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On Saturday, I went over the trades that Pierre Dorion has made as GM of the Senators, and it wasn’t that great overall. He had some decent trades, but most of them were on the smaller side of things. For today, I’ll be analyzing his free agent signings, and there haven’t been many of them. I didn’t include AHL or CHL signings like Danny Taylor, Jim O’Brien, or Aaron Luchuk, because those aren’t players that are making an immediate impact on the team.
Here are the grades for his free agent signings:
1. Chris Kelly: D-
At the time, I really wanted to sign Brandon Pirri instead, but I wasn’t
too upset at them bringing back a fan favourite in Chris Kelly. Although he was cheap, he proved to be incredibly ineffective during his second stint, as he ranked 3rd last out of 432 skaters in relative corsi at -8.65%. A lot of times casual fans will give fourth liners a break because they expect them to be bad, but this was not just a regular “fourth line bad,” it was a bloodbath whenever Kelly was on the ice.
Somehow he was one of three Senators in 2017-18 that played all 82 games, but mercifully he only suited up twice in the playoffs. Sure, he was “just” a fourth line centre, but Kelly was literally one of the worst skaters in the league. The only thing that pushes this to a D- and not an F is that it was just a one year contract.
2. Chris DiDomenico: C+
I felt like DiDomenico got unfairly lumped into the group of undesirables on the team, when in reality, he played quite well when he was up in Ottawa. He had 14 points in 25 games in Belleville, but also 10 in 24 in Ottawa, so it’s not as if he wasn’t producing anything. Furthermore, once he was traded to Chicago, he was incredible with 41 points in 35 games in the AHL across the regular season and playoffs.
Obviously he’s heading back to Switzerland again, so I can’t give this signing too high of a grade, but I still think that Dorion did well with this. DiDomenico is absolutely good enough for somebody’s bottom six, but it’s hard to break into the league as a 29-year-old, and he wasn’t given much of a shot with just 27 games. The Senators could have handled him a bit better, but since I think he’s a decent enough player, I’ll give Dorion a fair grade on this.
3. Nate Thompson: F
This was Chris Kelly 2.0 but worse because of the contract. I still can’t get over the fact that Thompson received a
no-trade clause after putting up 11 points the previous season and having just one 20 point season in his career. His $1.65M cap hit is absolutely ludicrous, and I’m amazed that the Los Angeles Kings were willing to take him on with one more year to go.
I think Boucher twisted Dorion’s arm on this one because Thompson had previously played for him, but a) he’s the GM and has the final say on running his team, and b) that is no reason for giving him such a needlessly bad contract.
Here are Thompson’s shot results from this past season:
Just like Kelly in 20116-17, he was one of the worst skaters, and it seems like Ottawa has an incredibly difficult time at identifying good fourth line centres.
4. Johnny Oduya: C-
I have a feeling that Erik Karlsson really wanted Oduya to come Ottawa because he wanted another veteran to replace Marc Methot, and he’s also Swedish. I’m sure that Guy Boucher also wanted Oduya since he’s a veteran, so I don’t think that it was all Dorion’s idea. However, he still deserves to take the blame for it, as “Johnny Oduya: first pairing player in 2017-18” was never going to work.
It could have worked a bit better if he was sheltered on the third pairing, but instead he was thrown into the fire by playing 17:12 per night. I could’ve given this a worse grade just because of how poorly it turned out, but at least it was only a $1M deal for one season, so it wasn’t too harmful in that sense. However, I do not like the thought process of the signing at all, because it seemed like the organization believed Oduya could genuinely make a difference on the top pairing.
5. Magnus Paajarvi: B-
Technically Paajarvi was a waiver claim, but I’ll count him in here. Everybody knows that he obviously isn’t going to be a scoring phenom, as he’s only had 20 points in his rookie season. However, if he’s used as a 4th line defense-first player, he can be useful, and I’m hoping Dorion and Boucher recognize that.
He is making just $900k, and is a player who
actually shouldn’t hurt your bottom six. Ideally I’d like to have a player that can score a bit more, but for now he’s good enough. Plus it seems like Dorion learned his lesson with giving term to depth players, as his new contract is just for one-year, so that’s a good sign.
Overall, just like with his trades, it’s difficult to accurately give Dorion a proper grade just because he isn’t working with much wiggle room to sign quality players. However, it’s still possible to sign solid depth players for cheap, and he just hasn’t done that. Hell, Jonathan Marchessault was making $900k this past season for God’s sake.
With that in mind, I’ll give him an grade of C- for these five signings because they just haven’t had any positive impact on the whole, and he fails at recognizing who is a good depth player and who is a bad one. With a league that has so much parity now, depth throughout the lineup matters more than ever, and I just can’t trust Dorion in that department.
Tune in for part three where I look at his first three drafts.
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