BREAKING: The Senators have traded center Mika Zibanejad to the New York Rangers along with a 2018 2nd round pick for center Derick Brassard and a 2018 7th round pick.


Although he isn't the #1 center the Senators have coveted since Jason Spezza's trade, Brassard at this point in their respective careers is an upgrade over Zibanejad and gives Ottawa a pretty solid 1-2 punch up the middle.

Brassard, 28 years old now, is making a cap hit of $5M for each of the next three years, but his salary comes in at about $3.5 on a front-loaded contract. The local product has been at or near 60 points in each of the last 2 seasons in New York (60 & 58 respectively).




Now back to what I had written earlier this morning....
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A couple of weeks ago, I looked at the importance of having a true #1 centre, and the trend showed that you cannot win the Stanley Cup without one (or 2) truly dominant pivot.

What about goaltending? Quite often it is referred to as the most important position, but as it turns out, 10 of the last 12 cup winners haven't had a goalie who has been deemed the best at his postion in any season, let alone the year they won.

For a period of time, up until 2002-03 (coincidentally the last time a team without a truly dominant centre won the Cup), the names that backstopped teams to Lord Stanley were Roy, Brodeur, Belfour, Barasso, all Vezina winners. Nine of the 13 cup winners between Pittsburgh in 1991 and New Jersey in 2003 had a goalie that had already won, or eventually would win, a Vezina. The exceptions to that rule were Mike Vernon and Chris Osgood in Detroit and Mike Richter in New York with the Rangers.

Since the lockout, only Tim Thomas and Dominik Hasek can claim to have both a Stanley Cup and a Vezina, with only Thomas taking them in the same season. Other than that pair, the Stanley Cup winning goalies have been Nikolai Khabibulin, Cam Ward, J-S Giguere, Anti Niemi, Corey Crawford and this year's Matt Murray. Jonathan Quick also won a pair of Stanley Cups but missed out on the Vezina but will probably be up for a career "he should have one by now" Vezina now that his teammate has his Norris.

So it seems that the League has moved from needing the elite, "steal games" goalies to win the Stanley Cup and evolved to simply "don't screw this up" netminders.

What does that mean for the Senators? Aside from having a roster that is quite a ways away from contending for a Cup (said elite centre being the biggest and hardest to get piece), Craig Anderson has shown a propensity to get hot enough for stretches to carry a team like that, but I am afraid those days have passed. This past season (and I know some of you disagree with the assessment) Anderson was as much a cause of the Senators defensive woes as he was a victim on many nights with misplays, inconsistency and inability to track the puck.

The problem is, at this point in time there isn't another option. Andrew Hammond had his chances to recapture the magic of the previous season, and rather predictably he couldn't. Matt O'Connor, the highly touted college free agent the Senators signed in the spring of 2014, had a rough first pro season and despite the fact that Chris Dreidger had a league best 1.000 SP and 0.00 GAA (albeit in a whole 32 minutes of NHL action) I don't think anyone is handing him the torch any time soon.

So it is a 35-year-old Anderson or bust right now, without a legitimate prospect waiting in the wings to take his place.

Remember when the Senators had such a perceived logjam in net that they felt they could trade Ben Bishop for Cory Conacher? Seems like a lifetime ago now, and maybe the best option available might be to try to pry Bishop out of Tampa for a return engagement to solidify the position for now and going forward for the next few years. Maybe O'Connor turns the corner and becomes what the club hoped they were getting, or big Swede Marcus Hogberg comes over and shines and this is a moot point. But Anderson isn't getting any younger and the Senators need a plan B, sooner rather than later because he isn't exactly an ironman either.

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