Colorado Avalanche: Why Trading Nikita Zadorov would be a Bad Idea

The Colorado Avalanche have a valuable asset in defenseman Nikita Zadorov, which is why they shouldn’t trade him.

It’s that time of year. The Colorado Avalanche, like many teams in the NHL, are facing down the trade deadline. Are they buyers? Are they sellers? The answer changes game by game.

One name that started cropping up recently concerning trades is defenseman Nikita Zadorov. When you think of the Avs and trading a defenseman, you usually think of Tyson Barrie. But, no, Eliotte Freedman put that thought out into the universe that teams were asking Zadorov, and it’s taken flight.

My understanding is that teams are always talking to each other about various scenarios, but moving on.

According to Avs insider Adrian Dater, a Zadorov trade is unlikely to happen by the deadline. I’m here to say it shouldn’t happen at all.

The big knocks against Nikita Zadorov are that he’s inconsistent and that he takes too many penalties. Both of those are true. However, he’s a big man, and some of those penalties are because he’s a big man creating a commotion on the ice. But some of them are deserved.

Zadorov is inconsistent. I’m not going to deny that either. He’s one of those exciting players who can lay an opponent out with a clean hit, thus giving the Avs a scoring chance, or lay an opponent out at a time that gives the other team a scoring chance. And he’s like Oprah when it comes to giveaways — ok, that’s more Tyson Barrie, but Zadorov’s ratio is 13:21, which actually is an improvement on previous years.

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And here’s where I lay out my biggest argument about Zadorov’s inconsistency — he’s still young by defenseman standards, being only 23. Defensemen notoriously take longer to develop than forwards.

For example, our captain of the blueline, Erik Johnson, was all over the place his first few years in the NHL. His totals ranged from 4 points in 31 games to 39 points in 79 games.

However, his production and overall play has leveled out since that four-point year, which happened when he was 24 years old. Now, at 30, he’s the cornerstone of our defense, the player who sees the biggest minutes in the toughest situations — and most often succeeds.

The other big factor in Zadorov’s favor is that — big. As in, he is that. Yes, I know that the NHL is moving toward speed, and you must be a puck-moving defenseman to make it in this league. I’m crying horse feathers because, as the Edmonton Oilers have shown us, you can’t make a team out of all the exact same kind of player and expect to be successful.

And it doesn’t matter. Zadorov doesn’t lack speed. And his puck-moving skills have been steadily improving. Likewise, like his turnover ratio, his CorsiFor rating has been steadily improving. He started out at 40.5% as a rookie and currently its at 48.7. No, that’s not a good CorsiFor, but it’s the best he’s had — and it’s going up.

Here’s another interesting tidbit, again from Dater:

That gets us back to the big thing. You still need size in today’s NHL. You need a player who can deliver bone-jarring hits. You need a player who has the skill to make his own plays, but is someone opponents are always keeping an eye on because, hey, even hockey players don’t like being splattered against the boards.

You need that presence. And, yeah, it’s better if that threat doesn’t come from, say, your captain or your cornerstone defenseman — because both Gabriel Landeskog and Erik Johnson have similar presence — in case the Big Guy with Presence Syndrome lands you in the penalty box.

I’ve been calling Zadorov the heir-apparent to Johnson all season because he is. He won’t fill all of Johnson’s roles — no one defenseman will. However, when he learns just a little more control, he can be a solid, two-way defenseman. Which is just what the Colorado Avalanche needs moving forward.