After the first few games for the Senators this season, I saw a lot of rhetoric about how Matt Duchene wasn't looking like somebody whom Ottawa should build their team around. He had just two assists in the first four games, and it was easy to talk about how perhaps the Senators should look to trade him as soon as possible and get as much value for him as they can. Since he is a UFA in 2019, it's a tricky situation that Pierre Dorion is dealing with.
While it is ultimately up to Duchene if he wants to stay in Ottawa or not, he's proven to the team that he is a player worth keeping around for a long time. His first 24 games last season were not great, but since then he has been one of the league's best:
Matt Duchene's last 54 games as a Senator:
— Trevor Scare-ckles (@ShackTS) October 29, 2018
20 goals, 34 assists.
Pay the man his money.
We're approaching full-season results territory, as 54 games is a pretty solid sample size. I don't think he is truly a point-per-game player considering his best season by far was 70 points in 71 games, but he doesn't need to be this good in order to justify a new contract. Even if he scores 16 points in the next 28 games, that would give him 70 points across 82 games, which puts him in elite company. Hell, even if he undergoes a horrific stretch with just six points in those 28 games, 60 points in 82 games is very good too.
Moving forward, we should not expect Duchene to be an 80 or even 70 point player, despite the fact that he has played like one for two-thirds of a season. As much as I want him to be included with the likes of the best centres in the league, I don't think he is quite there. At the same time, Ottawa doesn't need him to be in order to justify signing him to what he wants. Duchene is currently making $6M and any new contract is obviously going to be at least over $7M.
Would he be willing to sign for $7.5-7.75M for eight years? Considering he will be 28 in 2019, the term is definitely a bit scary, but I can't imagine him settling for anything less than eight years knowing that some team out there would give it to him. A contract like that definitely wouldn't be good value or anything, but that's what happens in the NHL: you have to overpay your stars if you want to keep a competitive product on the ice *coughKarlssoncough*.
During this 54 game stretch, Duchene sits 23rd in the league in points, and is 31st in points per game. The names around him include William Karlsson, Anze Kopitar, Patrice Bergeron, Evgenii Dadonov, and Tyler Seguin. For reference, the 23rd highest paid skater in the league is Shea Weber who is making ~$7.8M, and the 31st skater is Aaron Ekblad who is making $7.5M. So perhaps somewhere in the $7.5-8M range is perfectly reasonable for Duchene, even if he falls back a bit in his production.
If Duchene can actually stay this productive then perhaps we're looking at a potential contract with a cap hit over $8M, which then might be too rich for Eugene Melnyk's pockets. The asking price might already be in the $8M range anyway, but it's hard to know the exact numbers that are being talked about. Nevertheless, he should have earned Ottawa's trust by this point, because he is producing without much around him in terms of talent.
I'd be lying if I said I think he will be worth every penny of a new contract even at age 36, but that's how most elite player contracts work---you make it work now and pay your best players because you can fill out the depth on your roster with cheap players on their entry-level contracts. There hasn't been much talk about Duchene and his agent Pat Brisson gaining momentum towards a deal at all, but I'm sure we will begin to hear more as 2018 comes to a close. Even if it's a decision we don't want to hear, Dorion will have to decide if Ottawa is going to keep him or not at some point.
But considering how phenomenal he has been playing since the beginning of the calendar year, it'd look horrible on the Senators if they didn't try to do everything they can to keep him in town. They need someone to build around.