The Cody Ceci era in Ottawa is astonishing. He has proven that he is incapable of being a top-four defender, yet two days before his arbitration hearing on Wednesday, his camp is asking for $6M next season:
Arbitration for Ceci (OTT). Team offer is $3.35M. Player ask is $6M.
— Elliotte Friedman (@FriedgeHNIC) July 30, 2018
While that number is absolutely asinine, I don’t really blame him for asking that much. It’s the Senators who have constantly talked him up to the point that it seems like he is going to be the player that “replaces… Erik Karlsson, which would literally be one of the biggest drop-offs you could imagine.
When Ceci hears quotes like this from Pierre Dorion, it’d be hard not to think highly of himself:
“I'm a big Cody Ceci fan,… Dorion said. “Cody is one player – and I know a lot of the pundits out there might disagree with it – I'd like to have as a Senator for a long, long time.…
He has played in four and a half seasons, and hasn’t shown any improvement as a player over that time. It would have been wise to move on from him two years ago after he hadn’t shown much at all in his first two and a half seasons, but I was willing to at least give him a bit of a chance on his previous two-year deal. The fact that nothing has changed in his game besides his inflated ice time and Ottawa still wants to keep him around is absolutely baffling.
His HockeyViz charts are also sight to behold:
Cody Ceci may actually go through arbitration; personally I rather hope so. pic.twitter.com/XPQl7C9Kij
— Micah Blake McCurdy (@IneffectiveMath) July 30, 2018
With the way that arbitration works, obviously $6M is much higher than Ceci will get and his camp knows that. However, the Senators had to offer at least $3.35M, and you know that the arbitrator will be trying to find more of a middle ground rather than one or the other. I’d be floored if the number ended up being closer to $6M, but I could easily see a settlement at around $4.2-$4.5M. That is still an incredibly high number for someone who has not performed well and does not even pass the eye test.
The strange thing about this whole situation is that I’m confused as to why this will be going to arbitration anyway. If the Senators are so high on him, then they should be signing him for long-term (although that would be very unwise). He was already given a bridge contract last time, so it’s not like you can argue that he “needs more time to develop… because he’s played 366 games for god’s sake.
And if they want to trade him after the arbitration, I’m not sure why he wouldn’t have been traded earlier in the summer or at the trade deadline. So if it goes all the way to arbitration, it will be an extremely odd outcome, and he’ll be handsomely overpaid. He’ll be handsomely overpaid even if a long-term deal is signed, but arbitration doesn’t make a lot of sense here. It’s hard to know exactly what the team thinks of Ceci right now because they always talk him up, but perhaps he’s asking for too much on a long-term deal.
Like I said, I can’t blame Ceci for asking this much, because the Senators have praised him for years as if he’s just a step below Karlsson. Unless he gets traded immediately after, this is going to end with a lot of upset fans that there is a new overpaid player on the team.