Vancouver Canucks general manager Patrik Allvin met with the media on Sunday afternoon to talk about his club’s acquisition of Nikita Zadorov from the Calgary Flames earlier this week.
Zadorov made his Canucks debut on Saturday night against his former team, a 4-3 win for the Canucks in which Zadorov logged 17:35 of ice time and played a key role in the visitors picking up the win.
“In our last preseason game when Brisebois went down there, we felt we were a little bit thin on the back end there, then Soucy got injured and we felt we needed to address it,” said Allvin, confirming the rumours and reports that the Canucks have been looking for help on the back end for some time now. “We’d been checking in around the league at what’s available and Nikita was a name that was out there in conversations earlier and we talked internally here and felt it was a fit for us at this point.”
Allvin talked about what the club believes Zadorov will bring to the team.
“He’s unique in terms of size and ability to move in today’s game and bring the hardness and a little bit of attitude to the back end… Especially with Quinn and Filip Hronek being more offensive-minded, we felt we needed to strengthen up a little bit there. The familiarity with Adam Foote going back to Colorado, and he played with a couple of players on our team too, so we’re excited to get him here.”
As we already saw last night, bringing Zadorov in will allow the Canucks to rely less on players like Hughes and Hronek to log big minutes on a nightly basis.
“I think we played our top four guys heavily here in November and we had a very condensed schedule at the start, so we felt there was a need to add a defenceman here to help our group and improve our team as well.”
On the question of signing an extension, Allvin made it clear he’s in no rush to get Zadorov signed beyond this season, and that Zadorov’s fit in Vancouver will dictate whether or not he’s here beyond this season.
“I think this is a great opportunity for both sides, for us to get to know Nikita better and for Nikita to get to know us better. I hope we fit together and this can be a long term [partnership].”
Allvin also talked about the coaching staff’s input and feelings toward the acquisition after
“We always communicate. I always bring Rick and his coaching staff on the discussions I have with teams around the league. We have players who can play their off sides, Soucy, Cole, Nikita the past couple weeks as well has played his off side, I think this is something the coaching staff will figure out as we get healthy. They were familiar with him and worked with him, Jeremy Colliton had him in Chicago as well, so our staff did their due diligence. What we were looking for and needed with Soucy going down, I think this was the priority, to get more of a PK shutdown player coming in here.”
