Drance: Why Nikita Zadorov is worth the price for Canucks — even if the fit isn’t ideal

Nikita Zadorov is a ton of fun.

The newest Vancouver Canucks defenseman, acquired from the Calgary Flames on Thursday afternoon for a modest price — Vancouver is sending the fifth-round pick it acquired from the Chicago Blackhawks for Anthony Beauvillier this week, plus a 2026 third-round pick, to Calgary — stands 6-foot-6, weighs nearly 250 pounds and has solid speed and really good puck skills for a defender his size.

There’s more than a little bit of chaos on Zadorov’s game. Big hits, a high-velocity shot from the point and exciting sorties in the offensive zone as an oversized puck-carrier. He’s the blue-line version of a 360-degree tomahawk dunk.

The safest bet in the wake of this trade is that Zadorov is going to make Canucks games more interesting to watch.

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Flames trade Nikita Zadorov to Canucks

Of course, chaos is a double edged sword in the NHL. By overall impact, Zadorov is a sturdy two-way option with legitimate defensive value. On a play-by-play basis, however, his pronounced wildness is defined by a penchant for questionable decision-making with the puck, and a habit of trying to do too much.

On the same Canucks blue line as Tyler Myers, the question has to be asked: How much chaos is too much?

We’ll get that answer once Zadorov suits up for Vancouver, but on paper, the Russian-born defender — whose agent, Dan Millstein, publicly requested a trade several weeks ago — is a massive short-term upgrade on a Vancouver blue line that has had to cobble itself together in the wake of a long-term injury to Carson Soucy.

Depth players like Cole McWard, Noah Juulsen and Mark Friedman have cycled through the Vancouver defense corps over the past few weeks, with varying levels of effectiveness and consistency. Zadorov is immediately and without question a significant upgrade over such players.

In identifying and acquiring that upgrade, the club has found a creative way to do so at a relatively neutral price.

Swapping out Beauvillier and sending that freshly acquired draft pick to Calgary for Zadorov (while absorbing Zadorov’s deal into the cap space vacated by the Beauvillier trade) is just flat out good work. It isn’t easy to reallocate resources from the wings onto the blue line in the contemporary NHL, but Vancouver found a relatively sharp way to do so at an inexpensive rate across two separate transactions.

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Spending the additional third-rounder in this trade isn’t ideal, given how many picks the club has sent out the door in recent months, but even if Zadorov’s best moments have typically come on the third pair, he’s still beyond a run-of-the-mill type depth player. Unlike fourth-line forwards and backup goaltenders, 6-foot-6 defenders that hit like Zadorov and can legitimately support the breakout are pretty rare in this league.

And, of course, the cost-benefit analysis of parting with draft picks must naturally shift when a team is closer to the top of the standings than it is to the playoff bubble.

A third-round pick, after all, is a price that the team likely would’ve paid over the next few months, regardless. Zadorov is on an expiring contract and the going rate for expiring depth defenders — as we saw last year when Vancouver traded Luke Schenn — tends to be a third-round pick during trade deadline season. Or, in other words, Vancouver has paid the market rate for such an addition, while getting its business done early and at a high-leverage moment for a surprising, upstart team, given its injuries on the back end.

Despite the dexterity of the move and the obvious short-term upgrade, in some ways, Zadorov’s long-term fit is a bit uneasy, given how this Canucks team is built.

Between Soucy, Quinn Hughes and Ian Cole, Vancouver already had three left-handed defenders signed for $3 million or more, all of whom have performed well this season. With Zadorov now in the mix, Canucks head coach Rick Tocchet and assistant coach Adam Foote — who runs the defense — will face a bit of a tough balancing act when Soucy returns to the lineup, especially given that this Canucks coaching staff seems to be philosophically reluctant to play defensemen on their off-side.

The stakes of that juggling act are amplified by the fact that Zadorov requested a trade out of Calgary primarily because he was seeking a larger role. On paper, anyway, such a role seems far from assured on a Canucks defense corps with this many left-side options. That’s without even mentioning that Zadorov’s agent also represents Canucks winger Andrei Kuzmenko, who was a healthy scratch on two occasions just this past week.

Even if the fit isn’t ideal and could get a bit complicated over the long haul, the acquisition price is modest enough, and Zadorov — who also brings some unique physical value, given his prodigious size — is a significant enough upgrade over what Vancouver has been rolling out on the back end to more than justify this roll of the dice.

The chaos is going to be a ton of fun to watch. And this trade has made the Canucks a better team.

(Photo of Nikita Zadorov: Steve Roberts / USA Today)