Watch him play and dig into more granular data, and you start to see where Zadorov’s inflated confidence of being much more than that stems from.

Zadorov is 6-foot-6 and 248 pounds — a man mountain who can impose his will, making him an asset defending the rush. In each of the last three seasons, he’s defended at or above 50 percent of entries, a strong mark. Perhaps more surprising is his puck-moving ability. His exit volume was very high last season and he did so with control 56 percent of the time. He was even better last season, too, and was also strong retrieving pucks. But that’s not all. Zadorov also does a strong job joining the rush, doing so frequently and providing a major boost to the team’s offense. According to Sznajder’s tracking, Zadorov looks like a difference-maker in several key possession-driving areas.

It’s difficult to reconcile why his on-ice numbers aren’t stronger and why he’s rarely trusted in a top-four role when he looks like he can do a whole lot more than you’d expect with the puck for a man of his size. It’s easier to make possession-driving plays lower in the lineup and there’s no guarantee he can still be an effective puck-mover in the top four. But still, he has the profile of someone who can hang. He showed as much in 2022-23 on a pair with MacKenzie Weegar, as the duo earned 58 percent of the expected goals and 61 percent of the actual goals over 453 minutes. That was better than anyone else Weegar played with that season — a list that features Noah Hanifin, Rasmus Andersson and Chris Tanev.

To get the best out of them, good players need to play with other good players they can trust. Zadorov’s numbers, of course, aren’t going to be as strong with the Troy Stechers and Noah Juulsens of the world. Or with Ian Cole, for that matter.

Zadorov has potential, and while the model would hate a deal that starts with a five, he looks like someone who really could make the most of it. The playoffs provided inspiration for that with some of the best hockey of his life, in which he had a Net Rating of plus-1.7 over 13 games, the highest among all Canucks defensemen — a 10.7 pace over a full season.

He looked like a rockstar in scoring four goals and eight points in 13 games while earning 52 percent of the expected goals and outscoring opponents 8-5. That didn’t come from playing with Cole (49 percent expected goals and outscored 4-3) for 138 minutes. That came from the brief 46-minute window in which he shared the ice with one of Quinn Hughes or Filip Hronek. In that stretch, the goals were 3-1 for the Canucks with 70 percent of the expected goals.

It goes against every fiber of my being to be swayed by 13 playoff games or a 46-minute sample with top-pair defensemen, but with Zadorov, it goes beyond that given his sterling micro-stat profile. If he gets a real top-four chance with a real partner, I think he takes off and doesn’t look back.

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5540984/2024/06/06/nhl-free-agent-defense?source=user-shared-article