Chicago Blackhawks: 3 unprotected players for Seattle to take

Nikita Zadorov’s time with the Chicago Blackhawks might be up after Wednesday.

The Chicago Blackhawks went ahead and left Nikita Zadorov unprotected. Many people believe that he will be Seattle’s pick in the draft from the Blackhawks. If he is, that would be sort of sad in terms of Blackhawks’ recent events. They traded Artemi Panarin for Brandon Saad and then flipped Saad for Zadorov just to leave him unprotected. That is a horrible look for Stan Bowman right now.

Zadorov is a talented defenseman that just hasn’t fit in well with the Blackhawks. He only had one year with them and it was the weird short 2020-21 season but it didn’t go very well. The Hawks don’t play a style of game that fits him very well either. He always just seems to be in the wrong place at the wrong time on the ice in Jeremy Colliton’s system.

There is a chance that if he went to Seattle, he would find some success. He is an RFA so the new club would have to work with him to get a contract extension done. That probably also played into why the Hawks left him unprotected at this point of their roster retool. He feels like the type of player that would step into their lineup and all of the sudden start playing really well.