With this trade, it's hard to gauge the winner.
It feels like Saad has been around forever, and should be in the downswing of his career but he's only 27, and he has been a consistent 20 Goal scorer, at 5mill for one more year, 4 mill after retention.
It's hard to gauge Zadorov's true value. As others have noted, it feels like Zadorov is a bigger piece than a 7th D. (He does have a lot of defensive coverage gaffes). And I think that's because he was playing as one of our top 4D during the playoffs (injuries to EJ and Cole) and he brings some intangibles that can't be measured by skatr comparison tools.
Is there a quantifiable metric for the amount of fear opposing forwards feel when crossing the blue line?
Because against ARI, the forwards would skate in the opposite direction rather than take a Zadorov hit, and against CGY in 2019, Tkachuk was causing all sorts of problems until Zads wallopped him a couple times, then Tkachuk kind of disappeared from the series.
And Zads is a good locker room guy, only 25, and only 3.2mill next year.
Tough to say who won this trade. It will depend how Saad fits into the avs offense, and if the avs can still use the cap space they have to bring in more talent IMO
Edit: 5mill after retention