So yesterday afternoon the Senators dipped their baby toe into the free agent pool, reached into their past and signed veteran centre Chris Kelly to a 1 year , $900K contract. Not a 1 day contract, to retire as a Seantor, but a 1 year contract. My initial reaction was, in a word, Why?
A 35 year old forward (36 in November) who had smarts but never the most skilled player, coming off a pretty devastating leg injury, that will fill in/take up a 4th line role and help kill penalties isn't exactly my idea of a big splash, even if he was popular when he was here and still calls Ottawa "home".
It seems like a waste on the surface, and if he can't get back to 100% from the injury that limited him to 11 games last season, it probably will be. BUT, as bad as Ottawa's penalty kill was last season, if his sole role is to stabilize a spot in which success is pretty much hockey sense and effort, and can show an example to the younger guys that scoring a league leading 17 shorthanded goals is nice, unless you are cheating in your own end to get those shorties and allow the second most power play goals against in the league and have the second-worst penalty killing percentage.
I thought about it a little bit more, and looked for a bit of light at the tend of the tunnel. If this signing signifies a bit of an organizational shift where the club wants to leave their prospects in the AHL until they are really ready for active NHL duty, in whatever role they are destined for, then a depth signing like Kelly makes sense for a season. Leave Paul, McCormick, Dzingel in Bingo to see what their real ceiling is at that level and what they might bring to the NHL level with more seasoning. Even Curtis Lazar, although it might be too late to revisit that plan that went awry, is waiver exempt for 17 games and could be sent down without risk of losing him (if my understanding of the CBA is correct, which is always a crap-shoot)
I am just not sure with the injuries (he has missed about 110 games in the past 4 seasons) how much he has left in the tank, but if he can help the penalty kill unit it won't turn out to be the worst signing ever.
However, if that means there is $900k less in the budget to add to the contracts of Mike Hoffman and/or Cody Ceci, then it really doesn't make much sense at all. Other than experience, at this point will he really add that much more to the lineup than a guy like McCormick brings?
Pierre Dorion called it a move not for "what he has done in the past, its for what he can do for us in the future".
I guess we will have to wait and see, but a big reason, and maybe the only reason, why this is at least tolerable among the fan base is the fact that he was so popular when he played here his first time around and you knew what you were going to get from him.
Bottom line, this isn't going to make or break the Senators season, and as we await an impact signing that will probably never come (at least externally), this won't have much effect in the grand scheme of things either way.