I will get to the big news coming out of Pittsburgh in a moment, but first a recap of the game, another Senators loss by a 6-3 score.
More of the same as the Senators were plagued by terrible goaltending, inability to compete in the defensive zone and pretty much Mark Stone against the world offensively for the most part.
Mike Condon allowed goals on 3 straight shots in the second period to get the hook, and two of them were atrocious goals and turned a close 1-1 game into a no-doubter.
The only real positive was that the Senators held their opposition to under 30 shots for the first time in 2018, but that doesn't matter if they are going to let the type of goals in that Ottawa's masked men are allowing this year.
Oh yeah, and of course they allowed yet another player's first career NHL goal, this time around to Zach Aston-Reese, who scored on Condon in the middle of the three consecutive shots going in, and then added the empty netter for his first two-goal game as well.
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On to the good stuff, and by good stuff I mean if you like the direction Pierre Dorion is going. As I said Monday the Senators are open for business and the first domino dropped mid-game Tuesday.
Dion Phaneuf was pulled from the game during the second period as the Senators were finalizing a deal to send him and injured centre Nate Thompson to the LA Kings for forwards Marian Gaborik and Drew Shore. Ottawa will retain 25% of Phaneuf's salary (cap hit of $1.75M per year for the next 3 years) in the trade.
So, there are two aspect to this deal - money and on-ice factors. The first being the relief in terms of salary and cap hit that removing Phaneuf provides to the Senators, who were/are about to be short in both. How much they save depends on what they decide to do with Gaborik.
The ideal situation is that the oft injured Gaborik gets the Hossa/Lupul treatment (maybe that skin condition afflicts many Slovaks when they turn 36?) and goes on LTIR for the remaining 3 years of his contract. That option would save the Senators almost $16M in cap space and almost $12M in actual dollars over three years as opposed to the status quo (assuming insurance covers 80% of Gaborik's salary in that case).
The other option is to buy out Gaborik's contract after this season, which will save them about $4.6M in cap space and $6.66M in real dollars than if they had kept Phaneuf but only about $3.5M saved (over 6 years) than if they had bought out Phaneuf themselves after this season.
My chart of the four options (1. Status quo; 2. Ottawa buying out Phaneuf; 3. Ottawa buying out Gaborik and 4. Ottawa sends Gaborik to Lupul Island is below, with salary and buyout numbers taken from capfriendly.com. I don't pretend to be a capologist so I am not 100% guaranteeing the numbers are accurate and in some cases I rounded up or down in individual years to come out with a more accurate total figure. I also disregarded the rest of this season as a wash, and left Nate Thompson out of next year's figures as an assumption that they would have moved him elsewhere if not included in this deal, for simplicity sake, but the Senators do save $1.65M in cap space and salary for next year with his departure as well. Shore is an RFA after this season so if they do decide to re-sign him (after all he is the type of player that Guy Boucher seems to love) it will be a decision independent of this trade.
So that is the money aspect, but now the departure of Phaneuf, who has probably been Ottawa's most consistent defenseman for most of this season, leaves a giant hole on the Senators' blue line. Freddie Claesson is around to fill it in the short term, but I don't think he is capable of playing the high minutes against good competition that Phaneuf did in his two years (plus 4 days) in Ottawa.
Now that they will either have to pay someone $5M+ to fill that role, or go cheaper and younger, was it really worth the savings to make the move?
Time will tell in the long term if it makes them a better team on the ice, but it certainly looks like a cash grab, and not a big one at that unless they can put Gaborik out to pasture. If they can't, then it is pretty much a wash with minor savings and they gave up one bad but serviceable contract for a slightly less bad but far less serviceable player given his age and injury history.
*The fifth option is that they can try to flip Gaborik for anything else and get him off the books, but that might be the most unlikely scenario, and I assumed he won't retire and leave millions on the table, which would probably be the best option of all.
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