Ottawa Senators general manager Pierre Dorion expects trade talk to pick up in the next couple of weeks and is expected to gauge what the market looks like at the GM meetings set to take place in Toronto on Tuesday, writes Bruce Garrioch of the Ottawa Sun.
While Dorion was looking to add defensive depth both in the offseason and in training camp, he suggested that getting that doesn’t appear to be as much of a concern at the moment:
“Specifically I’m really happy about the play of Freddy Claesson coming up and I’ve always talked about adding depth on defence so I’m really happy about that and I don’t feel as much of a need as I did in training camp especially with the emergence of the way Chris Wideman and (Mark Borowiecki) have played.”
[Related: Senators Depth Chart]
Over the offseason, the team added center Derick Brassard and head coach Guy Boucher and the expectation was that the Sens would become an even higher scoring team after finishing ninth in the league in that regard in 2015-16. However, that hasn’t been the case early on as the team has just 33 goals (excluding two awarded for shootout victories) which ranks them 27th in the league so far. Despite that, Dorion won’t be actively pursuing another scorer and hopes that as the team adapts to Boucher’s new system, the goals will eventually come on their own:
“People are going to look at our scoring. For me, to play good defensive structure we had to sacrifice goals early on but at the same time we’re winning games and that’s what matters the most. It’s not like any of the guys who have produced here in the past are in the tail end of their careers. They’re all still in their prime and they’re all still all going to be able to produce.”
With goaltender Andrew Hammond nearly ready to return, Dorion plans to sit down with Hammond and go over the options. The team could ask him to play with their AHL affiliate for a couple of weeks on a conditioning stint but even if they don’t, the GM reiterated that they’re comfortable carrying three netminders (joining Craig Anderson and Mike Condon) for the foreseeable future. A trade isn’t out of the equation either as Dorion is reportedly gauging the market on Hammond as well.