“The team will plan to spend close to the NHL’s salary cap every year from 2021 to 2025.… Those were the words of Ottawa Senators owner Eugene Melnyk in early 2019, just as his team was working through the tear down portion of the current rebuild. Even the best-laid plans aren’t immune to the impact of COVID-19, unfortunately.
In a wide-ranging interviewwith the Ottawa Sun’s Bruce Garrioch, in which he articulated his plans to bring a Stanley Cup to Ottawa, Melnyk adjusted those spending expectations slightly and suggested that his team is “going to stay somewhere in the centre… of the National Hockey League’s salary cap range moving forward. He doesn’t see the Senators sitting at the bottom of the ladder, but it doesn’t sound like the plan is to reach the cap any longer. “Our budgets are always somewhere around $70-million, which is in the centre,… Melnyk told Garrioch.
Social media was quick to react to the expectations adjustment, with many expressing disappointment in the comments. Building a winner takes money in today’s NHL, and teams with internal budgets haven’t historically been the last ones standing at the end of the season. With that being said, there’s nothing stopping a team like Ottawa from going about its business efficiently on the road to building a winning roster. If the next few years are done right, much of the concern expressed today on social media will have been overblown. Here are my two key takeaways:
1) The “easy… part of the rebuild, at least for a team like Ottawa, is over. Pierre Dorion did an excellent job of tearing down the roster and recouping assets in the process, as evidenced by the bevy of high-quality prospects laden within the Senators’ system. When the goal is tearing down and acquiring futures, being a budget team is perfectly fine. The challenge for the Senators now is going to be turning that internal budget into a competitive, winning roster while other teams around the league are spending to the salary cap.
Doing that isn’t impossible, but it will require a shift at the pro scouting level of the organization. Successes in finding young players like Brady Tkachuk and Thomas Chabot have been offset by landing on-ice anchors like Nikita Zaitsev and Erik Gudbranson. For a team that can outspend its problems, that’s not the worst thing in the world. For a team that is committing to being a middle-of-the-pack spender, though? Every dollar counts. The Senators can’t afford for contracts like Zaitsev’s and Gudbranson’s to hang around on the books, especially as the young talent comes due for new contracts.
The state of the roster right now is relatively fixed, but every Senators fan should be watching moves at the NHL level with keen interest moving forward. There needs to be a shift in what the organization perceives as valuable attributes in its targets. Skill and talent should win out over toughness and leadership.
2) Talk of the team’s future spending plans is worth about as much as the paper it’s written on. People will be following along to see action, not words. Whether the owner indicated that his team was ready to spend at the top or the bottom of the salary cap range today doesn’t really matter.
The tangible good news on the spending front is that the tides already appear to be turning in a very real way. Thomas Chabot’s contract extension was significant. The team had no hesitation in committing term and dollars to Matt Murray in goal. Evgenii Dadonov received a healthy free agent deal. Even if you don’t agree with every move the team has made, there’s no denying that a renewed willingness to commit dollars appears to be present.
In conclusion, I wouldn’t read too much into the owner’s comments in that interview with Bruce Garrioch. It’s obviously great that he’s committed to building a winner in Ottawa, but sports is a results-driven business. Those future results matter more than the words today.
As always, thanks for reading.