Quoting: NewfieQuilty
Im not sure Id call his contract bad... but he is a second pair RD....
Definitely. Eats a few minutes, but didn't do much with them, this year.
Quoting: ClockReads2113
1 IF Zaitsev is better than Kempny (debatable) then it isn't by much. 2 But Kempny is on a great contract while Zaitsev is on a bad one. 3 And no way in hell Zaitsev plays on the 1st pair over Carlson and Niskanen who are far better.
4 Also: STOP TALKING ABOUT HITS LIKE IT'S IMPORTANT. IT ISN'T.
1. Agree. 2. Agree. 3. Agree. 4. Slightly disagree, but no reason to shout...
A lot of teams don't seem to value hits. Most of them, even. Then wherever Lamoriello goes, he signs a couple guys who put up 200 or so hits a year, and the teams do okay. It's not everybody's cup of tea, but it's one strategy for building an affordable team to compete in the salary cap era. Zaitsev is massively underperforming his contract, which is supposed to compensate him for a level of offense he never reached, but I think maybe 1M or 2M of it are for hits? He comes through on that part. Last year as an older rookie he got over 30 points, with over 20 at evens. This past year he played tougher minutes and stopped getting power plays and only got 13 points, all but one at evens. He still had as many even strength points as Djoos, who took shifts with Carlson or Orlov this year, without anybody getting angry enough to shout about it.
But I don't have a first pair, so Zaitsev can't be on it.
The Caps have three NHL #1 defensemen, and I almost always put one on each pair. Caps fans each have their favorite guy, but I just like to pair a strong defenseman with a weak one. I get this comment a lot of, "why isn't so and so on this rank of pair." I think it's as funny as when parents complain to the principal that their kid isn't in the advanced reading group in Kindergarten. First of all, no one in Kindergarten needs to be reading. It's not developmentally appropriate because half of the kids aren't ready for it yet, and they get bored and act up, and no one learns much. Kindergarteners do better at singing songs and playing games and dancing and learning to clean up. But back on the hockey pairings, I like the way the Caps put them together in 1998, with a veteran teaching someone not as good on each pair. And yeah, I definitely didn't put Zaitsev on that Russian pair to teach Orlov anything, but the reasons I put him there do have a lot to do with language and educational development. If I had to learn new hockey plays in my second language, of Spanish, I would be bad at them. Zaitsev has been asked to do that in Toronto and has not developed as expected. My hypothesis here is that this could be part of why he has underperformed his contract, so far.
So, like it says in the description, I built a five man Russian unit coached by Peter Bondra. They're going to practice together half the time, and with the whole team the other half. They'll work on different skills, drills, and set plays, and be hell to defend against. Now, do you think Carlson or Niskanen speaks better Russian? Which one of them do you want on that "top pair?" My guess is that if you make learning plays and strategies easy for Zaitsev and Galiev, they can play up to their potential. As evidence, I would point to Galiev, who was perpetually a healthy scratch under Barry Trotz, ranking fourth in playoff points this year, in the KHL.
https://en.khl.ru/stat/
The Caps have already drafted and developed him once, but they didn't quite get it right. With better leadership and better communication, I think Bondra, Galiev, and Zaitsev could help Ovechkin and Kuznetsov play the best hockey of their careers.
Obviously, I'd rather get Zadorov from Colorado than Zaitsev, because someone trending upward appears more valuable, but all the trades I've suggested have been shouted down on both sides, even when I offered Kempny and Burakovsky, Colorado fans were uninterested. Zaitsev had a good rookie year with average top four level even strength offense. Toronto paid him like he would keep improving and turn into Erik Karlsson. Instead, he is their Orpik, at the same price, but over a decade younger, and Russian-speaking, with three more points last year (although Orpik, like Kempny, got ahead in the playoffs), but with potentially great chemistry with Orlov, Ovechkin, and Kuznetsov, because they all grew up speaking Russian, and when the arena is quiet enough, they can just yell out exactly what they're going to do on the ice, in Russian, and 90% of the defenders against them in the NHL would have no clue. Like, "I'm going to fake a pass to you but shoot low and to the left! Go in for the rebound and pass it across to Stan while I hit the guy covering him!" And nobody knows. How easy is that? It's like being invisible.
I am confident that Toronto can afford a right handed defenseman elsewhere. What should Toronto throw in to this trade get that cap space, and make up for the chance that Zaitsev does not build back up to his rookie numbers , but just becomes another Orpik. How big is that chance and how much are $2M of cap space worth to the team that just signed Tavares and has four huge RFA deals to work out in the next year with Matthews, Nylander, Kapanen, and.... who is it again?