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Thursday Think Tank: The Columbus Dilemma

March 7, 2019, 1:47 AM ET [29 Comments]
Trevor Shackles
Ottawa Senators Blogger • RSSArchiveCONTACT
You can follow me on Twitter @ShackTS

The Columbus dilemma

As of now, the Blue Jackets sit two points out of a playoff spot with a game in hand on the Montreal Canadiens. With 16 games to play, they could realistically finish anywhere between 3rd in the division or 9th in the conference, even though they clearly have enough talent to go far in the playoffs. Ottawa has a vested interest in how well they do, but I think it’s actually more complicated than one would think.

The Senators own the Blue Jackets 2019 pick unless Columbus misses the playoffs and wins a top-3 lottery pick. If they miss and end up giving away the 15th overall pick, that has solid value, as it’s quite the difference between that and a Stanley Cup-winning team at 31st. It seems obvious that fans should be cheering for Columbus to crash and burn so that Ottawa gets the highest pick possible. However, the Senators also receive a 2020 first round pick if Matt Duchene re-signs, which would make the trade even better.

The thing is, will Duchene even want to re-sign if Columbus misses the playoffs and isn’t surrounded by a winning atmosphere? I’m inclined to think no. I really don’t think money is going to be a problem because Columbus can probably give him enough, but the past few years, Duchene has always said that he wants to play on a winning team. If the Blue Jackets don’t make it, and Artemi Panarin and Sergei Bobrovsky say they are going to walk in free agency, I can’t see Duchene staying there. So perhaps the best case scenario is for Columbus to make it as one of the lower seeds, win two rounds, then re-sign Duchene due to that success, but have other free agents leave so that their 2020 pick is still a valuable one for the Senators.

The good news is that unless Columbus makes it to the conference finals, Ottawa should be getting a pick somewhere between 15th-20th.

Lack of a rooting interest

Speaking of cheering for/against a certain team, this season is so strange because there isn’t much of a rooting interest for Senators fans. The playoffs were always out of the question, but without a first round pick, they can’t even root for losses to enhance the tank. And without that pick, it’s not even like fans can root for other cellar dwellers so that Ottawa stays at the bottom. 2014 was sort of like this, although they finished five points out of a playoff spot, so it’s not as if they were horrendous like this season.

As previously mentioned, Columbus is one team to cheer against, but then again, maybe not if fans want Ottawa to get that extra first round pick for Duchene. If San Jose re-signs Erik Karlsson and they get to the Cup Finals this season, the Senators get an extra 1st round pick, so that’s certainly another team to cheer for, although that’s in the playoffs. It’s just an odd apathetic feeling not caring about scores every night, and I miss having more of an interest. That will certainly change next season though, as Ottawa tries to go “dernière for Lafrenière”

Bettman speaks

Gary Bettman was asked about the situation in Ottawa with LeBreton Flats, and here is what he had to say:






Anything that Bettman says obviously has to be taken with a grain of salt. After all, he shot down rumours that the Atlanta Thrashers were going to be moved just weeks before relocation to Winnipeg was official. At the same time, I have a hard time believing that Bettman and the NHL wouldn’t be intervening to keep a team in Ottawa because they know that it is a good hockey market that is being destroyed by Eugene Melnyk.

Bettman says that they are always ready to intervene when appropriate, but I just hope that he knows when to help in order to keep the team in Ottawa:




This isn’t a fanbase issue like it was in Atlanta, this is purely an ownership one.

Redundant centres

Over the next season or two, Ottawa will have to decide which centres they want to keep, because a lot of them profile as 2nd/3rd line centre types. Realistically, Logan Brown is the only one in the organization who has 1C upside, and even for him I’m not sure if he will reach that lofty ceiling. Josh Norris is an exciting prospect too, although he profiles more as a 2C more than anything. Colin White has become a 2C or a very strong 3C, Jean-Gabriel Pageau is a 3C, and Chris Tierney is at best a lower end 2C, but probably more of a 3C moving forward. Then there’s also Oscar Lindberg and Zack Smith, who are simply 4th line options.

Out of the five centres who are important for the team in the future, four of them are 2nd or 3rd line centres, and at least one of them could be redundant, depending on the development of Brown, Norris, and White, of course. There’s a very real chance that they won’t have a need for all of these players since it’s unnecessary to have so many similarly skilled centres. If they were all 1C’s, that’s different, but many of them are limited.

Personally, an ideal situation would be to have Brown-White-Norris-Pageau down the middle, and in that case, Tierney could be moved for a winger, or there is always the option of moving one of them to the wing if they can do that. This isn’t a pressing issue considering Brown and Norris aren’t even in the NHL yet, but it will be a talking point as soon as October.

Poetry

The great band Mumford and Sens played at the CTC on Tuesday night, and their efforts at pumping up the crowd was pure poetry:







It’s amazing how much hatred there is within the fanbase right now, and how can you blame anyone?
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