Rutherford reveals juicy tidbits from Zadorov's Vancouver Canucks contract negotiations
The Vancouver Canucks sure miss defenceman Nikita Zadorov this season.
The 6-foot-6 blueliner was a star in last year’s playoffs but signed with the Boston Bruins in free agency. The Russian defenceman has previously spoken publicly about how he felt “disrespected” in contract negotiations with the Canucks.
The Canucks started low but eventually raised their offer to match the Bruins. Despite that, Zadorov still left. Club president Jim Rutherford revealed in a recent interview he thinks they did everything needed to retain the physical defenceman.
“At the end, Zadorov was talking close with Tocchet while Patrik [Allvin] was talking to his agent. Tocchet would ask him ‘What’s it going to take to keep you here?’ And Zadorov said he had to get his contract to US$5 million [annually] and then he’d be set. So we got him to US$5 million. But then there was still no deal,” said Rutherford to The Globe and Mail‘s Gary Mason.
“So, Rick said to him ‘What’s going on?’ And then he said, ‘Well, if I can get to six years then I’ll stay.’ Same process. We said okay. So twice in that process, he said give me that one more thing and I’ll stay and then we give it to him and then he goes to Boston.”
Dan Milstein, Zadorov’s agent, responded to Rutherford’s comments with an Instagram post of his own.
“Seven months later and we’re still on this? 604 is a great city but some things are better left in the past,” reads the caption.
Zadorov had already explained his side of things further in a recent interview with RG’s Igor Rabiner.
“Yes, Vancouver showed interest,” said Zadorov. “And in terms of money, it was basically the same contract that I got in Boston. Vancouver didn’t offend me, everything they offered was very good.”
“There were a couple of moments in the negotiations that I didn’t like — both the way they were conducted and the way the information was presented to me. But that wasn’t the main thing.”
It seems that when push came to shove, there were certain factors outside of the Canucks’ control that made the difference. Zadorov was looking to move south of the border and while he didn’t explicitly mention it, he’ll save roughly $3 million in taxes over the length of this contract by playing in Boston instead of Vancouver, per PuckPedia’s NHL tax tool.
Nikita Zadorov saved $567,467 in taxes per season signing with the #NHLBruins instead of the #Canucks.
That's more than $3 million over the life of his new contract.
Numbers courtesy of @PuckPedia. pic.twitter.com/0nncTPP4TN
— Noah Strang (@noahstrang_) January 30, 2025
“In the end, when it was time to make a decision, we weighed everything up, and a couple of factors played into the fact that it was more comfortable for our family to play in the US than in Canada,” continued Zadorov in the RG interview.
“You make a list and check off the boxes: this is more suitable here; this is more suitable there. In the end, we chose what was more relevant for hockey and more relevant for life.”
The Canucks failed to adequately replace Zadorov, and his absence has been felt greatly. The defence corps has been far from good enough and they miss his skating and puck-moving ability dearly. They also miss his snarl and swagger, which this group has lacked at times.
It seems like the Canucks matched Zadorov’s demands but it still wasn’t enough to keep him around. If they could do it again, perhaps they’d raise their offer quicker, although it seems like it would’ve been hard to keep Zadorov a Canuck regardless.