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Pierre Dorion has been on the job for just over two years now, and he’s taken the team from a bubble team to a playoff contender back down to a cellar-dweller. The results have been extremely mixed, and I wanted to evaluate what he’s done so far as the Senators GM. This will be a three part series, and firstly I will be looking at his trades.
I left out a few smaller deals involving AHL players, so there are 13 trades of significance. Here they are:
1. Alex Chiasson for Patrick Sieloff: B-
Dorion was willing to receive anything for Chiasson because he wasn’t going to keep him anyway, so getting an AHL defenseman is better than nothing. Chiasson has still been in the NHL since then, although it’s not like he’s a player that the Senators have missed, even in a depth role. This trade looks a lot worse if we include the part about Sieloff re-concussing Clarke MacArthur...
2. Mika Zibanejad and a 2nd for Derick Brassard and a 7th: C
This trade was bad the day it was made, and it doesn’t look any better. Zibanejad is six years younger than Brassard, and has been the better (albeit more hurt) player the past two seasons. There was concern about him getting a big pay day in 2017, but his cap hit is $5.35M, which is easily manageable for a 50+ point player. Brassard was at times actually underrated by the fans, and I think he did a decent enough job on the team, but it stings giving up a now-25-year-old centre for an older and
slightly worse player.
The fact that they had to include a 2018 2nd round pick (33rd overall) so that they didn’t have to pay Brassard’s July 1st bonus makes this even worse, because that’s essentially a late first round pick. Brassard helped for one playoff run, but it’s not a good look that Ottawa is now counting on Filip Gustavsson or Jacob Bernard-Docker to pan out in order for this and the subsequent trade to look okay. Ottawa needlessly gave Zibanejad away, that’s how I see it.
3. A 5th for Mike Condon: B+
The contract extension is terrible, but Condon filled a need for a backup goaltender at the time. He played in 40 games and was a league average goalie with a .914 SV%, so that’s easily worth a 5th.
4. Buddy Robinson, Zack Stortini, and a 7th for Tommy Wingels: B-
Wingels only played in 36 regular season and 9 playoff games in Ottawa, but he made the 4th line a bit better, especially before Alex Burrows, Viktor Stalberg, Clarke MacArthur, and Colin White came in. He isn’t a standout player, but he pushed other terrible players out of the lineup, and Dorion didn’t give up anything of value in this trade, so I was pretty happy with it.
5. Jonathan Dahlen for Alex Burrows: F
If Dahlen becomes a top-six forward, this is on the same level as Filip Forsberg for Martin Erat. I’m willing to say it is the worst trade in Senators history, and I don’t need the benefit of hindsight to see that. Yes, Dahlen has been playing in the Allsvenskan league, but his production is still incredibly good, and if he was a Senators prospect then we would be drooling over him and have him ranked in the top three or four.
Burrows was way past his prime and didn’t even make it through his two-year extension that Dorion immediately gave him. He did alright in the regular season by scoring 11 points in 20 games, but he was absolutely invisible in the playoffs with just five assists in 15 games. He wasn’t even the “pest” that people had been hoping for, either. Even if Dahlen doesn’t turn out to what Canucks fans hope he can become, it’s still an awful trade because his value on the trade market was definitely more than a 36-year-old fourth liner.
Living in Vancouver, I hear about this trade all the time, and people cannot stop laughing at the fact that
Jim Benning fleeced Dorion here.
6. A 3rd for Viktor Stalberg: B+
Stalberg added some much-needed depth to the lineup, and Dorion paid a normal price this time. Although he was just a rental, a 3rd round pick is a fine price to pay, and it’s the kind of return that I expected in a Burrows deal.
7. Curtis Lazar and Mike Kostka for Jyrki Jokipakka and a 2nd: A-
Considering how long the Senators have held onto Cody Ceci, I was shocked (and still am shocked) that they decided to give up on Curtis Lazar. It was definitely the right move, but I thought for sure that they would give him at least one more year to prove himself since he was a former first round pick.
He just wasn’t any good besides his rookie season when he played with Jean-Gabriel Pageau and Erik Condra, and getting Alex Formenton for him looks like a steal. Lazar has just 51 points in 245 career games, so Ottawa essentially got a 2nd round pick for free. This is easily Dorion’s best trade so far.
8. Kyle Turris, Shane Bowers, Andrew Hammond, 1st, 3rd, for Matt Duchene: C+
This one was by far the hardest to grade. I could easily be convinced to go as high as a B or as low as a C-, as there are so many complicating factors at play considering the circumstances. If the first round pick was in 2018 and in the high teens, then this trade would’ve been fine. However, there’s a real possibility that it will be a top-5 pick in 2019, and in that case, this trade could end up looking horrendous.
Plus Duchene is a UFA in 2019, so Ottawa might have to trade him for less than they gave up to get him. I was fine with losing Bowers, Duchene was an upgrade over Turris, and at the time, one of the main gripes I had with the trade was that they had to give up their first round pick as well:
I applaud Dorion for finding a creative way to move on from Turris while also slightly improving the team, and it’s not as if it’s Duchene’s fault that the team immediately fell apart. However, we should definitely blame Dorion for not realizing the true talent level of his team and that a first round pick could have high value. If the Senators shock the world and make the playoffs and Duchene also gets re-signed, then this deal won’t look so bad after all.
However, with everything that’s happened the past year, I’m expecting the worst. This trade definitely needs more time to evaluate, but it’s not looking good right now.
9. Dion Phaneuf and Nate Thompson for Marian Gaborik and Nick Shore: B+
It’s hard to evaluate this trade through a player for player standpoint, since it was all about money. If we want to look at it financially, then Dorion did a good enough job. He got rid of Thompson’s $1.65M deal for next season and 75% of Phaneuf’s $7M cap hit ($1.75M stays on the books), and he acquired Gaborik’s $4.875M contract.
Phaneuf and Gaborik both have three years left on their deals, but Ottawa is saving $375k per season by making this deal, not including Thompson’s contract for 2018-19. Furthermore, Ottawa can save even more if they decide to buyout Gaborik’s contract, although that seems unlikely because they declined to do so in the first buyout period. I liked the deal even more at first when Ottawa still had Nick Shore, because he was a clear upgrade over Thompson, although he was gone just a few games later.
Phaneuf was a deteriorating asset, and although he provided some value to the Senators at points, he just wasn’t good enough. And it’s much easier to hide a bad winger in the lineup than it is to hide a “top-four” defenseman.
10. Derick Brassard, Vincent Dunn, 3rd, for Filip Gustavsson, Ian Cole, 1st, 3rd: A-
This trade doesn’t quite make up for the initial Zibanejad-Brassard swap, but at least Dorion got some solid value in return. Gustavsson looks like he could be the real deal, but people are putting an awful lot of pressure on a 20-year-old goalie prospect. The first rounder (essentially) turned into Jacob Bernard-Docker, so Ottawa got some good pieces in this trade.
This trade will obviously have to be re-evaluated in three to five years as it depends on how the prospects pan out, but for now, it looks like Dorion did well.
11. Nick Shore for a 7th: C-
Shore isn’t a game-changing player, but he is an effective 4th line defensive centreman. Nobody has signed him yet, so his value obviously isn’t very high, but I’d rather have just kept him instead of expecting Paul Carey to fill that role.
12. Ian Cole for Nick Moutrey and a 3rd: C+
I was hoping for a 2nd round pick with this trade, but a 3rd (and an AHL body) was good enough. It wasn’t great or terrible, but C+ means it’s “fine.”
13. Mike Hoffman, Cody Donaghey, and a 5th for Mikkel Boedker, Julius Bergman, and a 6th: C-
Listen, obviously I know that Dorion was dealt a bad hand with the Hoffman situation. Still though, he downgraded a draft pick, swapped AHL defensemen, and we’re essentially left with a trade that saw a first line sniper turn into a third liner. I would’ve been fine with a trade if it was Boedker and had one or two future pieces, but there is nothing in this deal that is exciting whatsoever.
I’m floored that Dorion couldn’t at least get a second round pick or something, because Bergman isn’t much of a prospect. If the team truly did know about the Monika Caryk allegations before the trade deadline, then this looks even worse knowing that he didn’t pull the trigger before the situation became public. I know it was impossible to get full value, but there is nothing to be excited about in this trade in the future.
Overall, Dorion’s trades haven’t actually been
that bad. The problem is that he failed miserably in the Burrows trade, now looks foolish on the Zibanejad trade, took a big risk in the Duchene trade that might backfire in a massive way, and lost Hoffman for hardly any value. Almost all of the deals he did well on were on the smaller side of things, so that’s why that on the whole, the grades don’t look too bad.
However, I’m not confident in his ability to make a big trade at all. He was at least able to do quite well in the Phaneuf and Brassard (2.0) trades in February, but that doesn’t undo his previous mis-steps. It’s also important to note that Eugene Melnyk has certainly played a role in some of these moves, so perhaps we can’t
truly give a good analysis on Dorion. If I had to give him a grade for his ability to make a good deal though, I’d give him a C+ because a good GM needs to win big trades, not just smaller ones.
Part 2 of this series will examine his free agent signings.
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