Senators Notes: Pinto, Arena, Korpisalo

There doesn’t appear to have been progress on contract talks between the Ottawa Senators and restricted free agent forward Shane Pinto, says The Athletic’s Ian Mendes. Pinto’s agent, Lewis Gross, declined to comment when Mendes reached out to him for an update last week, and Mendes anticipates “radio silence” in the near future. While the Senators would certainly love to have Pinto under contract when training camps kick off a month from today, they technically have until December 1 to sign Pinto to a deal for him to maintain eligibility to play in the NHL this season.

Drafted 32nd overall in 2019, Pinto’s stock rose sharply this season after he shouldered some top-six minutes at times with Joshua Norris limited to just eight games with a shoulder injury. That being said, his production didn’t jump off the page. He did score 20 goals, finishing sixth on the team, but he added just 15 assists to finish with 35 points in 82 games. He likely won’t command a significant number on a short-term extension, but anything above the league minimum is incredibly tough for the Senators to make work at the moment. After signing Vladimir Tarasenko to a one-year, $5MM pact earlier this month, CapFriendly projects the Senators with just $895K assuming a bare-minimum roster of 11 forwards and seven defensemen.

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• Mendes also mentioned another area of interest for Senators fans, the status of a potential new arena, which remains in flux with Michael Andlauer set to take over as the team’s majority owner. Ottawa mayor Mark Sutcliffe had spoken to Mendes earlier in the summer, referencing a Canadian Department of National Defense building downtown as another potential site as compared to the long-rumored LeBreton Flats plot. However, with the government’s lease on the building slated to run through 2035, construction could take quite a while to start before the Sens see their new home. That’s not to say a solution won’t be found sooner, but Mendes believes Andlauer’s initial priorities will lie with the team on the ice, putting discussions on a new, more centrally located home on the back burner for the time being.
• Free agent addition Joonas Korpisalo spoke to NHL.com’s Mike Zeisberger over the weekend, saying he’s excited to get to work in Ottawa with an old friend in goalie tandem partner Anton Forsberg. The two netminders have won a pro championship together already, winning the 2016 Calder Cup while members of the AHL’s Lake Erie Monsters in the Columbus Blue Jackets organization. Korpisalo arguably had the best season of his career in 2022-23, starting a career-high 37 games while putting up a very respectable .914 save percentage, given he played the majority of the year on a Blue Jackets team with a rather hapless defense thanks to a score of injuries. On a more competitive team in Los Angeles after a late-season trade, Korpisalo excelled with a .921 mark down the stretch. That being said, the five-year, $20MM contract Ottawa signed him to this summer is widely viewed as a serious gamble, and rightly so – Korpisalo has just a .904 career average across more than 200 games of NHL experience and has no experience starting the majority of his team’s games.