Exposing Zajac would be absolutely asinine, he's a quality second line center who i'm certain other teams would covet if he were available for trade. He's fantastic defensively, a great penalty killer, wins more than his fair share of face-offs and is somehow still producing at around a 50 point pace on an offensively inept team.
$5.75 million year is pretty fair value for what he brings, especially considering the cap is well above $70 million now. He's 31 years old and he's only signed for four more years; stranger things have happened but i'm not exactly expecting a precipitous decline in his level of play given that his game seems to rely more on intelligence and positioning than raw physical tools.
I'm personally of the opinion that it may make sense to trade Zajac in about two years time; given the current state of our team I have my doubts we'll be a legitimate contender before he's approaching the end of his contract. If we hold onto him for another two seasons it gives us a chance to let the youngsters get their feet wet (McLeod, Zacha, perhaps whoever we draft this year too) while having Zajac as a model veteran to learn from and shelter them a little.
It's more likely than not that he'll still have considerable value to a contender two years from now (even if we retain a little bit of salary) Zajac is the kind of player who could push a contender over the edge.
It's a shame that he's a little too old to be a part of our future 'core' as he's criminally underrated and i'd love him to see him win a cup with us. I prefer him as a player to Henrique but given the choice i'd rather us trade Zajac purely because of the age difference. In my mind one of the two will likely get phased out by the youngsters, especially with us potentially adding another center in the top 10 of this years draft.