[Flame On]

In my "head-canon" the way I see it going down is a bunch of players going into free agency, were holding out, turning down offers, holding the team at arms length. To the extent that the Flames org turned around and said "ok we're holding off all contract talks for now".

And Zadorov as a person that actively wanted to stay became annoyed that the ones holding things up meant the team wasn't committing to him, the one that actually wanted to be there.

It kind of annoys me that a bunch of players who aren't committed to the team are annoyed at another who was, but who wanted to move things forward.

This doesn't preclude me thinking it was very poorly timed by his agent, or that we really should have been giving him a retirement contract. I just believe this is the source of the friction.