The 2018 off-season is the first of two incredibly difficult summers for GM Pierre Dorion. In 2018, he has Mark Stone and Cody Ceci to deal with, and in 2019 he has Erik Karlsson, Matt Duchene, and Ryan Dzingel.
Karlsson will obviously take centre stage this summer, as trade rumours will be swirling, but Dorion can’t lose sight of the fact that he has two unrestricted and three restricted free agents to re-sign. Those include the aforementioned Stone and Ceci, as well as Fredrik Claesson (RFA), Chris Wideman (UFA), and Magnus Paajarvi (UFA).
Something that I love to look at as a free agent resource is
Matt Cane’s wonderful free agent contract predictions. They aren’t simply
his predictions, they’re based off of comparable deals and players, and of course it gets adjusted for inflation. The actual numbers listed go down to the dollar, so I rounded the dollars in each case.
Here is what he projected for the five Senators contracts:
Mark Stone: ~$8.77M for 4 years
This may seem like a lot, and in reality I think Stone will settle for less, but honestly, he is 100% worth a contract that big. Although he only played 58 games, scoring 62 points in that stretch on a horrendous team is nothing short of incredible. I don’t think he’s a point per game player moving forward, but even if he’s what he normally was (a 60 point player), he is extremely valuable.
There isn’t a single thing that he does wrong on the ice, and I’d gladly pay him that contract. Having said that, I’d take the under if I had to guess, and I’d be a bit disappointed if he costs that much, mainly because the Senators have done a good job of keeping costs relatively low for their RFA’s. No matter what, Stone will be getting a massive raise.
Cody Ceci: ~$4.09M for 1 year
This is the troubling contract. If Ceci gets another short-term contract like this one, I’m not sure what the point would be, considering he’s 25 at the end of the year, and he’s had enough time to showcase the kind of player that he is---which is not a top-four defenseman.
Over $4M would be quite a hefty price to pay for a defenseman that spends most of his nights stuck in his own zone, but I fear the term a lot more. The Senators have had a plethora of chances to cash in on Ceci’s trade value, and signing him to a big contract would just be compounding the problem.
I can see them signing Ceci to a longer-term contract around four or five years, and that scares me.
Fredrik Claesson: ~$1.06M for 1 year
Claesson had a rough 2017-18 season, but I think he’s better than he showed, as he proved to be a steady third pairing defenseman in the previous season. A shade over $1M is quite cheap, and I think he’s more useful than both Mark Borowiecki and Ben Harpur, so I’d love to keep him here.
Plus, I’m not going to lie, I really want him to stay because of his hilarious personality off the ice.
Chris Wideman: ~$1.12M for 2 years
If you’ve read my work at Silver Seven Sens, you’ll know that I’ve long been a Wideman fan. I won’t get into all of the shot metrics here, but simply put: Wideman is one of the most effective third pairing defensemen out there.
That may not sound that amazing, but we’ve watched the Senators consistently have terrible depth at forward and defense, and for a brief period it was nice having the third pairing not be a dumpster fire while Wideman was in the lineup. Plus, for that price, there’s no downside, and depth options matter more than you think.
Magnus Paajarvi: ~$899k for 1 year
Much like with Claesson and Wideman, it’s hard to beat this projected salary. He isn’t going to give you much offense, but Paajarvi’s shot suppression numbers have actually been quite solid over the course of his career.
The problem is that Ottawa already has a lot of limited and non-dynamic depth players like Tom Pyatt, Alex Burrows, and Max McCormick. I think I’d like re-signing him if one of those three were to be moved, and there’s a chance that it could be Burrows.
Dorion has some tough negotiations ahead.
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