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How to Mishandle an Asset 101: Cody Ceci Edition

July 2, 2019, 11:21 PM ET [68 Comments]
Trevor Shackles
Ottawa Senators Blogger • RSSArchiveCONTACT
You can follow me on Twitter @ShackTS

Now that Cody Ceci has finally been traded out of Ottawa, I’m glad that we don’t have to talk about him anymore because it was draining. However, I’m going to discuss one last thing about his time in Ottawa while I can. He was in the organization for almost exactly seven years from 2012-2019 and played 440 games. For more than three years (beginning in 2016), the Senators created a masterpiece on how to mishandle an asset as bad as possible---it’s almost as if they took pride in how poorly Ceci’s tenure in Ottawa was managed.

It’s not just that he was a poor defender who never lived up to the expectations, it’s that the Senators could have moved on from him for the longest time and they would have been able to get a great return for him. That is certainly the main reason why there was a lot of vitriol towards him because fans knew that he shouldn’t be on the team while a better player should have been. That’s not fair to Ceci, and I do feel bad that he had to go through that. He needed to play better on the ice, but Ottawa’s stubbornness in believing that he would one day turn into a great top-4 defenseman helped foster some horrendous judgement.

I’m going to go over every misstep the Senators took in regards to Ceci and first start with the number of times that they should have traded him for something else:

The summer of 2016

I could even bring this back to the trade deadline in 2016, as rumours about Jonathan Drouin were rampant, with the Lightning having a clear need on the right side of their defense. Ceci was in his third season in the NHL, although he played just 49 games in his rookie season. Apparently the Lightning were also asking for Thomas Chabot in a trade for Drouin, so perhaps that deal was never going to happen. However, a trade in the summer could have and should have happened.

Right before Taylor Hall got traded for Adam Larsson, Hall was close to becoming a Senator:




Even if this supposed deal was not Hall for Ceci straight up, Hall is and was so much better than Ceci that another asset such as a 1st round pick would not have even mattered. Hall had averaged 71 points per season in Edmonton and was turning 25 years old at the time...this trade would have been a slam dunk. You could argue that the Senators didn’t get enough time to respond, but Dorion should have laughed and accepted the offer right away once this deal was even brought up.

Did Ceci still have some potential by this point? Sure, he was turning 23 in a few months and was a former 1st rounder. However, he had played 205 games and was not improving whatsoever. Furthermore, it’s not as if they would have been selling low on him---Hall would have been a phenomenal return. There were other teams that were interested in Ceci at the time as well, so this was not a Peter Chiarelli thing. The Senators could have gotten a top-six forward (at least) in return at this time.

Smart teams will realize when to cut ties with a player who is not showing what you expected, but the Senators have been subpar at professional scouting (in the NHL) over the past decade. Trading him in 2016 would have been smart, but even that wasn't the last summer that they could have looked smart if they moved on from him.

Instead, Dorion decided to give him a bridge contract for two years, and I was willing to see if he could improve in 2016-17.

2. The summer of 2017

Spoiler: he did not improve the following season. Him and Dion Phaneuf were a disaster for the entire season as they gave up way too many shots against:




After 284 games now, it was clearer than ever that Ceci was just not going to turn into what the Senators wanted him to be. If he was a 5th round pick, there is no chance that he would have lasted until 2017 but he had that pedigree of a 1st rounder. And for the second summer in a row, they could have acquired an Oilers winger---Jordan Eberle.




This is speculation again, but given how NHL GMs value young RHD with a high pedigree, it’s not surprising that Ceci was targeted in an Eberle deal. Eberle has averaged 59 points per season over the course of his career, so he is not on the same level as Hall, but that is still easily top-six production that the Senators sorely needed. Perhaps the Oilers did not want to make a deal with Eberle and Ceci, which is fine, but Ottawa could have easily made a deal involving a similar young forward. And again, even if they would have had to add in another piece such as a draft pick, it would have been worth it because Ceci’s value on defense was negligible anyway.

Now that he was already one season into his first contract after his ELC, Ottawa was quickly running out of time before the league finally realized that he had no room to grow and was not going to turn into something the Senators desperately wanted him to be. He had one season left on his contract in 2017 at just $2.8M and was a pending RFA in 2018, so teams would have been excited at getting a cheap, young player.

But again, Dorion was stubborn and believed that Ceci was going to magically turn into a star defenseman.

3. The summer of 2018

Last summer was the first time that it might seem like Ceci might actually be on his way out. After yet another lacklustre season, he was quickly losing value around the league, and it didn’t seem like he held as much name value as in the past. However, Dorion was still unwilling to include him in a trade for Matt Duchene, which made the trade much more complicated than it had to be by involving Nashville:




Obviously Ceci would not have been the only piece going away in a deal for Duchene in the fall of 2017, but perhaps they would have been able to not include their 2019 first rounder or Kyle Turris. The Senators moved on from Duchene just a few months ago anyway, but it would have been nice if they didn’t have to give up nearly as much as they did in the trade that brought him here.

So by the end of the season in 2018, it was unclear what the Senators were going to do with Ceci. He was an RFA and it looked like a long-term extension could be possible. However, they took him to arbitration and when his new contract was announced, there was hardly any hoopla:




It seemed like they were at least hesitant on keeping him around for a long time, but they still didn’t move him in a trade like they could have. Were the options as good as Drouin, Hall, Eberle, or Duchene anymore? No, but I still think a team would have been willing to give up a late 1st round pick or a decent young top-nine forward for him. He still had some value, but the Senators were dealing with other things more important such as Erik Karlsson, Mark Stone, and Mike Hoffman (if only Dorion had a larger staff to help him out with these things…).

The frustrating part about keeping him around for at least one more season was that nobody could sell hope and potential to the fanbase anymore. Ceci had played 366 games by this point, and even the most conservative NHL analysts will say that it takes 300 games for an NHLer to reach his potential and get settled in. So it’s not as if they were risking him becoming a star defender elsewhere because he was showing zero improvement from season-to-season.

But the Senators didn’t want to admit that he wasn’t the player they were looking for. They essentially had to bite their tongue though when Karlsson was traded, as Ceci was constantly talked up as one of their better players:







At that point, it was hard to see how he wasn’t going to be a career-long Senator.

4. The trade deadline of 2019

The most recent trade deadline made it feel like a Ceci trade was imminent for the most Senators reason of all-time: money.




Names have never come up in regards to what could have been coming back to the Senators at the deadline in 2019, but perhaps they were looking at futures such as prospects and/or picks. Just before the deadline, he was scratched before a game just in case they ended up moving him. It was looking like a trade might actually happen:




Apparently, a team that was about to acquire Ceci before the deadline backed out at the last minute for whatever reason, but Ottawa still could have easily gotten a deal done. The return would have been lower than at any other stage in Ceci’s career, but it would have been something.

5. The past few weeks---for a different return

The final touch on a series of miscalculations and stubborn behaviour was Dorion deciding to move Ceci yet somehow find a way to also frustrate the fanbase. Is it good to move on from a much-maligned player that was losing value? Definitely, and Ceci needed a fresh start as well. However, Nikita Zaitsev is comparably bad in his own zone and is signed to a bad contract for the next five seasons. Connor Brown is a fine player but is only a 3rd liner, and for some reason, Ottawa had to include a 3rd round pick in the deal---most likely because the Leafs paid the bonuses for Zaitsev and Brown.

It’s not as if any of Ceci, Ben Harpur, Aaron Luchuk, or the 3rd round pick are of any great value for the Senators, but Ottawa should not have had to give up a pick in a Ceci trade, nor should they have had to take on a bad contract without much of a “sweetener.”

Colin Cudmore sums up what has been a frustrating 3+ years:




Over the years it was clear as day that Ceci was not a good player and that he wasn’t going to suddenly be able to have better awareness in his own zone. Ottawa could have had so many good players in trades involving Ceci, but they decided to hold out hope that one day he would miraculously improve his eyesight and physical abilities. In a sense, his career trajectory was eerily similar to Jared Cowen’s in that he had no value by the time he left.

If only they were able to cut the cord as they did with Curtis Lazar, as Alex Formenton is making that trade look amazing. I have a hard time believing Dorion couldn’t have traded Ceci in the past few weeks for someone who wasn’t locked up on a bad deal for the next five seasons too. Even with Ceci off the roster, there is still a bad taste in a lot of people’s mouths.

Not only have there been too many times where they should have traded him when they didn’t, they have also heavily misused him during his tenure. Here are three things that did not help Ceci in Ottawa at all:

A. Putting him in a “shutdown” role while playing against team’s top lines

I have no idea why Ceci was ever cast as a “shutdown” player. He was known for his offensive prowess in Junior as he scored 60 points in 64 games in his draft year and was expected to be a point producer in the NHL. That never materialized though, with his high in points coming in at 26, but his defensive game was never good either.

If you watched a single game from him, you would realize that he had trouble covering his checks in front of the net and routinely failed at leaving his own zone. In 2016-17, his ice-time also went up all the way to an average of 23:12 per game, which was only behind Karlsson on the team. There was so much pressure put on him and his role never once suited him.

B. Expecting him to be a replacement for Karlsson

There was also a ton of expectations from within the organization for Ceci to be a replacement for Karlsson. I don’t think they expected him to be as good, but they thought he could be a veteran leader and someone to build their defense corps around. That was not fair, even though fans could see right through the team.

Just because he was the next highest paid defenseman didn’t mean that he was the de-facto best player, and there is nowhere in the “how to be a GM” manual that says they had to keep him just because he had been on the team since 2013.

C. Showcasing him as a star player who is also local

This one just backfired with the hardcore fans. It looked like Ceci did a lot of great work in the community and that is certainly appreciated by everyone, so in that sense, it was nice that he was a local kid. However, him being “local” became a running gag amongst fans because the team would mention where he grew up as if that was a positive attribute for why he was a good hockey player. It seemed as if they were desperate to create a local star player who they could market around, but Ceci was just never going to be that guy.

Mark Borowiecki can be loved by the community and portions of the fanbase because he seems like a genuinely great person but expectations for him are also extremely low. Therefore, people aren’t going to get as mad at him for playing poorly because the team isn’t saying that he is a star calibre player.

The entire Senators career for Ceci is absolutely fascinating and a strong lesson on how not to handle an asset like him. It’s not his fault that they loved him way too much, as their stubborn nature caused them to lose out on countless better players over the years. It took awhile for almost the entire fanbase to finally realize that he was never going to reach his ceiling, but unfortunately the Senators waited that long as well. I’m just glad that this will be the last I have to talk about him though, and I wish him good luck in Toronto.
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