Prospect Update: Deven Sideroff

Photo: San Diego Gulls

By Thomas Harrington

A third-round pick from 2015, Deven Sideroff just completed his second professional season. He spent the entire year playing for the Gulls.

Sideroff had a rough 2018-2019 season. After recording eight points in 47 games in his rookie year, the hope was that he’d put up better numbers in his sophomore season. Initially, it looked like he would. He had three assists in the month of October, including a two assist performance in his fifth game of the season. By early December he had six points on the season. While they were all assists, he was well on his way to his best offensive season. Unfortunately, Sideroff was injured in late December and missed the rest of the regular season and the playoffs. Overall, he played in 20 games and recorded six assists for the Gulls. When healthy, Sideroff spent most of his time on San Diego’s fourth line.

Safe to say that Sideroff didn’t hit the expectations that I set for him a year ago. In junior hockey, he showed that he does have a scoring touch, but he has yet to find that element of his game at the professional level. I wanted him to score at a more consistent rate, play more, and have a better second half of the season. While he was on pace to have more assists and points than his previous season before his injury, his lack of goal production means he didn’t meet my first goal for him. Playing on the fourth line shows that his playing time didn’t increase in a meaningful way. He was also scratched a few times before his injury. Finally, his injury meant that he didn’t have a chance to have a better second half of the season.

Sideroff is still several seasons away from making it to the NHL. Even if you take out a year lost due to injury, he’s a right-winger, which Anaheim is incredibly deep at. Even with Corey Perry bought out and Patrick Eaves injured, the team still has Jakob Silfverberg, Ondrej Kase, and Daniel Sprong on one-way contracts, while both Troy Terry and Kiefer Sherwood had impressive rookie seasons this past year.

This coming season, there are two things that I want to see out of Sideroff. First, for him to stay healthy and play more than 50 games this season. Second, for him to have a much better offensive season than either of his first two professional seasons. With Terry, Max Jones, Sam Steel, Sherwood, Max Comtois, and others all vying for a full-time spot in Anaheim, there could be a chance for him to play more prominent minutes for the Gulls. Hopefully, he takes this opportunity and puts together a solid season for San Diego.

Sideroff has one year left on his entry-level contract and he’ll be a restricted free agent next season. Unless he comes out of nowhere and makes the NHL, he’ll be on a two-way contract next summer, assuming that Anaheim decides to qualify him. If he is re-signed, it’ll be a short deal, probably just for a year. If he has another season where he struggles to put up points in the AHL, the Ducks could decide to not qualify him, similar to what they did recently did with Keaton Thompson. At that point, San Diego could try to sign him to an AHL only deal, or he could try and find a new team for himself.

The next prospect update will be on Olle Eriksson Ek.

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July 17th, 2019