The Athletic’s Sean Gentille and Dom Luszczyszyn have posted their weekly set of power rankings, and they’re talking about Filip Zadina’s status as a healthy scratch:
Record: 16-15-3
Last Week: 23
Dom rank: 21
Sean rank: 22Dom: Quinn Hughes was taken one pick after Filip Zadina. How much closer to the playoffs are the Red Wings if they make that pick instead? A top pair of Hughes and Moritz Seider would’ve dominated this league for a decade, it’s a real shame it never came to be and it’s a decision that may hinder this team’s full rebuild potential. Not getting the top pick means it’s a necessity to hit home runs on those top 10 choices and Zadina simply has not been that. He’s scoring 0.61 points-per-60 this year at five-on-five. To his credit, a lot of that seems to be bad luck, but it’s still discouraging to see for the 22-year-old. He should’ve taken a bigger step by now.
Sean: Yeah, that made me take a look at the 2018 draft — as in, check Pronman’s “re-draft” post from a couple of months back — and folks … it was not good. But yeah, it’s probably past time for people to start getting nervous about Zadina. Getting scratched is a bad break. Maybe Jeff Blashill should throw him on a line with Dylan Larkin and see what happens.
Continued (paywall); the Ken Holland regime wanted to draft Evan Bouchard if they didn’t pick Zadina, so they never even considered Hughes.
