Colorado Avalanche: Evaluation and Areas of Improvement for Nikita Zadorov

While Colorado Avalanche defenseman Nikita Zadorov has shown significant improvement, he still has room to develop.

Colorado Avalanche defenseman Nikita Zadorov had the best season of his four-year career. He’s always been raw talent and skill. However, now the 23-year-old is starting to show the maturity needed to temper his fire.

What’s helpful for the big Russian, whom the Avalanche acquired in the Ryan O’Reilly trade, is that he stayed healthy this season. He played 77 regular season games and all six playoff games.

This was a season that saw him start by missing training camp because of contract negotiations and then fail to pass muster in his conditioning. In other words, he started out the season in something of the doghouse. However, he soon dug himself out, and by the end of the year, the Avalanche were relying on him to make up for Erik Johnson‘s absence.

So, let’s look at how Zadorov’s season went and identify some areas of improvement.

Evaluation of Nikita Zadorov’s 2017-18 Season

Goals: 7
Assists: 13
Shots: 94
Shooting percentage: 7.4%
Hits: 278
Blocks: 106
Takeaway vs. giveaway ratio: 13:36
CF%: 47.3%
CF% Rel: -0.7

Offensively, this was Nikita Zadorov’s best season. His seven goals, 13 assists and 20 points were all career bests. His CorsiFor also essentially matched his career best. He also recorded more hits this season than in any other — and he led the entire NHL in that stat.

As noted, he didn’t start out in high favor with the coaching staff. He had to earn every shift of the ice. That said, he did start on the top pairing with Erik Johnson.

His play got a little faulty in Coach Jared Bednar’s view late in October, and he sat a few games as a healthy scratch. When he did make it into the lineup, he was on the bottom or middle pairing.

By mid-December, he was back on the top pairing. And, while his ice time had fluctuated a lot before then, from mid-December on he played between 19 to 23 minutes most games. And, as noted, when Erik Johnson was out with injuries, Zadorov was the man tagged to help make up the lack.

Areas of Improvement for Nikita Zadorov

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Nikita Zadorov plays a physical game. Sometimes that gets him in trouble. However, he seems to be finding that balance between hard-hitting and irresponsible.

Zadorov isn’t as offensively gifted as Johnson, but he’s definitely tagged for the intimidation portion of Erik’s game. However, the offensive aspect — beyond getting under opponents’ skin — is a definite area of improvement for Zadorov. His shooting percentage of 7.4% is impressive for a defenseman — but it translates to only seven goals when you take only 94 shots.

I doubt Zadorov’s shots and hits numbers will ever align. However, I wouldn’t mind seeing the gap narrow.

Naturally, another area I’d like to see Zadorov improve upon is his giveaway to takeaway ration. A big, aggressive man such as Nikita should take the puck away more than 13 times in the season. And a big, aggressive man such as Nikita should not give the puck away 36 times in the season.

Nikita Zadorov plays his own style of game. What’s exciting is that he’s only 23 years old, and he only really has 3 1/2 years of NHL experience. He’s not even in his prime yet, so we have yet to be able to see what he can truly bring to the team.

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I have every confidence in the Colorado Avalanche’s Wild Mustang of a player, Nikita Zadorov.