Sportsnet 590 The FAN: Elliotte Friedman on the Calgary Flames trading Nikita Zadorov, and if they could have gotten more.
** NHLRumors.com transcription
Matt Marchese: “Nikita Zadorov gets his wish he gets moved from Calgary to Vancouver in exchange for two picks. Did you think this was what the return was going to be, or might it have been a little bit better had Calgary you know if they decided to move him to Toronto where they would have had to have eaten a little bit of money. Would that have changed the package or do you think this is just what it was going to be?
Friedman: “I think, look, I think if you, what I always do is I kind of go back and I look, okay, here’s what similar players have, have gone for in recent years. And the one that I really looked at from last year was one that both the Toronto fans and the Vancouver fans are familiar with, and that’s Luke Schenn. Luke Shenn was traded last year to the Maple Leafs for a third-round pick. And that’s kind of where I saw Zadorov’s value.
And what can happen to you is Matt, is if there’s a lot of teams are interested in the player, and I think there was a lot of interest in Zadorov, the net sometimes can drive up the price.
The thing that Vancouver did here was they put themselves in a position where they can get him without asking Calgary to take money. And that was a big deal for the Flames. The Flames were an LTIR. They have a couple of other players who were there. Zadorov’s at $3.75 million.
By, you know, by making that deal and not having to take a player back or not needing money, they, they’re out of LTIR and now they can start accruing some cap space. And that’s a big deal. It’s going to give them some flexibility to do some things. It’s going to put them in position to increase some of the opportunities of what they can do. And I absolutely think that Calgary wants it to be seen as a signal that if you’re interested in doing business with them, they’re willing to talk.
You know, obviously, if Calgary is being asked to eat money, then they’re going to add more of a price from the other teams that want to trade for him. So for example, like I definitely think Toronto had interest in Zadorov. I definitely think Toronto was in the middle of these conversations. But all of that said, they would have had to pay a higher price because they would have needed the Flames to eat money and they might have had to include a player, so, depending on all their injury situations.
So you know, I think it was a much easier deal for Vancouver to do. Now, I think Vancouver had to throw the extra pic in there, the fifth rounder, just because they’re a division rival. It’s not a huge price to pay, you pay it. But I do think Calgary wanted that a little bit. So basically because of Vancouver’s cap situation being better than everybody else’s, I’m not surprised it ended up being where it was.
I will say this, I was surprised at the timing. I knew Vancouver was looking for a D and I thought, I didn’t, I should have remembered that, it’s (Jim) Rutherford’s history to go quick. I should have seen that one coming.
But the other thing too is, you know, I think Calgary was motivated to make the deal even though they’re playing well and they want to get in night. I still think there was some hurt feeling, I guess from the trade request and how it got out after that game in Toronto. And I think they were just like, let’s move on.”