Chicago Blackhawks: This is the perfect lineup for the 2020-21 season

Defense Pair Two

Zadorov-Murphy

The Chicago Blackhawks made three trades involving Brandon Saad that were pretty bad. The worst one was one involving Artemi Panarin but we don’t need to go down that road. The latest one sent Saad to the Colorado Avalanche in exchange for Nikita Zadorov. Zadorov is a decent mid-tier defenseman but the reason the trade was bad was because of the timing of it.

It feels like a trade that Stan Bowman made to try and make the team better right before saying they were going to rebuild. It also came after deciding to let Corey Crawford go. However, Zadorov is with the Hawks now and should be on their second pair. He would work nicely with Connor Murphy if he was ever able to stay healthy for a long period of time.

Murphy was also a part of a bad trade that Stan Bowman made. He came over to the Hawks in a deal that sent Niklas Hjalmarsson to the Arizona Coyotes. Murphy was seen as a younger version of Hjalmarsson and he basically is (was) but he can’t do it and stay healthy on a regular basis. Meanwhile, Hjalmarsson went to Arizona and has been mostly awesome.

Regardless of how they got there, however, they are there. They are both capable of being steady second pair guys on a good team. They need to stay healthy and they need to chip in on the offense every now and again. If they do those things, it could form a pretty nice pair for this team.