Senators Looking To Add Defensive Depth

This early in the season, most teams will be looking to hold off on making any moves of significance, wanting to see what they have over the first month or two.  Accordingly, a lot will be focusing on their depth situation if the opportunity presents itself to do something.

It appears that the Senators are a team that wants to add to their depth before too long.  Postmedia’s Bruce Garrioch reports that GM Steve Staios has been looking around the market for a depth blueliner.  While they gave some consideration to some of the players waived at the beginning of the week, they opted not to claim one, presumably feeling that they can swing a move to get one.

Ottawa’s top four on the back end is well-established.  Thomas Chabot and Artem Zub have been around for several years, Jake Sanderson is still in the early stages of his career but projects to be a fixture for years to come, and Nick Jensen was acquired from Washington in the Jakob Chychrun trade.  Barring injury, that part of the blueline is set.

Beyond that, however, things get a little murkier.  On opening night, veteran Travis Hamonic and Tyler Kleven – who has just 18 games of NHL experience – comprised the bottom pairing.  Jacob Bernard-Docker, who cleared waivers at this time last year, was the spare defender but notably did play in 72 games for the Sens last season after an early-season recall.  Kleven and Bernard-Docker both have some promise but are relatively unproven still while Hamonic has seen his effectiveness slide in recent years.  That section of the back end can be improved upon as a result.

However, one thing Staios will have to be mindful of is the salary cap.  The team currently has less than $900K in cap space per PuckPedia.  While that’s enough to afford to add a depth blueliner, it would effectively cap them out unless one of the other blueliners came off the roster.  Kleven is waiver-exempt while Bernard-Docker and Hamonic aren’t; Hamonic also has no-move protection which takes waivers off the table.  Can Ottawa find an upgrade that would allow them to send Kleven down or risk losing Bernard-Docker on the wire?  It appears that’s what they’re looking to find out.