This is late news by now, but I feel that I have to mention it tonight. Just a couple hours after it was announced that Mark Stone had re-signed for one year, the news on Cody Ceci's arbitration case came out:
News Release: Following Wednesday’s hearing, the arbitrator has awarded #Sens defenceman Cody Ceci a salary of $4.3 million for the 2018-19 season: https://t.co/iR46TPuks1 pic.twitter.com/DJJ2MlaZ1C
— Ottawa Senators (@Senators) August 3, 2018
With his contract being $4.3M, the Senators could have actually walked away from that deal and declared Ceci a free agent, but they won't be doing that. Ceci will still be an RFA in 2019, which is obviously different than the Stone situation. It was always an inevitability that he'd be making this much on his next contract, but the Senators painted themselves into a corner so they get no sympathy here.
My thoughts on Ceci are well-known by now, even if you've only been reading my work since I got to Hockeybuzz. He's not cut out to be a shutdown top-four defenseman, and no matter how hard I search I can't find anything positive about his play or his future. You could maybe make the case that he'd be an alright defenseman in a sheltered offensive role on the third pairing, but he has just been objectively bad in his role for his whole time as an NHLer.
As I've mentioned, I'm not sure what to make of the team taking him to arbitration, because obviously they love him enough to keep him on the team this long, plus he's been the player with the most ice time on the team not named Erik Karlsson. There must have been some snag in the negotiations though, and I wouldn't even rule out the possibility that Ceci is frustrated with where the team is headed as well.
Although he has had plenty of time to prove himself, the end of this contract has to be a crossroads. Either he'll be moved because of bad play, or he'll be signed for a long time because the team trusts him. It's hard to envision another short contract because his previous one was only for two years.
I genuinely hate having to theme a lot of my articles with a negative slant, but it's days like these that make me have such little faith moving forward. Ceci has never been a solid defenseman and it's hard to ever envision him developing into one since he's already almost 25. It only makes things worse that they could have gotten quite a lot for him in return over the past few seasons.
If he ever gets traded, then the amount of positivity in my articles might substantially go up.