What is going on with the Bruins and Nikita Zadorov?
Most things are going right for the Boston Bruins these days, as the team has jumped out to a 7-2-1 record that has them in first place in a loaded Atlantic Division.
If there is something to nitpick, it’s the play of Nikita Zadorov, as the veteran defenseman has taken several undisciplined penalties while the Bruins have bled high-danger chances while he’s on the ice at 5-on-5. His 29 penalty minutes have put the team in a disadvantageous position, as has the 46.53% expected goal share he’s produced, the worst of any defenseman on the team.
Even as Boston’s third highest-paid defenseman, Zadorov recently found himself as a healthy scratch.
On Thursday’s episode of Daily Faceoff LIVE, host Tyler Yaremchuk and co-host and former NHL goaltender Carter Hutton discussed were joined by Pete Blackburn, co-host of the podcast What Chaos!, to discuss the friction between the Bruins and their $5 million defenseman.
Carter Hutton: And obviously you touched on Jeremy Swaymen, but in the back end, Zadorov is an interesting one for me. Like, I watched him play so physical, then it felt like he was in the doghouse there, getting scratched. What’s going on there? Is he a guy that just kind of needs a message sent to him?
Pete Blackburn: Yeah, I mean, I think that the Bruins have accepted what Zadorov is in terms of a disrupter. And part of that is why they went out and got him. They like his ability to disrupt. They like his ability to be physical. And part of accepting that is accepting how many penalties he’s going to take, and he’s led the league in penalties over the past couple of years, and that is what it is. He’s still been a net positive for this team, I would say, for a large portion of his stay. To start this year, he has not been a net positive. His play hasn’t been nearly good enough, and he’s been taking stupid, undisciplined penalties. So I think that when they said that they were scratching him for disciplinary reasons, it wasn’t solely disciplinary reasons. Because if that was the case, he’d be a healthy scratch for much of the past two years. So I think that it’s partially because he has not nearly been good enough, and partially because he had a real net negative impact the previous game when he just took a double minor that really put them down in that game.
You can watch the full segment and the rest of the episode below…
