Earlier in the week we discussed some of the roster question marks that existed for the Ottawa Senators prior to making their final round of training camp cuts. With today’s news that the team has sent Vitaly Abramov, Logan Brown, and Christian Jaros to Belleville, the answers to at least some of those questions have been made clear:
Sens make their final roster cuts, sending Logan Brown, Vitaly Abramov & Christian Jaros down to the AHL.
— Ian Mendes (@ian_mendes) September 29, 2019
Jaros is a bit of a surprise as a lot of us thought he would be paired with Borowiecki to start the season.
And this means Erik Brannstrom makes the club out of camp.
As Ian notes in the tweet above, the cuts today mean that Erik Brannstrom has made the team. The challenge for DJ Smith and his staff now is to ensure that he isn’t just playing minutes, but rather *meaningful* minutes that will allow him to continue his development. Spot duty next to an anchor isn’t enough. It’s already been said by numerous commenters here that, if Brannstrom isn’t going to be playing meaningful top-four minutes, he should be leading the way in Belleville.
I don’t think there’s any doubt that Brannstrom is one of the team’s six best options on the blue line, but the cuts today show that Smith & Co. really value veteran-ness as an attribute on this squad. There’s a risk that said misplaced desire for age in the lineup could result in limited opportunity for Brannstrom, which would be a worst-case scenario. He’s made the team; now they need to play him. The demotion of Jaros should help to facilitate that.
Up front, by sending down Logan Brown and Vitaly Abramov, the team has signalled that both Drake Batherson and Scott Sabourin are going to be around for opening day.
Specific to Batherson, it’s clear that the equity he built up during his audition to end last season paid dividends today. He was largely invisible during camp and the preseason, and probably wouldn’t have made the team had it not been for the fact that he looked fine at the NHL level in 2018-19. Being waiver-exempt, the challenge for Batherson now will be finding his game quickly. The players cut to make room for him are knocking on the door. If he can’t flip the switch early on, it wouldn’t surprise me to see a swap made at some point within the first few months of the year.
Sabourin, on the other hand, didn’t have some magical stretch last year that earned him a place this year. He turned his professional tryout into a two-way contract, and somehow beat out a number of promising prospects. At 27 years old, Sabourin likely is what he is at this point - and that’s a player who tallied eight (yes, eight!) points in the American Hockey League last year. The decision to keep him around emphasizes Smith’s aforementioned affection for a veteran presence and intangibles. Sure, the fights may have seemed fun, but the 40% expected goal share he generated at five-on-five during the preseason games tracked by Natural Stat Trick surely suggests that there was probably a better option available. Even so, it remains a great story for the hometown guy. The Senators aren't expected to compete for anything other than the first overall pick, so this is hardly a make-or-break move for Pierre Dorion and the management team.
While it can be easy to read a lot into training camp decisions (heck, I just penned 500+ words on the topic), the reality is that NHL rosters are fluid. What we see today is not what we’ll see a month from now; that’s a guarantee. All we can do now is wait for Wednesday night against the Toronto Maple Leafs.
As always, thanks for reading.
Michael Stuart was the Tampa Bay Lightning writer for HockeyBuzz from 2012 to 2015, and has been the Ottawa Senators writer since September 2019. Visit his archive to read more or follow him on Twitter.