This Thursday night, MLive’s Ansar Khan posted a primer as to where the 12 players who left the Detroit Red Wings wound up earning contracts (or pro try-outs) this offseason, and Khan also engaged in an interesting exercise:
Khan spoke with San Jose Hockey Now’s Sheng Peng, discussing Filip Zadina’s missteps in Detroit, and his potential with his new team, the San Jose Sharks.
Regarding last season, and the Red Wings coaching staff’s decision to place Zadina away from his favorite shooter’s spot on the right wing faceoff circle:
“He did not have a good training camp and pre-season. He was actually a healthy scratch [for the first two games of the year]. He just quickly fell out of favor with a new coach, and he never really recovered. [Then] he got injured, I think in November, blocking a shot, got hit by a shot and broke his leg,” Khan said, also noting that Zadina got behind free agent Wings forwards Kubalik, David Perron, and Andrew Copp on the depth chart. “They had more options on the power play, and it was simply a matter of Zadina just dropping down the pecking order.”
Zadina himself noted that he suffered an appendicitis at the end of the 2021-22 campaign, which put him behind the eight-ball in his summer training.
Anyway, Zadina did not look comfortable in the high slot on the power play, a high-traffic area which requires quick, accurate passing and shooting decisions. Khan agreed.
So of course, the obvious answer for the San Jose Sharks is to reinstate Zadina on the right flank of the power play. He was an above-average scoring threat from there from 2019 to 2022, ringing up 2.11 Power Play Goals Per 60, good for 57th among all NHL forwards (of 178 qualified, 300-plus PP minutes). That’s not too bad for a youngster.
Ansar’s not so certain about that:
“Their whole thing with him the last couple of years was they didn’t want him to be as much on the perimeter. And just to be like a one-trick pony. Where all he could do was fire off shots, one-timers from the flank,” Khan said. “They wanted him to be a little bit more at the net, and be more on the inside, and kind of expand his repertoire a little bit. I think that’s why they moved him. They wanted to get him closer to the net. Try to find different ways to score, whether that’s garbage goals around the net and things like that.”
Khan and Peng continue, and it’s an intriguing discussion!
The Wings power play when Zadina was on the right hash was totally predictable and pretty bad. He either missed the net or the goalie had an easy stop. There was little movement of the pieces on the power play. I wish him luck in SJ but he is going to have to change to have a career there.