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Remaining Off-Season Priorities |
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Guest Writer: Ken Hawkins (a.k.a. khawk)
Senators’ GM Pierre Dorion had a difficult task ahead of him when the off-season began, but he rightly focused the early part of the summer on addressing his two biggest priorities. The addition of Joonas Korpisalo should help bolster the quality of their starting goaltending, and the Alex DeBrincat trade resolved their biggest salary cap problem in addition to yielding a 1st round pick and a cost-controlled scoring winger in Dominik Kubalik. Dorion also managed to sign Brannstrom, Hamonic, and Bernard-Docker to reasonable new deals, which sets the team up for the coming season with the best d-men group they’ve had in years. The recent addition of Vladimir Tarasenko should help further bolster the scoring lines, and give them another quality veteran leader in the dressing room.
So if the summer of 2022 was about Dorion making unexpected big-name splashes, the summer of 2023 so far has been mostly about Dorion making targeted and necessary improvements. This includes allowing several of the team’s veterans to leave, including Gauthier, Watson, Brown, Gambrell, and Brassard. Not surprisingly, this constitutes the majority of their bottom-6 forwards from the past season, which is the common denominator among the roster areas that still need attention from Dorion before training camp.
Shane Pinto
No remaining roster move is more necessary than signing C Shane Pinto to a new RFA extension. Last year showed that he was capable of handling a major NHL role at centre, and if Josh Norris can stay healthy this year the Senators will be very hard to match up against down the middle. But as much as Pinto is a very valuable player, a bridge deal seems almost inevitable. Even if Pinto wanted to sign a long-term contract with the Senators coming out of his ELC, any such deal might be easier to manage after the coming season. Not only is the league salary cap expected to increase, but the Senators will also gain back >$4M of dead cap space. Expect a 1-2 year deal at this point, depending on how much cap space they can free up before training camp.
Musical Chairs
One of the worst-kept secrets in the NHL is that the Senators have put themselves in a position where a trade is most likely necessary before training camp. A quick check of CapFriendly will confirm some pretty simple math. The Senators are less than $900K from the salary cap limit and have just 10 forwards under contract. Even if they managed to sign Pinto to a $2.0M/1yr deal, they’d still need to clear at least $2.0M of cap space from the books. So it’s become a game of musical chairs, with a few likely candidates to find themselves without a chair when the music stops.
Contestant #1 - Mathieu Joseph ($2.9Mx3yrs)
Probably the most frequently identified trade candidate, there are two key factors that might keep Joseph from being the odd man out. One is that his contract has 3 years of term remaining, which could make it difficult to trade. The second is that the team has relatively few established two-way/defensive-minded wingers with 3rd line upside. His offensive production was disappointing last season, but Joseph led all Senators forwards in SH TOI, SH points, and plus-minus.
Contestant #2 - Erik Brannstrom ($2.0Mx1yr)
Another popular choice would be Erik Brannstrom, who has never lived up to the potential that Dorion hyped at the time of the Mark Stone trade. The biggest question about Brannstrom is whether the team believes that younger options like Bernard-Docker and Kleven are ready to play regular NHL minutes. His contract also offers the least cap flexibility, which might not be sufficient depending on how negotiations with Pinto unfold.
Contestant #3 - Anton Forsberg ($2.8Mx2yrs)
Less frequently discussed is Anton Forsberg, however the combination of the long-term signing of Korpisalo and the nature of the injury that Forsberg sustained last year makes it more than reasonable as an option for Dorion to consider. Factor in the development steps that Mads Sogaard took last season, plus the need to give Leevi Merilainen regular ice time in the AHL, and it could become Dorion’s best option.
Contestant #4 - Dominik Kubalik ($2.5Mx1yr)
A week or two ago this option didn’t seem very likely because there was a clear roster spot for Kubalik, and his $2.5M contract was more than affordable. But after the Tarasenko signing none of that is clear anymore. Factor in the fact that Kubalik is not an established two-way winger, and that his contract has the least long-term cap space implication, and he might prove to be the path of least resistance.
Contestant #5 - Drake Batherson ($4.9Mx4yrs)
This is clearly the option that nobody wants to see unfold. However, with so much uncertainty surrounding the findings of the WJC investigation, it’s hard to know the extent to which Batherson might be implicated. If nothing else, though, the timing of the WJC report could very likely dictate the timing of how events unfold for the rest of the Senators’ off-season, including any kind of new RFA deal for Pinto. Let’s just hope that Batherson's name isn’t among those identified.
My pick? I’m increasingly thinking it could be Kubalik, if only because he’s the one player on that list that hasn’t made a personal commitment to the team (i.e. signed a new contract), and they need to be a better 5-on-5 team this year and Joseph would help quite a bit more in that regard. I also think Joseph has a lot more to offer than we saw last year, and don’t want to see Dorion extorted for a major asset in a trade involving an undervalued player with 3yrs of term remaining.
But who’s your horse in the race? Leave your comments below, and enjoy the long weekend!
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