season. The contract will carry him through the end 2022-23 season.
Mikhail Sergachev gets a three-year deal with #TBLightning carrying a $4.8M AAV.
— Chris Johnston (@reporterchris) November 25, 2020
Mikhail Sergachev Re-signs in Tampa
Over his four-year NHL career, Mikhail Sergachev has played for the Montreal Canadiens and the Tampa Bay Lightning. In that time, he has put up 25 goals and 81 assists for 106 career points in 228 career games. He was originally drafted in the first round, ninth overall of the 2016 NHL Entry Draft by the Canadiens. Yet, after just four games in a Habs sweater. The Canadiens shipped him to Tampa Bay in exchange for Jonathan Drouin.
During his most recent season, Sergachev scored ten goals and 24 assists for 35 points. He also added 58 minutes in penalties. His possession numbers were 52.9 percent Corsi and a relative Corsi of 1.3.
In 25 post-season games, Sergachev scored three goals and seven assists for 10 points on route to a Stanley Cup Championship.
Looking Down the Road
With Tampa Bay’s current cap situation, it comes a bit of a surprise they were able to re-sign Mikhail Sergachev. The Lightning entered the offseason with just under $3 million in cap space. However, Sergachev is a massive part of the team’s future and the club needed to do whatever they could to get him under contract. With that being said, Tampa Bay has also extended qualifying offers to other key restricted free agents in Anthony Cirelli, Erik Cernak, Mathieu Joseph. So we will likely be seeing some movement of cap in the near future.
Now that Sergachev has resigned, he finds himself apart of another stacked defensive corps. Behind Victor Hedman and Ryan McDonagh, Sergachev will look to be the future number one defenseman on Tampa’s roster. The young puck-moving defenseman has quite a bright future ahead of him. After being able to maintain most of their championship-winning roster. It is hard to not look at the Tampa Bay Lightning as a Stanley Cup Contender for the foreseeable future.
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