BREAKING : Well fortunately, the Senators have pulled off their big move before I had to leave on my afternoon travels (as mentioned earlier), and I thank them for that.
It is now official
The #Sens have acquired a first-round pick (21st overall) from the Buffalo Sabres in exchange for Robin Lehner and David Legwand.
— Ottawa Senators (@Senators) June 26, 2015There will be some questioning whether trading intra-division is smart in light of Ben Bishop, but this day in age you have to take the best deal available, and if that is Buffalo then so be it. You can't avoid dealing with 1/4 of the teams in the league because you see them a couple more times a year.
If you read earlier this morning (see below), that is pretty much what I would rather have seen than adding a player for the now. I had suggested trading to move up, but adding the 21st pick to go with the 18th pick they already have gives them options to move up even higher if there is a guy they really want.
The dumping of Legwand opens up over $5M in additional cap space, so with 2 mid-first round picks at their disposal (not to mention 2 2nd rounders as well), is the dealing done?
--------From earlier this morning...
If the Awards show closed the 2014-15 season, the NHL Entry Draft is the preface to the 2015-16 season. The night where boys are pretty much instantly expected to become men, and childhood dreams of a few are realized while so many others are crushed.
It is a night where the fates of franchises can be decided, because in this era of limited movement of quality free agents and the lack of "hockey deals", teams can't afford to make mistakes at the draft table, especially in the first couple of rounds.
For all the mock drafts out there, it is impossible to really predict what is going to happen in the top 10, let alone top 17 picks. Every year there is a team or two who thinks they know better and go a little off the board thinking they see something that nobody else does and take a player earlier than other teams have him on their board. Every year there is a guy that is expected to go early but slides down the draft and is the focus of the cameras before every pick is named because it is now the 15th pick and they were supposed to go top 5, for example.
Prevailing opinion for the Senators seems to be that they need to upgrade the skilled end of their blueline for the future, but they are not in a position to draft simply by need and they should take the best player available on their board. If they stay at 18, or even if they move up a few spots, they aren't likely going to get a guy who will play this year or even next. Which is fine, because patience is a virtue and the Senators have an already crowded roster that will take a season or two to thin out from their current handful of bad contracts.
The Senators could also be active on the trade front, with a stated desire to add a top 6 forward for right now, and a need to move a goaltender. I would be hesitant, unless a dynamite offer came from a cap-strapped team to get a young dynamic forward, to trade for the now. And they don't tend to be just handing those guys out.
From a personal perspective, I would have no problem if the Senators went into the season with essentially the same lineup they had at the end of last season. From the beginning of January onwards, they were in the top 10 in a lot of advanced stats categories. Andrew Hammond got a lot of credit for the run at the end of the season, and rightfully so, but the fact is that once Dave Cameron got his lineup set and his system in place, the Senators were much better as a team. Hammond was a catalyst but the groundwork was there before he burst on the scene.
If you add a top 6 guy in a trade, what are you expecting from him, realistically? - 25-35 goals? Well even if you think, like I do, that the Senators have only a couple of legitimate first liners (Stone and Ryan), they have 6 or 7 guys who could be considered "top 6" players right now (and I do still include Michalek as the 7th in that group based on his play down the stretch as an injury fill-in). So if you add one top 6 forward, you either subtract one in the deal or demote one. The default deletion seems to be Mike Hoffman, but if you are taking someone's salary dump are you really upgrading the top 6 if Hoffman (and his 27 goals) is out? You are probably creating more of a log-jam, or at the very least making your top 6 more expensive.
Eklund posted late last night that he is hearing Craig Anderson to Edmonton is a possibility, so let's just say, for craps and giggles that the guy coming back for a package is Jordan Eberle. He is a guy that I personally love and think would be a great addition to any team. But is he enough of an upgrade on what is here to warrant the package that it is going to cost to get him out of Edmonton while adding a $6M salary in the process?
And if you add a top 6 forward without taking one away, who does he replace? Looking at the current top 6 or MacArthur-Turris-Stone and Hoffman-Zibanejad-Ryan, it would be MacArthur who goes down to the third line if I were penciling in the lineup. Not a bad situation to be in depth-wise, but the Senators can't afford another $4M+ 3rd liner.
I think the current group, given they way they played in the second half, deserves a shot to see what they can do over the course of a full season. They do need to move a goalie, but I would be more inclined to using him to move up a few spots and/or tie in a bad contract to the trade as opposed to bringing in another top 6 forward (again, unless it is an offer too good to pass up).
But I have digressed from the draft itself, but this potential trade will very likely go down today and will go a long way to determining when and if the Senators pick tonight, and what direction they will go with that pick.
I will be traveling this afternoon, so if something breaks before the draft I probably won't get to post right away. If all goes well I will be at my destination before the draft begins, and will update at that time and will certainly give my thoughts about the player(s) the Senators acquire whether it be by trade or drafted in the first round.