My guess he ends up $5.5 over 5 years somewhere. Will someone go $6 for 5? Maybe. Think they’d much rather pursue a couple of others before Zadorov though.
So he’d be smart NOT to overplay his hand Monday, and end up like Tarasenko. There’s only so much money out there and teams don’t wait around. They may throw $5.5 x 5 to 3-4 players and point blank say, whoever takes it first, gets it and then we rescind the offer to those other players. That happens twice and he’s holding out for $6 million over 6 years, real quick the market is gonna say nobody has more that $4 million over 3 years. Then in a week someone has a $5 million for 1 year slot, type thing.
It goes really fast too. Teams just wanna get it over with and there’s very few players (Stamkos, Kane) teams may wait around for a decision from. Zadorov won’t be one of those players.