There have been times, particularly in the rough early part of the season, when it was easy to pick apart Nikita Zadorov’s overall game.
He leads the NHL with 58 penalty minutes, so there have definitely been times when the discipline was iffy as it’s been for most members of the Black and Gold. And he’s obviously a big, heavy body that isn’t the sleekest on the ice, so there will be times when the foot speed can stick out if he’s a little bit out of position away from his own net.
Certainly, he’s made some questionable decisions with the puck in moments that have led to goals scored against the Bruins.
But Zadorov, like the rest of the B’s team, has been much better since the coaching change from Jim Montgomery to Joe Sacco, and enjoyed one of his best games in Tuesday night’s 3-2 overtime win over the Red Wings at TD Garden. It was a marriage of both opportunistic offense and hardnosed defense with a little bit of the dirty, mean and nasty thrown in that everybody envisioned Zadorov bringing once the playoff pressure cooker gets going in the spring.
It's been noticeable across the board on the Bruins roster, but Zadorov is one of the players who’s responded the most amidst the change and perhaps articulated best what’s going on while the B’s are 5-2-0 since Sacco took over the Boston bench.
“I think we're playing with the passion, playing with pride, and I think we're playing for each other,” admitted Zadorov after the game. “I thought we were disconnected before.”
Just don’t ask him specifically if Tuesday night was his best game in a Boston Bruins uniform.
“No,” was Zadorov’s curt reply when he was asked if scoring a goal and plus-1 rating in 18:20 of rugged, punishing ice time.
Clearly, he had some high moments in the overtime win, including a point blast he was able to step into and rifle past Detroit netminder Ville Husso for Boston’s first goal of the game. And he finished with eight shot attempts and another four hits along with a near brawl against Ben Chiarot as the physicality dial went way up in the divisional showdown.
In other words, he was a massive handful for the other team.
I think this puck owed Zadorov money pic.twitter.com/og0AnSoYMA
— Bear With Me (@BearWithMe_Pod) December 4, 2024
But he also took three penalties, including a slashing call on Lucas Raymond that drew his ire after the game was over for the handshaking and histrionics that went into the ref blowing the initial whistle. There was also a bit of a dive by Raymond on a cross-checking penalty where Zadorov admittedly went after the Red Wings scorer away from the puck in a pretty easy call for the referees.
Still, a message was probably sent there in something that Zadorov most definitely brings to the table for Boston.
The 6-foot-6 defenseman called it “disrespectful” to the referees while speaking postgame and mentioned it as a blight to the game itself in a league where embellishment has always been a very dirty word.
“I don’t like when the guy’s shaking his hand,” said Zadorov of Raymond’s antics during the game amongst a number of Red Wings players looking to draw penalty calls with a little extra acting. “I barely touch his hand, so I think that’s got to get out of the league.
“It’s a man’s league. We all get slashed. We’re all in pain. But you don’t go like this and show the referee that you get slashed. So I think it’s just a little bit disrespectful.”
“It’s a man’s league. We all get slashed. We’re all in pain. But you don’t go like this and show the referee that you get slashed. So I think it’s just a little bit disrespectful, so I went after him.”
— NESN (@NESN) December 4, 2024
Nikita Zadorov was NOT happy with Lucas Raymond's embellishment last night 😳 pic.twitter.com/GY0MaOvC8u
The Bruins may have finally settled on a role for Zadorov, man’s league or not, and that is skating on a pairing with Brandon Carlo where the two act in concert as a shutdown pairing. That’s the way they were deployed in Tuesday night’s game against the Red Wings and they kept Detroit off the board with good, old-fashioned, heavy hockey in the defensive zone.
“He was engaged in the game, and he was physical. He was defending hard tonight. When the opposition was on the ice, they knew that he was out there playing. The goal [he scored] was good and we like to see that. We’ve talked about that, about the D being shot-ready and there wasn’t even any traffic on that one.
“I just think [Zadorov and Carlo] have the ability to be a shutdown pair and play against other team’s top lines. Z is more physical, and Brandon is hard to play against because of his reach and his smarts defensively. If those two guys can gain some chemistry and play together against top lines, they are going to be an effective pair for us.”
A true shutdown pair would give the Bruins something really interesting to employ at times, and a veritable playoff weapon in the way Zdeno Chara and Dennis Seidenberg were over a decade ago on the way to a Stanley Cup.
That’s really what has ultimately been envisioned for Zadorov all along when he inked the six-year, $30 million contract with the Bruins over the summer. Perhaps he was trying to do too much over the first few months of the season to justify the money spent on him and impress his new home fans, but whatever the case the 29-year-old looks like he’s beginning to settle in as exactly the kind of intimidating shutdown presence they’ve been lacking on the back end since Chara retired.
Now it’s just a matter of Zadorov continuing to string together smart, physical and menacing performances as the biggest, baddest Bruins player on the block who’s got some very simple, but vital, roles on the ice.