What do we think about the re-signing of Kaspars Daugavins? No seriously, welcome to summer and what do we think about the re-signing of Kaspars Daugavins? |

James

So as Darren Dreger(‘s assistant, probably on this one) broke on twitter this morning, Latvian international and lovable rapscallion Kaspars Zmartholomew Daugavins has agreed to a new one year, one way deal for $635K avoiding arbitration scheduled for hearing in the lower fourth dimension later this quadmester. As we may or may not know, last year The Rooster, a third round pick in the 2006 draft, made it clear at the beginning of last season that if he did not make the big club full time that he was heading back, as the Latvians say “’cross the pond, old chap” to try out for a KHL team. Likely in his native Latvia, where he is probably the equivalent of Alexander Ovechkin in terms of popularity. I thought at the time this was a pretty reasonable plan B for the guy considering he’d put in a half decade of development time at that point and had just won the Calder Cup with the B Sens.

Impressively, early in the going, Dog Man got a shot with Ottawa and he stuck. Daug found his place as fourth line guy playing a responsible, grinding two way game (do you have any choice on the fourth line?) in limited minutes.

Greatest memory as an Ottawa Senator so far: Definitely when he scored his first NHL goal on an hilarious wobbling dump in from the point against Jonas “The Most Undeserved Nickname in the NHL” Gustavsson. He went on to put up 10 more points in a total of 65 games with Ottawa. Rarely did Daugavins see the pressbox during the regular season but hardly saw any action during the playoffs so there’s that.
So lets talk about feelings. How do we feel about the signing? We’ll use this Nintendo Wii controller as our talking stick, I’ll start:

I feel overall pretty good about this though it’s a bit wild all the one-way action going on. Seems that yes, we’ve seen Konopka, Foligno, Kuba and Carks go this offseason but hot holy Christmas are a lot of guys getting new deals. When the deals for forwards like Regin, O’Brien and Daugavins (even Butler) are examined one gets the impression that the team could look very different in a couple of years. Sure there’s a lot of one ways going down for some borderline NHLers right now but there is not a lot of term nor cap hit to be found. These signings haven’t left many roster spots open at forward for the kids but I’m starting to get the impression that the Sens brass are less than rushed to put a bunch of rookies in the line up this year. If you ask this cowboy, at forward it’s going to be Silfverberg given a shot out of camp until further notice and that’s it. I know Ziba is exciting but he just turned 19 and shit sakes, even Spezza put a year and half in down in Bingo. Silfvia Plath on the other hand will be 22 at the beginning of the season and has logged 150 games in the SEL at this point, some as team captain. I think that’s the kind of guy the Murrays will give a shot in October. Exciting as it is that we have a lot high quality prospects in the system a lot of them played junior last year and several are even headed back there this year. We’ll still see hints of guys getting called up from Bingo when Latendresse and Regin are injured. In the mean time guys who’ve earned their shot like The Rooster will fill the full time slots for the next season or two. Good signing at one year 635K. One thing that’s weird that I am keeping my expectations very reasonable about mostly due to the amount of minutes he plays and all but I would love to see a couple more goals from him. A thing I’ve heard a couple of times about Daugmo is that “he’ll never impress you with his hands” which is really weird considering his point totals have consistently been quite good and ive seen the guy score one of the craziest shootout goals I’ve ever seen (spin-o-rama on the toe of the blade goal that I’m 90% sure he did in an actual fucking game). Don’t know whats what but would love to see him pot 10 this season if only for that delightful barking celebration. Looking forward to Movember 2012.

Varada

The 6th Sens dudes have a good article about how far below the cap floor the Ottawa “We Must Make It To the Second Round to Break Even” Senators are, even with 13 forwards, six D, and two goaltenders signed.

Hard to understand: 1) is the cap floor a thing? If you don’t reach it, and a tree falls in the forest, does Gary Bettman clap with one hand? 2) Is there a cap floor with the new CBA that we don’t have yet? If we have one, does it scale back? Did they book office space to talk about the new CBA? Who took care of lunch, hrm? 3) if Murray was actually willing to trade for $7.8M Rick Nash, does that mean that he has another expensive move up his sleeve? And what could that even be? Bobby Ryan will also somehow go to Philadelphia, who’ve decided to just go ahead and sign every single player in the league for next season. Alex Semin is apparently a murderer of small dogs. Is there an expensive Marcus Methot out there we don’t know about? Should we recall Tom Preissing from the Peoria River Basins?

Finally, and totally unrelated to anything: are we seriously going into next season with That Defense? Would love to see a forward or two packaged for another blueliner, though I don’t know who, where, or for what. Helpful! Maybe Murray trades for the Tim Thomas’ ghost to reach the floor.

When I look at potential line combos, injuries notwithstanding (and odds are we get at least a couple major ones, right?) Butler really seems like the odd man out, especially if Alfie comes back. I’m glad Daugavins is back, I guess, though why give him a one-way deal to play eight minutes a night? Seems like a very replaceable player. But Murray has given the Walrus lots of NHL players to work with, even if there’s little top end talent, and I’m sure that’ll come in handy come February when everyone has the mumps.