Mention Nikita Zadorov, and we have no doubt that plenty of Vancouver Canucks will roll their eyes towards us. The thinking will be along the lines of letting it go, because it's all in the past.
However, when the player himself brings up the Canucks and discusses what happened during negotiations, we're going to pay attention and are likely to respond. Particularly when Zadorov claims the organisation was disrespectful during the negotiation process between the two sides.
Consider comments the 29-year-old made, in an appearance on the What Chaos hockey podcast. Giving due credit to Trevor Connors of Hockey Feed, Zadorov said:
""We wanted to stay at the start. … We tried to sort it out but there’s a point in negotiations when you check boxes and then a couple things didn’t go the way we wanted to, and (it) kind of felt a little bit disrespectful too.""
Now in the interest of objectivity and fairness, Zadorov did go on to praise Canucks head coach Rich Tocchet and the way he runs things in Vancouver. However, we still need to give our take on his comments about the negotiations specifically.
Considering Zadorov's claim
We've previously written about comments made by Zadorov, which we were compelled to take with a pinch of salt. In particular, when he claimed the Canucks were his first choice at the end of last season.
However, as far we're concerned, the Moscow, Russian native was always about the money. He knew he was in a favourable position ahead of free agency, i.e. in demand around the NHL, and he was going to squeeze every last possible dollar out of the process, to get the best possible deal.
To be clear, we have no issue with this in and as itself - every professional athlete has the right to earn as much as they can during what is often a short career in the grand scheme of things. It's all this talk about claiming the Canucks were Zadorov's preferred team and that they were disrespectful during negotiations, which we have a problem with.
There was one report in particular, that the Canucks had offered Zadorov a four or five year deal averaging $4.5 million per year, which he turned down. Then, despite the apparent claims about wanting to remain in Vancouver, he signed a six year, $30 million deal with the Boston Bruins essentially as soon as free agency began.
Again, we have zero issue with the blue liner getting as much money as possible. However, to call the Canucks disrespectful during negotiations is a bit rich -- no pun intended -- particularly with his Bruins deal being called one of the five worst in NHL free agency this year.
Disrespect potentially coming from a different place?
Now it's entirely possible Zadorov is talking more about how the Canucks approached negotiations. Because when he's being apparently offered potentially just one year and $500,000 per season less, that would not be our definition of disrespectful. (And keep in mind a previous report from the Daily Hive, that he was willing to take a discount to remain in Vancouver.)
However, if you want to go down the road of how negotiations were approached by the Canucks, we'd shine the light in the faces of Zadorov and his camp. As was reported by The Hockey News back in May, Zadorov's agent Dan Milstein admitted he wasn't speaking to the Canucks.
However, why cut off all communication, if your client was claiming that remaining in Vancouver was the preference? Instead, the stance was effectively that the Canucks had their offer and weren't going to communicate again, unless the team was going to agree to said offer.
In essence, we would call that the definition of disrespect. Not being prepared to even consider budging from your offer, even with the reported Canucks offer and Zadorov's eventual Bruins deal showing that they weren't quite as far apart as previously believed.
Overall, as noted at the beginning of this post, we do understand that it's all in the past and needs to stop being talked about, with Zadorov now a member of the Bruins. However, perhaps he can now stop discussing the matter himself, especially when his comments smack of a certain level of hypocrisy.