The Senators lost to the Maple Leafs in the opening round of this year’s Stanley Cup Playoffs. While they performed well in a six-game loss, they showed the team isn’t ready to be a serious contender. Some might argue that this is the first major hurdle in their rebuild, and they have plenty of time to ramp up expectations, but Ottawa has been rebuilding for half a decade and will need to be bold this summer if they hope to jump into the upper echelon of NHL teams.
Ottawa’s rebuild went through severe growing pains, the biggest being that the team hasn’t drafted particularly well outside its first-round picks. They took Drake Batherson in the fourth round in 2017 and Shane Pinto in the second round back in 2019, but their bottom six has been an area of concern for quite some time, and they hadn’t been able to squeeze bottom-six NHLers out of their draft picks. That put increased pressure on Ottawa’s strong top six, an area that Ottawa could look to improve if it wants to contend.
It doesn’t matter how good Ottawa’s top six is; if they don’t receive much help from the bottom two lines, winning games, particularly in the playoffs, becomes increasingly complex. A good comparison for this is the Penguins during the prime years of Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin, when the Penguins couldn’t get out of the first round with a weak bottom six but became a buzzsaw during 2016 and 2017 when GM Jim Rutherford built an above-average third and fourth line.
Ottawa needs to adopt the same approach to take the next step. Last year, Ottawa’s top six was dramatically improved by the end of the season, with Pinto centering the third line, and the acquisition of Fabian Zetterlund offering another solid piece for the bottom two lines. But if they want to be bold, there are two places they should look to improve, both of which would organically improve their overall depth.
The first is up front, where their depth was mentioned as an issue. Ottawa could tinker at the edges of their roster and sign depth players as they did last summer, or they could make a push to acquire a top-six forward who could push a David Perron or Claude Giroux (if he re-signs) into the bottom six and add some scoring. Alex Adams of Sportsnet has speculated about the Senators potentially taking a run at Winnipeg’s Nikolaj Ehlers or Florida’s Sam Bennett, and both would fit what Ottawa needs. However, the Senators have solid center depth in their top nine and limited cap space, making Bennett a longshot target. Brock Boeser could also be a target, but Ottawa might be best served to look elsewhere for cap management reasons, given what he will command on the open market.
The other area that the Senators badly need to address is the right side of their defense. Artem Zub is a good pro and a solid second-pairing defenseman, but he should not be on the first unit for a team with Stanley Cup aspirations. That said, Ottawa currently has a solid defensive core, but it could use some help in the short term.
The Senators probably won’t be in on the likes of free agent Aaron Ekblad, and they don’t have the high-end assets to acquire a top young defenseman on the trade market. But what about a reunion with former Senators captain Erik Karlsson? The three-time Norris Trophy winner had his best years in Ottawa, and although he was traded to San Jose, Karlsson’s wife is from Ottawa, and it’s possible he would welcome a return to Canada’s capital. But would it make sense for Ottawa to do so? The short answer is no, but there could be a match there if the Penguins were willing to retain money.
Karlsson would provide offense, but plopping him into the top four would mean he has to play with Jake Sanderson or Thomas Chabot, both young defensemen tasked with covering for many of Karlsson’s defensive shortcomings. Given his skating and strong positional work, Sanderson could probably do that, but it would be a big ask for Chabot. Acquiring a player like Karlsson would allow Zub to drop to the second or third pairing, depending on the availability of Nick Jensen. The other thing that a Karlsson acquisition would do is serve as a stopgap until defensive prospect Carter Yakemchuk is ready to play in the NHL in a couple of years. Yakemchuk could become the top-pairing right-shooting defenseman that Ottawa is looking for. Still, the timeline for his development is unlikely to meet the urgency with which Ottawa needs to fill that hole.
Ottawa’s real target for a trade should be a defenseman who can help elevate Sanderson or Chabot. Zub has been a good soldier for Ottawa, but whenever he plays away from Sanderson, his underlying numbers take a hit, while Sanderson’s improve. It’s a delicate situation for Ottawa as they probably don’t want to disrupt their top pairings’ chemistry, but it might be worth exploring another defenseman on the trade market. Cost will be an issue for the Sens, but Seattle’s Adam Larsson is a name that could be available, as could Calgary’s Rasmus Andersson. The latter of those two might be tailor-made for Ottawa, but he did struggle last year, having some of the worst numbers of his career, and he will be due a massive extension shortly. Ottawa might be wary of acquiring an expensive veteran via trade if they have to turn around and give a lucrative long-term deal to an aging defenseman.
The options are out there if Ottawa does opt to fill in some of the holes at the top of their roster; however, at the moment, the cap space isn’t there to aggressively pursue any of the top free agent options. Ottawa has 14 players signed for next season and has just $17.5MM (as per PuckPedia) left in cap space. After they find a backup goaltender, re-sign Tyler Kleven and Zetterlund, it doesn’t leave much left over to pursue top-end talent, and this doesn’t even account for Giroux, who could potentially re-sign as well. The Senators don’t have much coming from their prospect pipeline either, so they will need to dip into free agency or the trade market to acquire some depth help, too.
The time has come for the Senators to act like a win-now team, especially given the window they have left to compete. They don’t have much young help coming, so management must be aggressive and creative. Bold calculated moves are required so the Senators don’t squander the prime of their young stars, who are almost all on long-term contracts.
Photo by Nick Turchiaro-USA TODAY Sports
I’ll take “sell the franchise” for $100, Alex.
@RedFeather — They already did, though. And, he’s infinitely better than Melnyk. The team needs to be on the same page, with the self-evaluations of their play. Every time I go to download the TSN1200 episodes, I see a slew of “We were great” and “We need to work on some things” types of messages for the same games.