The Filip Zadina era in Detroit is over. Where did it go wrong, and what's next?

At noon on Thursday, the Detroit Red Wings placed Filip Zadina on waivers to the end of mutual contract termination.  The number six pick in the 2018 NHL Draft's time in Detroit has come to a close.

In opting for contract termination, Zadina foregoes the $4.56 million remaining on his deal, which was due to run through the 2024-25 season.  Now untethered to a long-term contract, the 23-year-old Czech is free to choose his next destination and set about proving himself a valuable, everyday NHL forward.

Unfortunately for Zadina, the story of his time with the Red Wings begins and ends with unrealized potential.  Going into the '18 Draft in Dallas, NHL Central Scouting tapped Zadina, then playing for the QMJHL's Halifax Mooseheads, the third best North American skater in the class.  

He was never in consideration to be the top pick (that distinction belonged to Swedish defenseman Rasmus Dahlin all along), but he was projected to hear his name called in the top five, and it wasn't supposed to last all the way to five.

After Detroit snagged him at six, Zadina said to reporters "I was telling my agent if they pass on me, I'm going to fill their nets with pucks."  It was an outstanding quip, showing the kind of bravado you'd want from a soon-to-be volume goalscorer, but it was a billing Zadina would never realize with the Red Wings.

Worse still, Vancouver selected Quinn Hughes with the seventh pick, a player who had spent the previous season setting the Big Ten ablaze just down the road at the University of Michigan.  

Five years later, Hughes is a franchise defender for the Canucks, and he worked his way to 200 NHL points faster than any defenseman ever.  That the Wings were in desperate need of defensemen did little to improve then-GM Ken Holland's reputation at the draft table.

Zadina's story in Detroit has always been about reputation and perception.  Those of us who declare ourselves draft experts every June after some light YouTube research were incensed as Zadina slid out of the top three and then the top five.  The draft night consensus was that the Wings had a steal in Zadina.

Sure, Zadina's own comments didn't do him any favors when it came to level setting, but Zadina didn't draft himself instead of Quinn Hughes, nor did he rank himself in the top three in any mock drafts.  

Nets filled or not filled with pucks aside, Zadina didn't just have to carry the weight of his own expectations but also the weight of Red Wings' fans disappointment at the dying embers of the Ken Holland years and the long road back toward Cup contention.

Across four seasons, Zadina has played 190 NHL games, scoring 28 goals and giving 40 assists.  For all the pre-draft talk of his goal scoring prowess, he is just a 7.4% career shooter.  According to MoneyPuck.com, his predicted shooting talent was 15.8% below NHL average last year.

What's most strange about Zadina's tenure in Detroit is that he's almost the polar opposite of the player he was touted to be at his draft.  Zadina was advertised a pure sniper.  Perhaps he wouldn't contribute in all three zones, but he would, well, fill nets with pucks.  This isolated impact chart from Micah Blake McCurdy shows the inverse profile:

By McCurdy's accounting, Zadina is a strong two-way play driver with woeful scoring touch and an unhelpful penalty differential.

At the NHL level, there are aspects of Zadina's offensive game that show promise; it's just not the goalscoring we were told to expect of him.  At least when the Red Wings are in possession, Zadina moves well without the puck.  He knows how to find soft space in the offensive zone, and he can make himself useful to the breakout thanks to his anticipation and skill for sending and receiving passes in tight spaces.

Many young players struggle with a kind of tunnel vision when they arrive in the NHL.  If a teammate isn't within five feet or so, they might as well be invisible because of the speed and the intensity of the NHL game.  Zadina doesn't have that issue.  He's a great passer with the ability to see and execute plays all over the ice.

Still, there are several problems with Zadina's game (as we've seen it to date) that are rather foundational to his continued NHL career.  Zadina does not defend at an NHL level; his reads in the defensive zone are disastrous.  For a player trying to stick at the highest level of the sport, those lapses make it much harder to remain in any NHL coach's good graces.

Zadina also seems to disappear for long stretches throughout games.  He has made cameos in Detroit's top six, but often from a bottom six role, Zadina looks invisible at different points in every game.  When things aren't going his way, he can't seem to get himself the touches he needs to deploy the skills he does have at his disposal.

More than anything, Zadina hasn't been able to get himself enough quality chances from the interior of the offensive zone.  If you want to understand why a proven junior goalscorer can't get results in the NHL, a dearth of slot shot attempts is probably your surest bet.

Per MoneyPuck, Zadina's average shot distance in 2022-23 was 29.0 feet. Brady Tkachuk (selected by Ottawa two spots before Detroit grabbed Zadina back in '18) took his shots last season from an average distance of just 24.3 feet.  That five-and-a-half-plus foot discrepancy doesn't tell the whole story, but it's a crucial detail in explaining how Tkachuk has scored 125 goals in his career while Zadina has managed just 28.

To reinforce this point, just 3% of Zadina's shots last year created rebounds while 19.4% were frozen by the opposing goaltender (both numbers also courtesy of MoneyPuck).  Put those two figures together, and it becomes clear that Zadina isn't creating the kind of net-front chaos that most reliably produces goals at the NHL level.

So, Zadina never blossomed into the scorer he projected as back at his draft in Detroit, but what's next?

The Red Wings put Zadina on waivers earlier in the week, where he went unclaimed.  At the time, Steve Yzerman explained that the decision was an attempt to accommodate Zadina and his agent's request for a fresh start.

Yzerman wasn't mad at the request for a new home, but he was disappointed: “Am I thrilled? No, I’m not. Am I happy to put him on waivers? No. I signed him to a three-year contract a year ago because I believed he was going to grow. And he signed that contract, and my expectation is that he wanted to grow with us. The reality now is, you wanted that contract, that contract may prevent you from getting that opportunity you’re looking for in another organization. That’s the reality for him.”

As Yzerman seemed to anticipate, Zadina's contract made him an undesirable waivers claim, but the GM clearly still believed there was a path forward for Zadina to earn his place in Detroit. He told the press "The best-case scenario, and it’s not out of the realm of possibility, is that he clears waivers, comes to training camp, plays well, works his way up into the lineup and goes. Filip Zadina is a nice young man. With high picks there comes expectations from the outside and from within. Not everybody matures or evolves at the same stage. He’s got to stick with it. And unfortunately, now the situation is if he doesn’t get claimed, he’s with our organization and there’s not much we can do other than both work hard and see if he can become a player.”

However, clearly, Zadina was insistent on a change of scenery, and Yzerman, despite whatever objections or disappointments he may have harbored, accommodated that request.  Mutual contract termination it was.  The decision constituted an empathic choice from an executive better known for cold-heartedness.

Perhaps Yzerman went along with Zadina's request because, in the end, even he knew that what Zadina needs most right now is a fresh opportunity.  

At the same press conference, Yzerman cited Eeli Tolvanen as a player who had a redemptive season a year ago after several preceding seasons failing to live up to lofty draft expectations.  To make that happen, Tolvanen had to leave Nashville (where he couldn't escape those expectations) and make a new start in Seattle.

Daniel Sprong, whom Detroit signed on the first day of the free agent period last weekend, is a player with a similar trajectory.  Sprong went 46th to Pittsburgh in the 2015 Draft (easing the burden of expectation relative to Zadina as a second rounder, well outside the top ten, selected by a club that would win two Stanley Cups in the next two seasons), but he took several years and teams before catching on as a full-time NHLer.

Filip Zadina will, in all likelihood, never become the 40-goal, 100-point player Wings fans hoped for back in 2018, but he could become a useful 20-goal, 60-point player when freed from the burden of expectations tied around his neck in Detroit.  

That process will have to begin with finding a new organization to call home, presumably on a one-year, prove-it deal, perhaps not even worth $1 million for the season.  

By walking away from $4.56 million to bet on himself, Zadina has made clear that some of the defiance, the brashness of "I'm going to fill their nets with pucks" remains, despite the adversity he's encountered at the NHL level.  What remains to be seen is whether Zadina can win that bet in a new uniform.