The Senators Have Some Tough Decisions To Make

The Senators are facing a midseason crossroads. The season has not gone as planned, and they are well out of a playoff spot.

They could stand pat and hope James Reimer provides steady goaltending, push for short-term moves to improve the team, or pivot to a sell-off for this season and hope to reload in the summer. It’s a real dilemma in Ottawa, as the Senators are too flawed to contend but too good to tank.

Even if they wanted to aim for an impact prospect in the 2026 draft, they don’t have their first-round pick this year thanks to the Evgenii Dadonov debacle. The Senators are effectively in the worst possible situation this year, and the next few weeks will be crucial in determining where they go from here.

There will be no easy answers for a club that has dramatically underperformed. Rebuilding is absolutely out of the question, given how much long-term money Ottawa has spent on extensions over the last few years.

However, a quick retool could inject much-needed draft capital or prospects into the Senators’ pipeline and net them a fair amount of assets, given how tight the standings are and how few teams appear set to become sellers before the trade deadline. If Ottawa wanted to dump some of its pending UFAs, it could effectively set the trade market on its own terms rather than responding to what other clubs do.

If the Sens start shipping out veteran talent, they have a decent stockpile of players on expiring deals that could be made available, including several former Stanley Cup champions among the forwards: Lars Eller, David Perron, and Nick Cousins. On top of the trio of former winners, forward Claude Giroux and defenseman Nick Jensen are also pending UFAs, giving Ottawa a healthy list of potential players to move should they slide completely out of playoff contention.

But can the Senators move all of those veterans this year?

Giroux is having another solid season, with 32 points in 46 games. However, at 38 years old and playing close to home, does he really want to serve as a deadline rental?

It’s hard to say. On the surface, it seems unlikely, but Giroux is nearing the end of his career and is missing the one thing every NHL player covets: a Stanley Cup ring.

If Giroux agreed to a trade, he could theoretically make the move for a few months and then return next summer to Canada’s capital, or somewhere else close to home. That has happened in the past, albeit not for a long time.

Mark Recchi did it back in 2006 when he accepted a trade from the Penguins to the Hurricanes, only to return to Pittsburgh the following summer. Keith Tkachuk had a similar sequence when he was traded by the Blues in February 2007 to the Thrashers, only to be returned in a separate trade in June.

Jensen is another interesting case and would have been a highly sought-after trade piece before this year, given that right-shot defensemen are always in demand. But this season has been one to forget for Jensen, who was a healthy scratch just a couple of weeks ago and has been trying to find his game for much of the season.

Ottawa has attempted to manage the 35-year-old’s workload, dropping his playing time from over 20 minutes a night to just north of 16 minutes per game in an effort to keep him fresh, but it hasn’t done much to improve Jensen’s play. The biggest knock on Jensen at the moment is that his once-fluid skating now looks disjointed and robotic, which isn’t surprising given his injury history and the fact that he had offseason hip surgery and missed Ottawa’s training camp in September.

Jensen hasn’t looked like himself this year, and the Senators’ goaltending has been terrible, which has only magnified his struggles and dropped his trade stock and, ultimately, his future contract prospects significantly.

Returning to Eller, he is a low-maintenance, plug-and-play fourth-line center who doesn’t contribute much offensively anymore but can still skate and has reasonable puck-handling ability. The 36-year-old has just two goals and four assists in 32 games this year, but has buried himself in a defensive role, which suits his skill set at this late stage of his career.

Eller is the perfect low-cost veteran for contending teams looking to add depth. He is making just $1.25MM on a one-year deal, and with such a low cost, if the Senators move him before the deadline, they should be able to grab a mid-round draft pick.

As for Cousins, no one should want to acquire him, given that he was voted by the players as the NHL’s most punchable player. That said, he is likely only disliked until he plays on someone’s team.

Cousins is the kind of player that teammates love, and opposing players despise. He has a unique skill set that is often overlooked, but he adds physicality, plays a pest-like game, and brings energy that can spark a team, particularly in the playoffs.

The Belleville, Ontario native has historically drawn a lot of penalties and can chip in with offense (six goals and six assists in 45 games this year), although his defensive work leaves a lot to be desired. Cousins is on a one-year deal, making just $825K this season, so, like Eller, there should be demand given that he can fit into almost any team’s salary-cap structure.

Finally, there is Perron, who has been much better this season after posting just 16 points in 43 games last year. The 37-year-old already has nine goals and 14 assists in 46 games this year, and his underlying numbers are much better than they were a year ago.

Perron is no longer a perennial 20-goal, 50-point scorer, but he remains a useful depth scorer and should be in demand if Ottawa makes him available. He’s one of, if not the, slowest players in the NHL, but he hits and is reasonably productive offensively at this late stage of his career.

Perron isn’t going to net Ottawa a first-round pick, but it’s entirely possible they could get a second-rounder should they opt to trade him. He will likely want to stay close to home, but his 15-team no-trade list covers less than half the league and would leave the Senators with plenty of potential suitors for Perron. It’s also possible that he would embrace the move to a team on his no-trade list if Ottawa is out of the playoff picture and a team is appealing enough to him.

Ottawa has rattled off a couple of wins in the last few days, which could be the start of a turnaround. Ironically, the Senators have been deploying Cousins, Eller and Perron as their de facto fourth line in those two games, and they’ve been terrific as a unit.

But even with four points in their pocket, the Senators sit five points back of a playoff spot, with six teams to leapfrog for the final playoff spot. There is also the consideration that those two wins came against the teams sitting at the bottom of both conferences, the Canucks and Rangers.

If Ottawa is going to go on a run, it will need to beat some outstanding teams in the coming weeks. The next two to three weeks will be crucial for the Senators and could ultimately dictate their short-term intentions.