The Trade-And-Extend Move Is Becoming A Gamble
Stars forward Jason Robertson is having another terrific season at just the right time. He’s set to become an RFA this summer and should be handsomely rewarded on his next contract.
One wrinkle with his next contract is that it could come with a team other than Dallas, given that they already have so much big money committed to members of their core (just $16.4MM in cap space available next year, per PuckPedia). If Robertson is moved, it would likely be via trade to a team hoping to sign him to a long-term deal. But given that many of these types of transactions have failed in the past, should teams be doing it?
The trade-then-sign isn’t an official title for a series of moves in which a team trades for a player and then locks them up shortly after the trade, but that’s effectively what it is. A few recent examples include the Senators trading for Linus Ullmark and then signing him shortly after, or the Flames and Panthers linking up on the infamous Jonathan Huberdeau-for-Matthew Tkachuk trade that launched Florida on a potential dynasty while effectively slamming the door on Calgary’s contention window.
Therin lies the risk with these kinds of moves. Trading for a player and then signing them immediately to an extension leaves you open to the possibility that they aren’t a good fit, and you end up with a Huberdeau situation instead of a Tkachuk one.
The Flames and Senators are hardly the only teams to fall victim to this kind of thing. In fact, the Senators have dealt with it before with Bobby Ryan. Ottawa traded for Ryan in 2013, a move in response to Daniel Alfredsson leaving the franchise to sign with Detroit. The trade effectively boxed the Senators into signing Ryan to a long-term contract, which they did, resulting in an albatross contract that was eventually bought out.
Vancouver is learning a similar lesson with defenseman Marcus Pettersson, who was a top-pairing defenseman in Pittsburgh but was dealt to the Canucks last year, before the trade deadline, and has never been a fit. Vancouver was quick to ink Pettersson to a six-year deal last year, shortly after acquiring him, and, like Ullmark, Huberdeau and Ryan, he has not worked out as planned.
The list could go on and on. Timo Meier in New Jersey, Seth Jones in Chicago, Matt Murray in Ottawa, and Pierre-Luc Dubois in Los Angeles. All of these moves had a few things in common. The teams signed the players to extensions before the fit was ever stress-tested.
Take Huberdeau, who was acquired in late July 2022. Within two weeks, he signed an eight-year, $84MM extension to remain with the Flames. Pettersson had a similar trajectory in Vancouver, as he was acquired in early February 2025 and signed his six-year extension less than a week later. The same story with Murray and the Ottawa Senators, as he was acquired in early October 2020 and re-upped within two days, having never played a game in Canada’s capital city.
Again, the examples are endless, and the failures in these situations appear to share several common traits. In the three examples of Huberdeau, Pettersson, and Murray, they had essentially never played for the teams they were signing with, meaning no one knew whether they would work out with their new teams, making it a gamble for the acquiring team. But the trades themselves, and the players’ contractual status, essentially forced the team that gave up the assets in the trade to lock up the player or risk “losing the asset for nothing.”
It’s something that happens in every sport, where teams acquire pending UFAs. For whatever reason, some teams have felt compelled to extend the player before they even have a look at how the player will work out with their new team. And make no mistake, most of the teams that have extended the player right away probably regret their decision. There is no way Ottawa was happy with the Murray era, and Calgary has another five years of headaches with the Huberdeau deal.
Often, a player’s signing is a move to protect a GM’s short-term reputation rather than to focus on long-term projections. In fact, most of the time, the GM never lasts the length of the deal he is handing out, as was the case with Brad Treliving in Calgary and Pierre Dorion in Ottawa.
The thing about rushing to sign a player you really don’t know, beyond scouting their on-ice performance, is that once you ink the deal, there is no easy escape, or do-overs. You are locked into a player you don’t really know, and outside of asking mutual friends, acquaintances, or previous employers, you don’t have first-hand experience with the person in most cases. It would be like running a business and then hiring an employee you’ve seen on television but never spoken to.
But in hockey, as in all sports, market and ownership pressures, egos, and reputations can all play a role in transactions, contracts, and player management. As much as it probably stings for GMs to ink a bad contract with a player, they would probably all do it again if given another opportunity.
The truth is that trading for a player is always risky, while trading for a player and immediately extending them is often how NHL GMs try to save their jobs. Usually, it’s the move that leads them to the unemployment line.
The NHL Is Ripe For A Big Change Of Scenery Trade
The classic change-of-scenery move was once standard in the NHL. Still, with the emergence of the salary cap, analytics, and entire departments dedicated to player projections, the number of big-name change-of-scenery trades has declined.
These deals were often made in hopes of inspiring two struggling players to return to their career averages or better. The most recent example of this kind of deal is the goalie trade between the Penguins and Oilers earlier this year, which involved Tristan Jarry and Stuart Skinner.
Another recent example came at last year’s trade deadline, when the Sabres sent Dylan Cozens and a draft pick to the Senators for Josh Norris and Jacob Bernard-Docker. This season, there are multiple change-of-scenery trade candidates, with the biggest names being forward Elias Pettersson of the Canucks and Andrei Svechnikov of the Hurricanes.
Don’t get it wrong. There are still plenty of change-of-scenery trades in the NHL involving fringe and depth players, and some don’t work out, but some do in a big way. Egor Chinakhov of the Penguins is a glaring example of a change-of-scenery move that has worked out thus far, as he is playing with more confidence and fire than he has in years.
In addition to the Chinakhov and Skinner moves, the Penguins have made several low-end versions of these trades this season, most recently this week’s deal with the Avalanche, which sent forward Valtteri Puustinen to the Avalanche in exchange for defenseman Ilya Solovyov. The trade barely made waves around the NHL, but it does provide an example of two players who need fresh starts being swapped by teams in the hope of reigniting their play.
Outside of the aforementioned Pettersson and Svechnikov, who are some other big-name players who could use a change of scenery? The big name has to be defenseman Dougie Hamilton of the Devils, who was a healthy scratch last week and hasn’t produced nearly the way you would hope from a $9MM offensive defenseman.
Hamilton has dealt with a couple of injury-riddled seasons and has just five goals and 12 assists in 46 games this year. While Hamilton’s play hasn’t been great this season, that hasn’t stopped the Devils from upping his usage from 19:51 a game last year to 21:33 this season.
Hamilton is still a good player and would be a likely candidate to bounce back in a new environment. But would any team want to take a gamble like that on a 32-year-old making $9MM annually over the next two and a half years?
There is interest, and why wouldn’t there be? Hamilton is a talented player who could very well thrive on a new team, but the Devils aren’t going to just give him a way or retain half his salary in exchange for peanuts. The best course of action for New Jersey might be to try to find a hockey deal for another player in need of a change.
Pivoting to the Western Conference, the Blues look to be going nowhere fast and have a few players who could use a fresh start, including forward Jordan Kyrou and defenseman Colton Parayko. Kyrou is probably the most intriguing name on this list, a 27-year-old with a healthy track record of success.
His decline this season (11 goals and 13 assists in 42 games) isn’t overly complicated. His shooting percentage has dropped almost a full six points from last year, and with it, so has his goal-scoring production. Kyrou has another five years on his contract after this season at an AAV of $8.13MM, and he could be a bargain depending on how motivated St. Louis is to shake things up.
The Blues are in no rush, though, and might hold firm on their asking price if they don’t get reasonable offers. From Kyrou’s perspective, this year has been one to forget offensively. However, many of his underlying numbers remain strong, and he should still be productive for the majority of his contract. The Blues have been a bad team this year, and without much support, Kyrou hasn’t been as effective as he was in years past, when he was a consistent 70-point threat.
Another Blues player who could use a new look is Parayko, who has been a mess this season after a good year last year. Parayko has never been an analytics darling, but some of his underlying numbers are ugly this season. Now, in fairness to the 32-year-old, he is being asked to shoulder a very heavy defensive load on a bad team that is going nowhere. It can’t be easy for the veteran to go in night after night knowing he’ll spend most of the game working in his own zone, but that is his reality in St. Louis. A fresh start in a less stressful role could be precisely what Parayko needs at this stage of his career, but he won’t come cheap, as St. Louis likely still views him as a premium asset.
Moving back east, the Devils paid a premium three years ago to acquire Timo Meier from the San Jose Sharks and hoped he would become a force in their top six as they entered their window of contention. Meier quickly signed a pricey extension with the Devils worth $8.8MM annually (on an eight-year deal), and it looked as though it was an excellent match for both sides.
Since joining New Jersey, Meier hasn’t been the same offensive contributor he was in San Jose, and some of his underlying numbers have taken a hit as well. Offensively, he is still a 50+ point player, but that likely isn’t what the Devils had hoped for when they made the moves to bring him in long-term. Meier just ended a six-game pointless drought the other night and has been dealing with personal matters on the side, taking a leave of absence last month to attend to a family health matter.
It’s hard to say whether he would welcome a move or not, but it probably wouldn’t be the worst thing for the 29-year-old or the team. Once again, the Devils aren’t going to give Meier away, as he remains an effective player, but given how rough the last 18 months have been for the team, it might not be the worst thing to shake up the roster by moving on from Meier, Hamilton, or perhaps both players.
The Penguins’ Evgeni Malkin Dilemma
If you’ve been checking the NHL’s Eastern Conference standings, you’ll notice a surprising team near the top of the Metropolitan Division. The Penguins, who entered the season as a first-overall pick favorite, have shocked everyone by remaining in the hunt to this point in the season.
Your eyes aren’t deceiving you; the Penguins have been that good this year, despite a disastrous stretch in December that saw them drop nine of 10 games and blow multiple three-goal third-period leads. But with every Penguins win, it becomes clearer that many of the veterans on the trading block will be sticking around for this year and perhaps beyond.
One of those veterans is 39-year-old Evgeni Malkin, who at the start of this year seemed like a potential trade candidate, or at the very least, a player who wouldn’t play in Pittsburgh beyond the 2025-26 season. With the Penguins in the hunt, young prospects turning to NHLers, the team holding onto other veterans, and Malkin turning back the clock, is it possible the Penguins offer Malkin an extension to stick around beyond this season?
The Blake Lizotte signing last week reveals a lot about where the Penguins’ general manager, Kyle Dubas, feels the team is right now. If he thought the team wasn’t a playoff team this year, he likely would’ve been working the phones to move the depth center for picks or prospects, as he has been collecting those types of pieces for the better part of two years.
But Lizotte’s extension signals a change in philosophy, sort of. Dubas has been a bargain shopper for the last two summers, and even though Lizotte received a raise in his new deal, it could turn out to be a bargain if he plays the way he has this season.
That leads us back to Malkin. When Dubas spoke about the future Hall of Famer before this season, he likely believed he would be selling off assets towards the trade deadline and overseeing the third and possibly final year of the Penguins’ retool.
But the team and Malkin have surprised everyone thus far, and as the Penguins play more hockey, it becomes increasingly clear that Malkin can still produce. Just look at the ten-game stretch in December when they couldn’t buy a win.
Who wasn’t in their lineup for that? Malkin.
Malkin returned to the Penguins lineup on Jan. 8 and made an immediate impact, scoring a power-play marker on a one-timer from Sidney Crosby. He missed over a month with a shoulder injury, and Pittsburgh badly missed him on their second line.
His return didn’t exactly spark the team, as they had won five in a row leading up to it, but he certainly didn’t hurt, and Pittsburgh has gone 4-2-2 since he’s come back.
Then there’s also the optics of signing Malkin. With Kris Letang and Crosby still in the fold, signing ‘Geno’ would mean the big three playing another season together in their record-setting run, which would surely be a feel-good story, especially if more young Penguins graduate to the NHL and make an impact.
Pittsburgh could see Rutger McGroarty, Harrison Brunicke, Sergey Murashov, and Tristan Broz all jump to the NHL next season, which would be a massive youth movement for the team.
With these young pieces mixed in with Pittsburgh’s big three, as well as Erik Karlsson, Bryan Rust, Rickard Rakell, and Thomas Novak, there is the potential to make some noise in the Eastern Conference. Especially for a team that is armed with over $50MM in available cap space and an army surplus store full of draft picks in the subsequent three drafts.
The last time the Penguins had this level of youth in their pipeline was 2015, when Rust, Matt Murray, Conor Sheary, Tom Kuhnhackl, Scott Wilson, and eventually Jake Guentzel all jumped to the NHL, and Pittsburgh won back-to-back Stanley Cups. That’s not to say Pittsburgh is on the verge of a mini-dynasty in the twilight years of Malkin’s career.
Still, if they are on the verge of being competitive at all, which it looks like they could be, Malkin deserves to stick around with his buddies, especially if he can contribute rather than just partake in a nostalgia tour.
So, what should the Penguins do with one of the most beloved Penguins ever? It feels like it’s time to sign him to an extension.
Pittsburgh has the cap space, Malkin isn’t going to ask for the moon, and there really isn’t a Malkin replacement available in free agency. He also doesn’t need to be a center at this stage of his career and is quite competent on the wing, as he showed last season playing alongside Crosby on the top line.
It was reported last summer by Penguins play-by-play voice Josh Getzoff that Pittsburgh GM Kyle Dubas planned to meet with Malkin during the Olympic break, and as of right now, that appears to be the plan. But what could a Malkin deal look like?
It could be pretty straightforward. Take the framework of the Jonathan Toews contract with the Winnipeg Jets this season and perhaps double the guarantee.
Would that get it done? Hard to say, but according to Josh Yohe of The Athletic, Malkin is willing to take a pay cut and a one-year deal.
Pittsburgh gets a top-six forward, Malkin adds to his legacy, and Pittsburgh avoids painting itself into a long-term predicament, remaining fluid for future moves. Everybody wins, especially the fans in Pittsburgh and, most importantly, Malkin’s teammates, including Crosby.
Rangers GM Chris Drury Should Be On The Hot Seat
The New York Rangers’ communications release last week showed the world a couple of things. The first was that the team was headed towards a retool, which was pretty evident to anyone who has watched them this season.
The second was that the team needs to move on from the current general manager, Chris Drury, but it’s doubtful they will. The current predicament the Rangers are in can’t be placed squarely at Drury’s feet, but many of the issues the team is going through were the result of his roster management, and the fans have let him and the team know it.
When Drury first took on the role of associate general manager in February 2021, it was clear he would eventually run an NHL team. It didn’t take long.
He was handed the job as president and general manager in May 2021 after the Rangers missed the playoffs and fired president John Davidson and GM Jeff Gorton. That was a banner day for Drury, but it came at a strange time for the franchise, which had been building a solid core of young players and was close to pivoting into a contender.
At the same time, they had missed the playoffs four years in a row and were just two days removed from the notorious Tom Wilson incident at Madison Square Garden. Drury took control and hit the ground running in the summer of 2021.
His summer was clearly shaped by what had happened to the Rangers during the Wilson incident on May 3, 2021. Drury single-handedly re-configured the team, and not in a good way, although they would enjoy some short-term success in 2022 and 2024.
Drury fired head coach David Quinn and replaced him with Gerard Gallant. There was nothing wrong with that move, but Drury then spent the rest of the summer setting fire to the Rangers roster and ultimately a lot of cap space and assets.
Drury started his summer by signing forward Barclay Goodrow to a six-year deal carrying a $3.64MM AAV, meant to bring toughness and grit to the Rangers lineup. It was a massive overpay, panned by many, who agreed that Drury gave too much term and money to a player who wasn’t productive enough.
A week later, Drury moved Pavel Buchnevich to the St. Louis Blues for Sammy Blais and a 2022 second-round pick. The move, which might go down as one of the worst so far in the 2020s, effectively opened a massive hole in New York’s top six that they didn’t have a player to fill.
As if the Buchnevich deal wasn’t bad enough, Drury then signed Patrik Nemeth to an ill-advised three-year deal worth $7.5MM, which the Rangers had to burn two second-round picks to dump on the Arizona Coyotes a year later. At the time, some folks might have claimed it was a good move to move on from Nemeth and open up cap space for other moves (which it was). However, eventually burning through cap space and assets catches up to you, as the Rangers have found out over the last year and a half.
Right after signing Nemeth, Drury made another move to add toughness, trading for Ryan Reaves of the Vegas Golden Knights (for a third-round pick) and giving him a contract extension. Much like with Nemeth and Goodrow, Drury eventually realized he had made a mistake in acquiring the player and had to pivot. Reaves was shipped to Minnesota 16 months after he was acquired for a fifth-round pick.
The summer of 2021 began with Drury significantly misreading the Rangers’ roster. Still, his poor work during that time is often forgotten because he made some good moves the following season at the 2022 trade deadline, acquiring the likes of Andrew Copp and Frank Vatrano and leading the team to the Eastern Conference Finals.
The summer of 2022 and beyond saw better work from Drury, as he traded Alexandar Georgiev for draft picks, moved on from Nemeth and Reaves, sent Nils Lundkvist to the Dallas Stars for a first-round pick, and signed Vincent Trocheck as a UFA. Trading Georgiev was necessary and was probably the best long-term move for the team, while sending Lundkvist to the Stars was a gamble for both sides, but given his poor performance to this point, it was probably a clever play for Drury.
There have been solid moves by Drury, but unfortunately for the Rangers, the wins have been far outweighed by the losses. The rest of 2022 saw the Rangers claim Jake Leschyshyn off waivers and sign defenseman Ben Harpur. They also locked up forward Filip Chytil to a four-year deal that seemed fine at the time but would eventually be moved in the 2025 J.T. Miller trade.
The Trocheck signing yielded immediate results, as the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania native was a seamless fit with the Rangers, providing two-way play and offensive numbers above his career average. Trocheck has offered tremendous value to the Rangers as he crosses the halfway point of his seven-year deal, and he is in the midst of a solid season with New York despite the team’s poor play. Given the rising cap, Trocheck could be a valuable trade chip, although it’s likely the Rangers will want to hang onto him if they are, in fact, completing a retool.
The 2023 trade deadline was one to forget for Drury, as he went all in, trading for Vladimir Tarasenko, Niko Mikkola, Patrick Kane and Tyler Motte. The moves for Mikkola and Motte didn’t push many assets out the door, nor did the Tarasenko trade. But trading for Kane was a move that probably didn’t need to happen after the Tarasenko trade, and it relieved the Rangers of another three draft picks in exchange for a Kane who wasn’t playing at full capacity due to a hip injury.
The wheels came off for the Rangers in the first round of the 2023 playoffs, as they fell to the New Jersey Devils in seven games, in what could best be described as an uninspired performance that showed a lack of leadership.
Drury spent the summer of 2023 overcorrecting this issue, but it appeared to work as the team reached the Eastern Conference Finals once again in 2024. Drury signed aging veterans Blake Wheeler, Nick Bonino, Jonathan Quick, Riley Nash and Erik Gustafsson to low-cost short-term contracts, which produced mixed results. Quick and Gustafsson played well for New York, while Bonino, Wheeler and Nash had minimal impact and didn’t finish the year on the playoff roster. Given the low cost of acquiring the players, they were worth the gamble and, once again, provided Drury with some small wins.
However, in 2024, the wheels really began to come off for the Rangers shortly after they signed goaltender Igor Shesterkin to a record-breaking, $92MM, eight-year extension.
The deal came on the heels of the team trading captain Jacob Trouba to the Anaheim Ducks to create cap space to sign Shesterkin. Trading Trouba made a lot of sense given his high cap hit and minimal production in New York. He’d become a lightning rod for criticism, and it became apparent that the team wanted to get rid of him the prior summer, which they eventually did.
For whatever reason, that series of events appears to have fractured the Rangers’ dressing room, and they’ve never been the same since that fateful weekend in December 2024.
The team has fallen off considerably, and Drury has shown little direction, at times appearing to rely solely on gut instinct. This is, of course, the perspective of an outsider, but the results are what they are. This is a flawed hockey team that has always been flawed, even when it reached the conference finals. Shesterkin’s play masked many of the team’s shortcomings, and Drury overvalued his own roster as a result. Perhaps Drury can lead the Rangers back to contention, but given his work over the past five years, it doesn’t seem likely.
It’s tough to evaluate the last 12 months in a vacuum. Still, Drury has made some franchise-altering moves, including trading for J.T. Miller, moving Chris Kreider to Anaheim, trading K’Andre Miller to Carolina, and signing Vladislav Gavrikov. It’s tough to gauge how everything will work out, but Kreider is flirting with a 30-goal season in Anaheim, while Miller could set a career high in points with the Hurricanes. Miller and Gavrikov have struggled this year, leading to a negative early return on some significant moves Drury made.
Also, the strange Calvin de Haan situation from last spring raises questions about morale within the Rangers organization right now. You either sell winning or you sell hope, and right now the Rangers don’t have either to sell. Drury is locked in under a contract he signed less than a year ago, but given how things have worked out, the Rangers probably need to look elsewhere for someone who can build a championship roster.
Will Depth Players Get Paid Again This Summer?
Something funny was happening in the summer of 2019. Depth players began getting serious term on multi-year deals to a level we’d rarely seen before.
Take the contract for depth forward Brandon Tanev, who signed a six-year, $21MM deal with the Penguins. At the time, that contract raised a lot of eyebrows, as Tanev had topped out at just 14 goals and 15 assists in any single season, and a $3.5MM average annual value was especially steep on such a long-term deal.
The deal was an outlier on July 1, 2019, with no close comparison other than the Panthers signing Brett Connolly to a four-year, $14MM deal. Connolly was coming off a 46-point season, which far exceeded any of Tanev’s offensive contributions.
There was a sense at the time that the NHL might shift, with depth players able to secure longer-term, higher-dollar contracts. When Colton Sissons signed his seven-year extension with the Predators a few weeks later, it certainly looked that way.
Sissons was two years younger than Tanev and an RFA, whereas Tanev was a UFA, yet their eventual contracts were comparable. However, the global pandemic in 2020 stalled the league’s growth and led to a flat salary cap, effectively shutting teams out of paying for depth and fringe players’ big-money deals.
The stars still got their money, as evidenced by 2020 free agency, when Alex Pietrangelo was still paid handsomely (seven years, $61.6MM), while depth players had to take one-year deals at or around the league minimum.
The stars have continued to get their money, and top salaries have escalated over the last few years, while second-line players have also been rewarded handsomely as the salary cap has eventually climbed. But the depth players in the NHL have continued to feel the squeeze to this point, and it does feel like that might change this summer, with another big cap jump coming, multiple teams with loads of cap space, and a very weak free agency market.
In previous summers, solid defenders such as Calvin de Haan and Matt Grzelcyk, as well as forwards Jack Roslovic and Evgenii Dadonov, have been part of a large group of NHL-caliber players who have experienced a very tight free-agent market when they have been available to all NHL teams. Now, it’s not unheard of for players to fall short of salary expectations in free agency, but it has become a common occurrence over the last six years, and it feels like this could be a summer where teams overpay for depth.
There has been a surge in signings in recent weeks, with the most recent being the Penguins locking up fourth-line center Blake Lizotte to a three-year deal worth $6.75MM total, and the Canadiens inking Alexandre Texier to a two-year deal worth $2.5MM per season. These deals were not massive signings, but they show that teams are moving to lock up their depth as they look to the summer UFAs and realize there isn’t much out there.
Center Christian Dvorak is another excellent example, having recently signed a five-year deal with the Flyers after settling for a one-year deal last summer. Dvorak has long been injury-prone and inconsistent, but the Flyers felt they had to ink him to an extension amid a career year in Philadelphia.
So, what depth players will get shocking contracts this upcoming summer, or will they? If you go by the old cliché that a rising tide raises all boats, it sure looks like the players at the bottom of the lineup will finally start to get a bigger slice of the pie.
Could a player like Ryan Shea, Connor Dewar, or Philipp Kurashev get a big-money, multi-year deal this summer? Or will teams continue to show restraint in the lower rungs of the free agency market, even though they have more wiggle room?
It’s hard to believe there won’t be some silly deals on July 1, 2026. There are always head-scratching choices NHL GMs make. But this could be a free agency unlike any we’ve seen in a decade or so.
July 1, 2016, is hard to forget for some teams, as massive mistakes were made that were clearly bad choices at the time. Loui Eriksson signed with Vancouver, Milan Lucic signed with Edmonton, and David Backes signed with Boston. Several other players were given ridiculous contracts relative to their future projections, which wasn’t anything new, especially for players with a history of being top-six NHL players.
However, some general managers watched those errors and learned a valuable lesson that carried through the COVID years, when there was a massive salary-cap squeeze. While teams didn’t have the salary-cap space to make the egregious contract offers, some GMs still did, and they usually paid the price for it.
A good example was Penguins GM Ron Hextall, who made some odd choices in free agency, particularly when he signed a Tanev replacement in the summer of 2021. Hextall inked Brock McGinn to a four-year, $11MM contract that was a poor value for the Penguins and was eventually traded along with a sweetener to the Anaheim Ducks in 2023.
That deal, along with contracts like Pierre Engvall’s, highlighted why many teams stayed away from giving terms to their depth players. But this summer, the stars are aligning for some wild contracts to be handed out to players who likely won’t last the length of the deal in the NHL. For fans of contending teams, or teams on the upswing who think they are just a player away from contention, you just have to hope your favorite team isn’t among the unlucky ones handing out the money.
Assessing The Canucks’ Direction
Reports surfaced earlier this month that the Canucks had re-engaged in contract talks with pending free-agent forward Kiefer Sherwood and were discussing a potential five- or six-year deal worth over $4MM per season. It’s hard to say whether the reports had merit, or whether the Canucks were serious about retaining Sherwood – or merely posturing to get a better trade return before the trade deadline.
Regardless of their true intentions, the Canucks’ direction is tough to figure out. They currently sit last in the NHL standings and, since New Year’s Day, are 0-7-2 and have been outscored 40-14. They don’t appear close to a winning run, yet there is little talk of a sell-off or a pivot into a rebuild. Their fans certainly like to talk on social media about embracing the tank, and the Canucks are reportedly willing to listen to offers for Elias Pettersson.
The truth about Vancouver is that it’s been a mess, off and on, for the better part of the last 10 to 15 years, from the top of the organization down to the players. There have been highs and moments of hope when it looked like the team was on the cusp of greatness, but those highs have been short-lived, followed by rapid declines.
The last two years are a clear example: the Canucks went from a team that was a win away from the Western Conference Final to one that missed the playoffs last season and appears destined to do the same this year. Those falls aren’t all that common (although the Rangers are living through a familiar descent) and are generally the result of self-inflicted missteps or a run of terrible luck.
In Vancouver’s case, it appears to be a mix of both, but there is no doubt that the J.T. Miller/Pettersson rift did irreparable damage that could have long-standing effects on Vancouver’s locker room.
Miller’s departure should have signaled the Canucks’ direction. Still, a quick trade for defenseman Marcus Pettersson and forward Drew O’Connor then implied that Vancouver intended to compete for a playoff spot last season, and the subsequent re-signing of both players certainly reinforced that notion.
Internal and external pressures aside, the trade to bring in Pettersson and O’Connor added to the Canucks’ depth, and they shed some bad contracts (Danton Heinen and Vincent Desharnais) in the deal with Pittsburgh. But the trades showed a lack of direction for Vancouver, and that carried into last year’s trade deadline as well as the summer, when the Canucks showed a lack of forward thinking. All of that leads us to this season, where Vancouver has spun its wheels despite rostering an ageing, expensive core.
The Miller trade to the Rangers had to happen, and while the return wasn’t great, it wasn’t awful either, as Miller has struggled to regain his form in the Big Apple. But the moves that followed the trade felt reactionary and forced, and ultimately proved in vain.
Pettersson was a top-pairing defender in Pittsburgh, but this season with the Canucks has been perhaps the worst of his career. The 29-year-old looks to be a shell of his former self and, like many players in Vancouver, has been terrible.
O’Connor has been fine in Vancouver, tallying 10 goals and seven assists in 47 games thus far while continuing to use his speed and size to be disruptive on the forecheck. That move, while tainted by Pettersson’s play this year, made sense at the time, but as the Canucks approached the trade deadline, some of management’s decision-making left a lot to be desired.
There was a moment after the Miller trade when the Canucks could have pivoted to a quick retool that might have been tough to stomach for the rest of last year and this season, but it would likely have yielded results next season. Instead, the Canucks did what they did, extended both Pettersson and O’Connor, and inked backup goaltender Kevin Lankinen to a deal that pays him $4.5MM per season for five years. All of it was reactionary, in the hope of getting the Canucks into the postseason last year. They didn’t.
The Canucks also tried to trade Brock Boeser last year at the deadline, but weren’t able to come to terms on a deal. It seemed all but certain he would bolt elsewhere in free agency last summer, but there he was on July 1, surprisingly signing a seven-year agreement with Vancouver that appears set to age like milk.
The Canucks added to their forward depth in another move, acquiring Evander Kane via trade from Edmonton. It was an acceptable deal in a vacuum; however, given Vancouver’s overall roster construction, it was a head-scratcher, as the Canucks used much of their cap space to fix the wing while watching their already thin center position get worse when Pius Suter departed in free agency.
Vancouver spent the rest of the summer making small roster changes in hopes that the core would find its mojo again. Still, a few months into the season, it was clear that wasn’t going to happen, which sparked trade rumours for their star defenseman, Quinn Hughes, whom they eventually dealt to Minnesota towards the end of 2025. The Hughes deal was actually a great haul for Vancouver given the circumstances, but it has officially put them into a hybrid retool that probably should’ve happened a year ago.
Hindsight is 20/20, but had Vancouver pivoted in early 2025 after trading Miller, they might have avoided some of the mistakes they’ve made over the past year, which have effectively set them back a few years. Instead, Vancouver is locked into long-term deals with underperforming forwards, a talented yet expensive goalie tandem that has injury and inconsistency issues, and a defense core that is now average at best.
Sure, they do have some nice young players who will likely become NHLers, but they will be surrounded by an old, pricey core unless the Canucks can start moving out from under some of the contracts they’ve locked in. No one is taking Boeser’s deal this year; the same could probably be said for Elias Pettersson’s.
But Vancouver could move their pending UFAs before the trade deadline and have nearly $17MM in cap space next summer to sign just two roster players (as per PuckPedia). That type of wiggle room could allow for additions before next season, but it’s not clear whether Vancouver should do that in the midst of what appears to be either a retool or a rebuild.
Patience might be the best thing for the president of hockey ops, Jim Rutherford and general manager Patrik Allvin to exercise, but given their track records, that has not been their strong suit, and it is a big part of the reason the Canucks find themselves where they are.
The Maple Leafs Are At A Crossroads
The Maple Leafs are on a heater at the moment, and while it’s made some fans forget about their awful stretch of play to start the season, it was clear that the team was going through something, and it’s hard to put a name to it. Some might call it an identity crisis: the team is full of offensive talent yet chooses to play low-risk, safe hockey.
Others might say it’s the apparent outcome of losing Mitch Marner and not replacing him with another offensive star. Or maybe it was the injuries, which have tested the team’s depth. Whatever it was, Toronto is facing a crossroads, and the future of the roster is murky.
The team struggled to get off to a good start, but has been much better as of late. Where they go from here is anyone’s guess, as the team has been unpredictable up to this point in the season.
Even though they are finally winning, many Leafs fans seem indifferent as the team sits outside of a playoff spot. Toronto fans could be fatigued by a team that always seems to let them down when games matter most, or many folks in Ontario who are Maple Leafs fans may have had their interests shift after the magical run MLB’s Toronto Blue Jays went on just a few months ago. Whatever it is, the Maple Leafs – the organization and roster – likely won’t go on for the rest of the season the way they are, which means something has to give.
Toronto is 7-1-2 in its last 10 games and has a positive goal differential on the year. But the results of late have been more of the same. They are great at home and terrible on the road, play great offense and below-average defense, and don’t play fast or tough enough. The Maple Leafs are the perfect candidate to make a shake-up move to change their fortunes, but what would that kind of move even look like?
Many fans would have liked to see Craig Berube fired before their most recent hot streak, but he is a highly respected Stanley Cup-winning coach who knows how to win. Would that kind of move change the fortunes of the Maple Leafs?
It could. It has happened before to other talented teams lumbering through mediocre seasons despite gifted rosters. The 2009 and 2016 Penguins come to mind as two examples of teams that fired their coach midseason and went on to win the Stanley Cup. More recently, the Blues fired head coach Mike Yeo in 2018, only to go on and win the Stanley Cup in 2019 with a new coach behind the bench – Berube.
But is firing Berube really the right move? It probably never was, and it definitely isn’t after their most recent stretch of play, especially given that the coaching market isn’t exactly ripe with great options for Toronto, and they would most likely be recycling a less-than-desirable option through Toronto, which probably makes it the wrong move.
What about a big trade? Well, that’s another issue for Toronto. They don’t have much to trade to acquire a player who can help now. Their prospect system is among the worst in the league, and they have just three picks in this year’s draft, none of which are in the first two rounds. They also don’t have a first-round pick in 2027 or a third-rounder.
This is before we even get to cap space, which they have very little of. Toronto could do some cap gymnastics, but at the moment, they have less than $3.4MM available at the deadline (per PuckPedia), which likely makes any significant move out of the question. Plus, do you want to move out more futures for short-term rentals when you don’t even know if this group is a playoff team?
The following month will say a lot about the Maple Leafs. If they continue to hover outside of a playoff spot in the Eastern Conference, they are probably best off seeing if they can move their UFAs and punt on this season. But if they continue the current run they are on, that will change the calculus going forward and put any coaching change talk among the fanbase to bed.
How can Toronto turn the corner and make sure it remains a consistent team? Simply put, they need to figure out which style of play maximizes the talent on their roster. Scott Laughton has been a black hole offensively since arriving in Toronto late last season, with just six goals and two assists in 30 games this year.
The same could be said for Calle Jarnkrok, who was once a consistent 30-to-40-point player but has just six goals in 29 games this season. They also need to figure out how to manage injuries to key players, including defenseman Chris Tanev and goaltender Anthony Stolarz.
It’s never easy to replace top players; however, teams find ways to do it and tread water until their players return. The Penguins faced a stretch this season without their entire second line, yet they remained in the playoff hunt despite arguably having a worse roster than the Maple Leafs. Teams rely on structure, work ethic and a next-man-up philosophy to overcome injuries, and Toronto needs to dig deep to do the same.
Lastly, there is the Marner issue, and it is perhaps the biggest. Fans had a close-up last night of Marner in Vegas’ overtime win over the Maple Leafs. Toronto never replaced Marner, and to be honest, they never could.
Stars leave massive holes in rosters when they depart, but good management groups find ways to plug the gaps, and the Maple Leafs haven’t done that. Some fans and pundits have suggested Toronto make a move for Stars forward Jason Robertson, but that move doesn’t have legs for many of the reasons previously stated (lack of cap space, lack of assets, etc.). But there are players out there that Toronto could look at as potential assets to add before the trade deadline, should they be in the hunt for a playoff spot.
At this stage of their contention window, the Maple Leafs can ill afford to finish in the middle and miss the playoffs entirely, losing their first-round pick. The best course for them is to make the postseason this year and try to make a run, but if they are going to miss the playoffs, it would likely be better to finish low enough in the standings to get a top 5 pick, retain their first-round pick for this season, and retool in the summer. This situation would push them to give up first-round picks in 2027 and 2028, but the hope would be that they could get a top prospect this year who could make an immediate NHL impact.
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.
The Full Teardown Rebuild Doesn’t Work Anymore
A few years ago, it was common for NHL fanbases to call for their favorite team to bottom out when it came time to rebuild the organization’s roster, and for good reason. The bottom-out rebuild had become trendy because most Stanley Cup champions during the 2010s had used that method of roster construction, and other teams began copying it, as is often the case.
However, late in the decade, another trend began to surface: the teams that were bottoming out couldn’t turn the corner in their rebuilds and remained in a perpetual state of losing. That leads us to the past couple of seasons, when some of those teams, namely the Sabres, have remained at the bottom of the NHL standings, while others, such as the Capitals, have successfully orchestrated softer retools.
At this point, it’s becoming evident that the bottom-out rebuild no longer works in today’s NHL.
There are many reasons it doesn’t work. Most notably, the draft is no longer a safe bet for bottom-feeders to land generational talent. Ten years ago, high picks were nearly a guarantee if you finished at the bottom of the standings, and now, with the new draft odds, it’s much harder to win a top pick.
Teams can no longer rely on a top draft pick to secure elite talent, which has reduced the incentive to tank via roster construction. After all, you still need fans to buy tickets and merchandise, and they won’t do that if your club is getting beaten every night.
This leads to another point about tearing down the roster. If you do acquire young talent who have no one else to play with and play in a culture of losing, that type of environment does seem contagious.
You can simply look at Edmonton and Buffalo in the 2010s. They couldn’t shake the stink of a losing culture, and it seeped into much of their young talent. Buffalo is a particularly egregious example, as many of their top draft picks more or less forced their way out of Buffalo to go on and win Stanley Cups in other cities.
This culture also shapes the development outcomes for younger players and explains why some young players get drafted late but, once in an NHL environment, find new levels in their games they had never reached before. It was no accident in the 1990s and 2000s that the Red Wings consistently found stars late in the draft. They had built a development machine and a culture of excellence that brought out the best in all of their young players. That dynamic can go the other way if you have a culture of losing. There is a real irony to all of it. The worse your team is, the less equipped your organization is to develop the players who might save your franchise.
Even if you hit the lottery and draft elite players, it doesn’t compound year after year the way it used to when the Penguins could grab Marc-André Fleury, Evgeni Malkin, Sidney Crosby, and Jordan Staal. The new rules from 2022 mean that a team cannot win the lottery more than twice in five years. Now, technically, that wouldn’t change things in the case of Pittsburgh, as they traded up to draft Fleury and drafted Malkin and Staal second overall, but it does reduce the incentive to ice a poor roster.
It’s also difficult to sustain the financial costs of an NHL roster in the salary-cap era while intentionally fielding a poor roster for several seasons. Back when Pittsburgh and Chicago were building their bottom-feeding rosters, they could literally sign every player to the league minimum (and they almost did) because the salary-cap floor they had to meet to be cap-compliant was much lower. Now, with an elevated floor, very few NHL teams could afford to reach the floor and ice a poor roster year after year without suffering a significant drop in gate revenue.
Speaking of money, another wrinkle in the bottom-out rebuild is that if you somehow draft elite players and develop them into NHL stars, they are set to exit their entry-level contracts and cash in big. Young stars can demand bigger extensions earlier, meaning the cheap years of their careers are behind them, and the team has to allocate massive amounts of cap space to them and can’t insulate them with other players. Stated differently, once your rebuild starts to bear fruit, the discounted years are over.
Then there is the issue that it’s tough to deconstruct an NHL roster, and even when you try to tear it down, you might end up with a team that falls into the mushy middle. This has happened to the Penguins this season: they tried to trade many of their veterans this past summer (Rickard Rakell, Bryan Rust, Erik Karlsson) but weren’t able to, and now find themselves in a playoff hunt.
It would have been foolish for Pittsburgh to give away its top players for very little, and whether they were serious about moving them is known only to management. Still, they elected to hold onto them and continue to ice a team that is competing for a wild-card spot. This is different from 20-plus years ago, when there was no salary cap, and Pittsburgh could simply call the Rangers or the Capitals to dump their star players.
Finally, there is the difference that social media and modern society make in rebuilding a team. Twenty years ago, entertainment options were much more limited, so fans stuck around to watch their favorite team, even when it was bad. This meant that management and coaches had a longer leash to rebuild and develop young players, as ownership had more patience because supporters were more committed and less distracted by other forms of entertainment. Nowadays, though, fans have a million choices for their leisure time, and if their favorite club is bad, they can do other things to fill their time.
Social media also plays into this, as fans have a louder voice than ever, which can put pressure on ownership if the naysayers get too noisy or create their own narratives. A rebuild used to be allowed to breathe for months at a time with minimal criticism, but nowadays it is litigated on social media daily. This can accelerate impatience and force management and ownership to show progress more quickly, making the long, painful rebuild a near impossibility.
Then there is self-preservation, which is often the primary motivator in management, leading to avoiding the long rebuild or not fully committing to a teardown. GMs notoriously shorten their own timelines and make job-saving trades that often turn out to be poor moves for the organization and for themselves (Kevyn Adams in Buffalo, for example).
The modern reality of a rebuild is that it is no longer about losing for a long time and collecting top picks. You can do that and still go nowhere, as evidenced by many teams in the last ten years. Rebuilds have become about timing long-term contracts.
They’ve become about layering prospects so they arrive in consistent waves year after year, keeping your depth intact when your internal players become too expensive to retain. They’ve become about patience and development, avoiding giving up on players too early, moving them prematurely, getting impatient with your current roster, and making a bad move. And finally, they’ve become about protecting your assets, draft picks, roster players, and cap space.
The teams that win now are no longer the ones that lose their way to the top; they are the disciplined ones that build the right way.
Ottawa’s Contention Window Could Be Short
The Senators have struggled to start the year, despite high hopes and promises that this would be the year they finally made some noise. However, some three months into the season, the only noise out of Ottawa is the collective sighs as the team’s inconsistency drives its most loyal supporters up the wall.
The Sens have a relatively young team, and with youth comes growing pains. But this group has been together for quite a while now, and it’s fair to wonder if this is who they are: a talented group of individual players who, together, form a flawed team with a window to win that grows smaller by the day.
When the Senators began tearing apart their core in 2018, it was clear that dark days lay ahead, but in the background, there was always hope for a brighter future, and for good reason. Many of the teams that tore down their roster to the studs rebuilt their systems and competed for Stanley Cups.
Whenever fans discussed the bottom-out rebuild, they would bring up the Penguins, Blackhawks, Kings and Lightning, and the collective 10 Stanley Cups those four teams won over 12 years. However, tearing down the roster was never a guarantee of success.
For every Chicago or Pittsburgh, you had a Buffalo or Edmonton. Teams that had bottomed out, but never built anything worth talking about. And now, with the Senators nearing the halfway point of the season at the bottom of the Eastern Conference standings, it’s fair to start asking whether they are more Buffalo than Chicago.
Ottawa is still framed as a team on the rise. They are young, talented, and one would think poised to break through once the pieces fall into place.
But aren’t the pieces already in place? You would think so, given the players they’ve brought in over the past five years, such as Jakob Chychrun and Alex DeBrincat, two men who were brought in for a season or two and shuffled out quickly. Ottawa likely pounced too early when they brought in those players, sensing they were closer to winning than they actually were, and exposing some of the problematic elements of a rebuild that are often forgotten.
The Senators have a ton of talent in their core. There is no doubting that.
Just because a core is talented doesn’t mean there is synchronicity. Ottawa has some pieces nearing their prime, while others have long passed it, and some are just learning what it takes to be a full-time NHLer and are being asked to do too much. Talent isn’t really the issue in Ottawa; timing is.
In fairness to the Senators, they did most of what a rebuilding team is supposed to do. They hit on their top picks (Brady Tkachuk, Tim Stützle), had some big trade wins by shipping out veterans (Erik Karlsson), and signed their top stars to very reasonable contracts (Jake Sanderson, Stützle, Tkachuk). But once those players are signed, it becomes much more challenging to layer the roster with inexpensive depth, and that is generally done through drafting, which the Senators have struggled with outside the first round. This has begun to rear its head.
There has long been a mentality among Senators fans that the team would figure out who to surround their stars with later on, but the time to figure it out is now, and they don’t look like they have the solutions. The trouble with a competitive window in the case of the Senators is that when you make big bets and lose, the window to win doesn’t get delayed or kicked down the road; it shrinks. The Senators could be in the midst of finding that out.
The Senators’ stars have been out of the development stage for a few years now, and one has to wonder how long their star players will remain patient. They were supposed to be past the learning years and into the progression years, and while last year felt like a step in the right direction, this year feels like two steps back, with little help on the way in the form of prospects or significant additions.
Ottawa’s farm system ranks bottom-10 in the league (23rd on Elite Prospects, 25th on Daily Faceoff), and they are without a first-round pick this year. They have a healthy stash of draft picks outside of that, but don’t have a ton of cap room to make major splashes.
Speaking of the salary cap, Ottawa has $23MM available next summer with eight players to sign (per PuckPedia). Assuming defensive prospect Carter Yakemchuk makes the jump to the NHL, that leaves Ottawa with around $22MM and seven players to sign to NHL deals.
That’s not a bad number by any stretch, but realistically, they will be looking to sign a top-four right-handed defenseman, a top-six winger, a backup goaltender, and a few bottom-six forwards. It’s not a daunting task, but it doesn’t leave much wiggle room, and you have to wonder whether their roster will be much better next year.
And make no mistake, the years are about to matter a whole lot more to the players on the roster and the team. Drake Batherson has one year remaining on his deal after this one, as does defenseman Artem Zub, while the likes of Tkachuk and defenseman Thomas Chabot have two.
Batherson has been a massive bargain on his current deal, carrying a cap hit of just $4.975MM on a six-year deal and delivering 60-plus points per season. Batherson is also consistently in the lineup, having dressed for 82 games in each of the previous three seasons. His defensive play, on the other hand, is not something to write home about, but that can be said for many goal-scoring wingers in the NHL.
Batherson has given Ottawa a ton of value over the life of his current contract, and like it or not, he’s going to want to claw a lot of that back on his next deal, which figures to be a seven-year deal and will probably top teammate Shane Pinto’s $7.5MM deal. Does Ottawa want to pay Batherson $8MM or more annually? Hard to say, but they can’t get that deal wrong, and what kind of message would it send to trade him right before the Tkachuk negotiations start?
Speaking of Tkachuk, he is the heart of the team and one heck of a competitor. You have to believe that if Ottawa can’t show forward progress in the next 18 months, he won’t be in a hurry to sign a long-term deal with the Senators when he is eligible to do so in July 2027.
Tkachuk negotiated in a very tactical and aggressive way during the last round of contract talks, and you have to believe he won’t be an easy player to lock up long-term if real results aren’t shown. Tkachuk is being paid handsomely at the moment, carrying an AAV north of $8.2MM. Steve Warne of The Hockey News has reported previously that his father, Keith Tkachuk, doesn’t believe he will leave Ottawa, but losing does a lot, as does winning, and Ottawa’s results will have a lot of say in what Tkachuk does.
The Senators have no choice but to win often and soon. They can ill afford to let the years go by without success. Windows to win don’t usually slam shut; they close quietly when contracts age poorly, teams fail to develop players, and depth erodes. It happened to those aforementioned Stanley Cup champions, in Chicago’s case, much earlier than expected and in Pittsburgh’s case, much later. It will happen to Ottawa at some point, and the question is whether they will win before it does. Much of that will be determined over the next 18 months.
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