After Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet threw a match into the puddle of gasoline that is an Erik Karlsson trade rumor yesterday, speculation has ran wild about where the Ottawa Senators captain will start the season. Friedman was on NHL Network recently, and reiterated that he believes the Senators are ready to move on.
A few years ago Dany Heatley showed up on the first day of camp with the Senators, and the Senators were like “can we fix this?” and they realized they couldn’t. They made the [Heatley] trade right away with San Jose. I think they’ve just decided they don’t want to carry [the Karlsson situation] into the season if they can avoid it.
Karlsson has been in the news for some time, given that the Senators haven’t been able to reach an extension with their superstar defenseman. The 28-year old is scheduled to hit unrestricted free agency in the summer of 2019, leave the team with little choice but to trade him for future assets if he’s not willing to sign long-term with the club. There had been talk about Karlsson potentially discussing an extension with interested teams, which would obviously increase the value of the return for the Senators, but now there may be a hitch in those talks. Andy Strickland of Fox Sports Midwest tweets that Karlsson does not want to sign an extension with a Canadian team, which could potentially take teams like the Vancouver Canucks—who were mentioned by Friedman yesterday, but quickly denied their involvement—out of the running.
There’s no guarantee that Karlsson wants to sign an extension with anyone at present, given that he could be the big fish on the open market next summer. Now that Drew Doughty, Oliver Ekman-Larsson, Ryan Ellis and Ryan McDonagh have all signed long-term deals, Karlsson projects to be the one real star defenseman available in free agency. At that point he could essentially choose his destination, as one would have to believe that almost the entire league would express some interest in him as a UFA.
For now, we’ll have to wait and see who rises as the front runner for a Karlsson trade and whether a Canadian team can wiggle their way into extension talks. The star defenseman has always spoken highly of his love for the city of Ottawa, but it doesn’t appear at this point like he’ll be spending the next portion of his career there.
He’s a punk.
Ain’t his fault the Canadian dollar is
Trash
All NHL contracts are based on USD regardless of the city in which the player resides.
He’s gonna pull a Chara and leave the Senators for the Bruins in free agency
As a Bruins fan, I hope not.
You’re kidding right? Karlsson is the best defenseman in the NHL
Can we stop with these rumors he ain’t moving
He isn’t going to re-sign in Ottawa. If the Senators don’t trade him & get something in return, they are stupid
If the Senators keep on insisting on a B. Ryan inclusion this might drag out for a while longer.
If their owner continues to insist on Bobby Ryan being included you mean fljay73. In which case the GM may just say fack it and send the first team with an offer for EK and BR to screw his boss over after putting him in such a bad position.
Worst case scenario he has a job secured with the team he sends them to as an assistant GM. Best case scenario someone sends a desperation offer and Ottawa walks with a tolerable deal. Odds are for the prior scenario before the later.