Quoting: TheDime99
It's all about the situations the coach puts the player in. Zaitsev was turned into a PK player and forced to focus on a more defensive style game if the Rangers use him correctly they could get him some value back. Staal was good until his eye injury and Smith gained a lot of weight after he resigned with the Rangers, Zaitsev is a good player who has been misused since his second year in the league. Staal and Smith are bad hockey players but Zaitsev could be a decent 2nd pair defenseman
Ah yes, the "he's not bad, just misused" excuse that seems to be only applied 1 way. Let's just discount the worse zone start rating in year 1 than year 2 before we talk about "usage"...or the fact that Staal has a worse zone rating in 3 of the past 4 years than Zaitsev has had in any year of his career...
In terms of performance, Zaitsev is one of 6 players to be ranked in the bottom 25 amongst defensemen in ALL of these categories over the last 3 seasons:
Goal Differential
Expected Goal Differential
Shot Differential
Scoring Chance Differential
The Other 5 players are Jack Johnson, Kevin Bieksa, Dion Phaneuf, Jay Bouwmeester, Derek Engelland.
Bieksa is out of the league, Engelland is a free agent, Bouwmeester has 1 year left, Phaneuf has 2 yrs and 10 mil left, and Jack Johnson has 4 years and 13 mil left.
Zaitsev has 5 years and 22+ mil left....
It's perhaps amongst the 10 worst contracts in the league...closer to Seabrook/Parise bad than Jack Johnson bad....
But hey.... what's the big difference?
Please do better next time...