If the league keeps with recent tradition, then shortly after playoff seeding is determined for the 2020 NHL season, it will hold the draft lottery determining where non-playoff teams will pick in the 2020 draft. Every one of the 15 teams to miss the playoffs will have a chance at the first overall pick. The odds for the remaining teams will then be adjusted proportionally for the second drawing, for the second overall pick, and then again for the third drawing, for the third overall pick. The remaining teams will then receive the remaining picks in the inverse order of the standings.

This statistical exercise in the likelihood of ping-pong balls with certain numbers to fall out of the machine first, which amounts to an exercise in controlled randomness, may be the most consequential event in the 28-year history of the modern incarnation of the Ottawa Senators. Not a playoff series, or even a particular play in a significant game, but an utterly random event that doesn’t even resemble hockey.

That’s because of four things we know, or at least suspect, to be true:

1) For a team to be a true contender, it needs at least one true ‘needle-moving’ player, a blue-chip, franchise guy who can drive play by himself if need be

2) Needle-movers have traditionally been found in the top few picks of a draft, and even then, not every year.

3) The 2020 draft is a deep one, with multiple sources reporting a higher likelihood than usual of real needle-movers being available in those top few picks.

4) As of this writing, Ottawa has two picks in the top ten. Their own is likely to be bottom five. San Jose’s, which they received in the Erik Karlsson trade, could realistically be anywhere among those 15 non-playoff teams, as the Sharks’ playoff chances currently sit at about 2.5 percent.

In the Spring of 2020, Ottawa could learn that it will select not one, but two franchise players. This has the potential not just to improve Ottawa’s chances of a Stanley Cup, but to drastically alter the competitive landscape of the Atlantic Division and Eastern Conference for the next decade. What happens because of those ping-pong balls could alter other franchises’ decisions about whether or not to rebuild.

…or, Ottawa could end up with two middle-round 1st, a place in the draft known to produce decent NHL players perhaps, but not of the franchise-player caliber. In this latter scenario, the Senators draft two Jared Cowens, remain a playoff bubble team for the next ten years, and hope to build by coalition a team that can sneak into the playoffs where anything can happen. (Some Sens fans are having paroxysms of agony at the sight of the words “anything can happen.”)

Maybe it’s better this way. Where we might still litigate Lalime’s 2004 playoff performance against the Leafs and just how soft those two Joe Nieuwendyk goals were, the fall of ping-pong balls is out of the control of any of the players, coaches, or managers of the Ottawa Senators. No matter what happens next, it will be neither fault nor glory of anyone in the Ottawa Senators’ organization, or of the referees, the fans, or even of the league. It is, in the space of a few minutes, an elegant testament to the chaos and indifference of a universe that doesn’t just not care about hockey – it doesn’t care if you live or die! 🤗

This got me thinking: is there anything in the Senators’ history more consequential than this upcoming draft lottery? Anything that could be said to have more meaningfully affected the likelihood of the Ottawa Senators winning a Stanley Cup?

I came up with a few contenders.

Breaking Ground in Kanata

The Senators’ arena seems oddly isolated, its location chosen seemingly arbitrarily in the suburban west end of the city, as if designed to limit accessibility and growth. It’s true that it’s only a 25-minute drive from downtown…on a good day. Add rush hour traffic, some snow, or if you’re coming through downtown from the east end, and it’s not unusual to spend closer to an hour. Anyone who’s spent that hour on a bus trying desperately to hold a game’s worth of beer in their bladder knows what I’m talking about.

This might sound like whining to someone like me, who navigates the United States’ busted infrastructure on ultra-long commutes to overcrowded cities, but in Ottawa, where people consistently have no idea how good they have it, that kind of drive to see something you could watch in your neighborhood bar seems insane. As a result, a hockey mad city that didn’t have  much competition until CFL football was revived once again in 2010 has at times faced attendance issues and trouble growing the game beyond the most hardcore of fans.

As Bruce Firestone recalled in an illuminating 2017 article, the original Senators ownership group wasn’t exactly overwhelmed with quality choices. Ottawa is laced with federal lands and a National Capital Commission loath to negotiate it away to corporate interests. (Which, don’t get it twisted, kicks ass.) While it’s true that a downtown arena could have been a game-changer in terms of making the Senators a have, rather than a have-not franchise, it doesn’t seem as if there was an actual, consequential choice at the time…unless the Senators wanted to keep playing at the 9,500 capacity Lansdown arena, home of the OHL Ottawa 67s. (Which, again, would kick ass.)

All the same, the location of the Senators’ arena has been hugely consequential in terms of their ability to raise revenue and compete, and remains a defining aspect of the franchise.

Drafting Alexandre Daigle

If you don’t think drafting Daigle was considered consequential, consider that the deal Ottawa offered to Daigle was so generous that it resulted in the introduction of a whole new class of contracts into the Collective Bargaining Agreement between the league and the player’s association. That’s how big the hype was for the phenom: it permanently altered the legal apparatus upon which all league business is predicated.

Had Daigle turned out to be a Sidney Crosby or Connor McDavid, and been added to a lineup that already had Alexei Yashin and Daniel Alfredsson, then the early years of the Senators franchise might have been quite different. Imagine if Daigle, like Crosby, turned into a lifelong franchise player, multiple trophy winner and Olympic medalist. Imagine Crosby in his prime playing with Alfredsson, also in his prime. Had Daigle brought a Cup to Ottawa, the team could have attracted free agents for generations. Everything would have changed.

Daigle, of course, would become a perfectly mediocre player even after given multiple chances and oodles of ice time, would bounce around the NHL and then finally play in Switzerland, only to be heard from along with Patrick Stefan every year when someone writes up a Biggest Busts article.

Trading Alexei Yashin to the Islanders

God bless Mad Mike, but I almost think that he gets a bad rap here. Sure, in retrospect, trading a hall-of-fame defenceman and the 2nd overall pick, which would turn into Jason Spezza, for Alexei Yashin doesn’t look great. (It wasn’t helped by the 10-year deal the Islanders handed Yashin, then subsequently bought him out of.) But in a pre-salary cap league, without the same understanding of the value of RFAs, Mike Milbury brought in a 27-year old with recent 88- and 94-point seasons, who had scored at close to a point-per-game clip for his entire career, in exchange for a defenceman who, at that point, was being used as an enforcer, and a pick that could turn out to be anything.

Imagine if, in the 2001 draft, the Senators had selected Alex Svitov, also a center, who went third overall to Tampa and scored all of 37 points in 178 NHL games. Or even Stephen Weiss, who went fourth overall and had a perfectly decent career but scored only 423 points in 732 games and retired after the 2014-2015 season.

Chara and Spezza would go on to help make the Senators a regular-season behemoth, and, after losing Chara to free agency, Spezza would center the famed Pizza Line alongside Heatley and Alfredsson and bring the Senators to the 2007 Finals, losing only three games along the way. Spezza would become captain of the team for a short time, and is even now still in the NHL, albeit playing for some fly-by-night contractors called the Leafs. Chara, of course, would become the Wolverine, complete with healing factor, captain the Bruins, win the Norris, and bring a Cup to Boston.

Daniel Alfredsson’s Best Contract in the League

Imagine that you draft a natural leader with an excellent two-way game and a goalscoring touch in the sixth round. Now imagine that he loves playing for your small-market, low-budget team, even if at one point it’s come close to bankruptcy and they reportedly had trouble cutting pay checks. Now imagine that he signs a team-friendly, five-year deal.

Now imagine that, as part of the Collective Bargaining Agreement, the players union agrees to roll back all existing contracts by 24 percent.

While the Senators would go on to buy out Aldredsson in 2009-2010 purely so that they could re-sign him to a fair deal and make him whole, they basically got one of the best all-around players in the entire league for less than $5M per season for years on end. This allowed them, among other things, to pay Heatley and Spezza after the Finals run, and keep intact a deep team throughout numerous regular season runs. Had Alfredsson held out in the early aughts for the kind of $7M+ contract he could get elsewhere, Ottawa might have found themselves without their captain, and never had had a shot at the Cup at all.

Dominic Hasek Goes to the Olympics

Sometimes we forget just how good that 2005-2006 Ottawa Senators team was. The Pizza Line. Spezza-Fisher-Smolinski-Vermette down the middle. Redden, Chara, Phillips, Volchenkov, all in their prime. Heatley, who had one of his 50-goal seasons, and Havlat on the wings as scoring threats. Quality depth all over the lineup, including Chris Neil, Patrick Eaves, and Chris Kelly. Then add Dominic Hasek, whose GAA and save percentage at the Olympic break would be the second-best in the league.

Hasek’s equipment was left behind in Ottawa, causing Hasek to miss vital practices in Turin, and he would injure himself in under 10 minutes in the opening game. He never returned to play for the Senators, who were eliminated in the second round after starting the promising but inexperienced Ray Emery, who managed only a .900 save percentage in those playoffs. Worse, the “will he-won’t he” quality of Hasek’s return kept the Senators from getting an experienced netminder at the deadline.

It’s possible that the Senators should have played better in front of Emery, or that a team that deep should have been able to defeat the Sabres, or at least take them further than five games. (Buffalo would lose in seven to eventual champion Carolina in the Conference Finals.) It’s possible that they should have brought Hasek back the next season, considering his strong play in Ottawa and willingness to play for a base salary so long as it was for a contender. But the fact that players were permitted to engage in long-shot Olympic bids, risking injury, and that the Senators would never be quite so deep again is why the Olympics remain so contentious in negotiations between the league and the players’ union today.

Hossa for Heatley

Imagine that you draft and develop a star player, and that player leads you to seven games in the Conference Final in the last year of his contract. It’s the first time your team has gone so far, having spent the better part of a decade as the punchline of the league after navigating uncharitable expansion rules and incompetent management. Your team then signs said star to a three-year deal without a no-trade clause…and on the same day he’s traded.

It’s wild to imagine now. This would be roughly the equivalent of the Senators trading Karlsson the same day as they signed him. But while Hossa would go on to have a 100+ point season with the Atlanta Thrashers, the Senators brought back Dany Heatley and had their greatest run of sustained success in franchise history. While Heatley had back-to-back 50 goal seasons in Ottawa, he would infamously demand a trade for which Ottawa could not receive fair value and quickly go into decline. Hossa’s career outlasted Heatley’s, and, despite missing out on back-to-back Cups with Pittsburgh and Detroit, he would win multiple Cups in Chicago.

It’s not clear why Ottawa traded Hossa, let alone why they traded him in a way that would erode trust in management so publicly. It might have been that they were not confident they could extend him beyond the three years he’d just signed after what had already been a long negotiation. But given Hossa’s longevity and the sour manner in which the Heatley relationship ended, it’s possible that Hossa takes Ottawa even further or extends their success.

Choosing Redden Over Chara

This has been litigated to death, especially with Chara still in the league at 42 and Redden having retired almost a decade ago. I maintain that with Phillips and Volchenkov in the fold, Ottawa leaned more heavily on Redden’s passing than they did on Chara’s shutdown skill and were reasonable to choose as they did. It was only after Chara left for Boston that he blossomed into the complete, all-around player with multiple 50+ point campaigns. In any case, Ottawa elected not to even offer Chara a contract, and signed Redden instead, but only to a two-year deal.

Ottawa would make the Finals without Chara, but would be dummied once they got there by the physical Anaheim Ducks, and it’s the perpetual game of Mirror, Mirror to debate what would have happened if they’d had a fully armed and operational Zdeno Chara over Redden’s 10 points in 20 games.

Perhaps more consequential than choosing two years of Redden over Chara was that first Chara, and then Redden, would walk from the franchise without Ottawa recouping so much as a draft pick. Ottawa once had two franchise-quality defencemen and got so much in their own heads about choosing one over the other that they lost both for nothing. Ottawa hasn’t made a Cup Final since, and wouldn’t even come close until…

Drafting Erik Karlsson

Here it is, the closest you might come to the randomness of ping-pong balls: drafting a 150-pound puck moving defenceman at 15th and seeing him turn into the best skater and defenceman in the league since Niklas Lidstrom. Winner of two Norris Trophies, robbed of two more. Single-handedly dragged a thoroughly mediocre team to the Conference Finals on a surgically reconstructed ankle. Fifth in league scoring…as a defenceman.

Ottawa has never had a player like him and perhaps never will again. Ironically, even with the potential for two picks in the top five in a very deep draft, Ottawa is unlikely to draft a player as good as Erik Karlsson was when he was in Ottawa. It’s too bad that his time in Ottawa coincided with an ownership who could not surround him with talent, and with a relatively barren prospect pool.

There were a number of pretty good NHL defencemen in the 2008 draft, even after 15th: Jake Gardiner at 17th, Michael Del Zotto at 20th, and this year’s likely Norris winner John Carlson at 27th. This makes it even more interesting and unlikely that Ottawa would not just take a chance on Karlsson, but trade up for him. He’s only surpassed by Alfredsson in terms of influence on the direction of the franchise.

In this episode:

– Anthony Duclair: He keeps kicking ass, so we gotta keep talking about him.
– Colin White: Kause 5 Koncern?
– Belleville Senators: They’re good now!
– The World Juniors: We just hope both teams have fun.

Look, I’m not going to rehash all of the ways in which last season truly stank. You know them, I know them…and yet here we are. As I mentioned on the most recent edition of our podcast, Senators fans have proven that truly nothing can keep us away from watching our favorite hockey team. Even a practical guarantee of last place combined with the Assistant GM sexually assaulting a young boy isn’t enough for us to ask, “Books…where are they now?” Just like a broken marriage, Senators fans and Eugene Melnyk are staying together for the kids.

So! What can we expect from our 2019-2020 Ottawa Senators? Let’s just take a look at some of the predictOOOOOH DEAR LORD GOD NO. AW MY GOD.

Courtesy of Charting Hockey

Well, holy shit, the Senators are going to be bad according to pretty much everyone.

There’s a long string of mediocrity running from about the Oilers to the Blues where the aggregated predictions see about a ten point difference – thanks, parity! – then you have a precipitous drop to the Wings and Kings, and then, below that…you have the Sens. USA Today’s model might have left out an entire stat category by accident, given their prediction for the Senators’ season. (Is that what a team that just doesn’t score a powerplay goal all season long looks like?)

Obviously this is hockey, and these simulations, taken together, represent a huge spread. I guess it’s possible that, say, Moneypuck’s predictions for the Sens come true while, say, Sean Tierny’s predictions of the Kings come true and somehow the Senators find themselves an incredibly inspiring fifth last in the league. Either way, I’m pretty sure that under no circumstances will the Senators be in the playoffs in 2020.

Which is fine! Because they are, at best, in year two of a five year rebuild. Having already laid a foundation of could-be-anything prospects coupled with some really great, toolsy players like Tkachuk, Brannstrom, and Batherson, this is the year for the Senators to add that foundational player in the draft. They have the picks, they have the expiring UFAs, and they have the suck. All they have to do is reach out and take back their destiny by well and truly phoning this season in.

Rookie coach D.J. Smith has his hands full keeping the love of hockey and general will to live going among these youngsters, who will spend the next seven months being ritualistically humiliated and literally beaten half to death by an entire league of older, bigger, more skilled grown men. Here’s hoping he doesn’t pile on by making them bag skate after yet another tough loss in the dog days of February when they’re on a seven game road trip through a section of America on the verge of civil war.

What is there to watch for, then? Here are five things that will keep me interested during what will otherwise be a grueling exercise in self-punishment:

Beat the Leafs

That’s not just going for the applause line. The Leaf’s avail themselves of every loophole the league has yet to close via CBA negotiations, from enormous salary bonuses, to massive analytics departments, to buried salaries and IR lists, to endless, fawning coverage, and now, this year, their window of contention is thoroughly open and all that whining and spending comes down to this.

What better way to salve the wounds of having the worst team in the league than to remind our division rivals every time they play us that they have to scratch and claw for every point against a broke team in the early throes of a rebuild? What better way to remind Leafs fans that they will definitely, definitely lose against the Bruins again than to show them that they can’t even beat the Sens? If we have our way it’ll be yet another year of Leafs fans yearning for their father’s love while he plays with his trains in the basement.

Hail the Duke

The Sens aren’t going to get a lot of respect this season, and in that way they share something with Anthony Duclair, on his fifth franchise at age 23 and only now being re-signed by a team because they like what he brings to the table. The Duke showed some of that good old fashioned spite in the back half of last season, and has already impressed in the pre-season with a gorgeous goal while on the penalty kill (!). Seeing him reach 20 goals again (he did so in his sophomore season in Arizona) would be a treat, as would seeing him prove wrong anyone who’s ever said “I don’t think he knows how to play.” He’s got the talent. Hopefully now he has the chip on his shoulder, too. The Senators just might have found themselves a diamond in the rough or, if not that, someone who embodies the spirit of this rough-and-tumble rebuild.

Reuniting Brown and Batherson

Logan Brown and Drake Batherson kicked the living shit out of the AHL last season. Batherson had 62 points in 59 games, and Brown had 42 points in 56 while generally acting like a bowling ball on skates. Batherson is sticking around through training camp, but Brown was sent back to Belleville to start the season. I don’t fault that decision – Brown didn’t exactly dominate – but bringing him back up when the team hits its first slump or when they inevitably encounter injury, and then pairing him with Batherson, might boost their production while giving us a preview of a pairing for years to come. Brown, at his best, looks like a terrifying power forward. Batherson looks like a Midwesterner on a church group singing tour, but he can score. It’s a match made in heaven.

Does Signing Scott Sabourin Stunt the Development of Another More Worthy Prospect Whose NHL Ice Time Might Contribute To

Just kidding. Nobody cares.

Is Erik Brannstrom the Tea?

I don’t know if you’ve heard about this, but last year, Ottawa Senators GM Pierre Dorion traded Mark Stone, a player Ottawa drafted in the sixth round and developed into a top 10 player in the entire league, for Erik Brannstrom, a rookie without an NHL game under his belt, pretty much straight up, and then said it was one of his proudest moments. No disrespect to Oscar Lindberg, who the Sens already let walk for nothing, or the second round pick, but in that moment Dorion staked his reputation as a GM on the development of this adorable little Swede. The only thing standing between that trade being listed every single year on clickbait “worst trades of all time!” lists right alongside us getting Chara and Spezza for Yashin is for Brannstrom to work out. NO PRESSURE, MY MAN, JUST GO OUT THERE AND HAVE FUN.

He’s like 180 pounds and starts the season paired with consummate veteran but otherwise human pylon Ron Hainsey in a redux of “trading for Phaneuf will be good for Ceci’s development.” My prediction? Look, the kid is going to finish like a -47 no matter what, so may as well have some fun with it. Put him on the first unit power play. Make stretch passes that have like a two percent chance of working out. Break in those skates! Don’t lose your humanity.

I understand it’s ill-advised to put too much stock in these things, and that this entire post has basically been an exercise in preempting getting hurt by expecting the worst, but wouldn’t it be fucking great if Brannstrom ended up as good as Chabot? Dare to dream, children.

IN CONCLUSION

Brady Tkachuk is a very likeable young man. Thomas Chabot has the potential to be one of the best players the Sens have ever had. Honestly, I don’t know how I feel about that deal the Sharks gave Karlsson. Mark Stone is the perfect hockey player. Alex Formenton is fast? Maybe we’ll get a new jersey next season. Anyway, here’s “Wonderwall.”

It’s been another season of tumult, mystery and murdered libido inside the Ottawa Senators organization. The team is now officially entering Year Two of the rebuild, a period during which it’s difficult for even world-class organizations to maintain the interest of even the most ardent hockey fan. Thankfully, the Senators are not a world-class organization, so I’m sure they will be successful in ushering in five years of unprecedented success as promised by the team owner who has no money.

Embattled general manager Pierre Dorion has carried out the equivalent of violating the Prime Directive by gutting his team to save money first and collect assets later. Acknowledging that the Senators have done little to weaponize their cap space, have hired and quickly lost all senior management staff, and have all but destroyed the faith of fans in their ability to build and keep a contender, I’ve devised a ranking system that reflects that nothing the team can do will make them good and/or fun.

• Sens hire D.J Smith as new head coach and Jack Capuano as assistant coach

Former Toronto Maple Leafs Assistant Coach D.J. Smith has the unenviable task of taking a team that finished in last place by a full seven points when it had Mark Stone, Matt Duchene and Ryan Dzingel and showing some improvement without those players. According to some projections, it would not be out of this world to see the Senators finishing in last this year by a full 20 points or more, which would make them the worst team since the 2016-2017 Colorado Avalanche finished 21 points shy of Vancouver. He is almost certain to fail at this particular task, which means that his real task is to keep things fun and loose in the process of losing and losing badly so as to preserve the naive spirit and will to live of our young players.

Can he do this? I’m not sure any coach has been able to balance the contradictory expectations of being simultaneously fun and disciplinarian, defensively responsible and emphasizing uptempo puck possession. The bigger indicator of a coach’s success, it seems to me, is where the coach is in their tenure versus team expectations. It’s Smith’s first year and everyone knows the Senators are going to be terrible, so it’s safe to say that he could play Anderson on the point during a power play and keep his job. If anything, Smith would fuck it up by having the team punch above its weight, endangering the team’s ability to add a franchise forward in next year’s draft to complement the vast depth of prospects but a surfeit of blue-chippers.

I truly don’t care who the head coach of the Senators will be this season, and the addition of NHL veteran coach Capuano seems to acknowledge the same thing. Smith doesn’t matter; he’s a nice guy who’ll keep everyone happy during monumentally shitty times. If Smith screws up the only thing resembling an expectation – make sure the players don’t demand a trade – they have another coach in almost the exact same model – player-favorite (baby shoes), never won (never worn) – who can step in and clutch Brannstrom to his chest and smooth his hair. Expecting anything more from either of them would be like getting mad at the Canadian Tire Center for being far.

Ranking: St. Sebastian, tied to a tree and shot with arrows then clubbed to death, which is roughly equivalent to finishing last and then losing the draft lottery.

• Sens receive Nikita Zaitsev, Connor Brown and Michael Carcone for Cody Ceci, Ben Harpur, Aaron Luchuk, 2020 3rd round pick

This was the big boy of the offseason and about a month after it happened, I still don’t know what to think about it. The Senators traded Cody Ceci, demonstrably one of the worst defensemen in the entire league, and somehow managed to get back a player who is almost as bad…but with term. Taken at that, one could conclude that walking away from Ceci after arbitration and replacing him with literally anyone from Belleville would be preferable. 

The only saving grace is that after the Leafs paid Zaitsev’s signing bonus the Sens will only have to give him about $1.5 M in real cash to play in a top-four role. You might not be able to get away with that even if you’re calling up your AHLers and it’s a smart move for anyone, broke or flush. The Sens also received Connor Brown, a promising forward, if by ‘promising’ you mean can play a top-six role on a bad team and is relatively young. Somehow, of course, despite the fact that this trade is almost a wash and the added punch in the balls that we’re helping our biggest rival by wiping Zaitsev’s term from their books, the Senators also threw in a third-round pick. That’s right: the rebuilding term threw a pick to a team whose window to contend is open in the course of helping them get the cap space they’d need to sign Mitch Marner, a franchise player. Because of course they did.

There are so many ways in which this trade is infuriating, but all of them land squarely in the world of opportunity cost. Why wasn’t Ceci traded sooner, when he could have garnered a real return? Why does it have to be the Leafs? Is Brown, at 25 and probably going UFA before the rebuild is done, the sort of sweetener you want in your cap-crunch-alleviating deal and if you’re in year two of a rebuild? If the Sens had been the ones receiving a third-round pick back, but only a third-round pick, for the rights to Ceci, would it have been as bad as this? We have the five remaining years on Zaitsev’s contract to think about it.

Ceci, of course, will play about five games for the Leafs just to see if something weird happens and he becomes Suddenly Good, but let’s not act like he won’t be shipped elsewhere for a pick at some point during the season. This trade will look even worse when the Leafs get what the Sens should have gotten.

Ranking: St. Lawrence, grilled alive on a red-hot gridiron, sort of like the slow death of Senators fans watching Zaitsev for the duration of a rebuild JUST as we were on the cusp of getting rid of Ceci and getting on with our lives.

• Sens receive Artem Anisimov for Zack Smith

In a rare move lauded by Sens fans as Not Actually Terrible, the Sens shipped out the remainder of Smith’s contract for a comparable player making less money. We can quibble about how all this money-motivated stuff is maddening and a symptom of greater moral decay inside Melnyk’s brain (as well as the actual brain decay) and the short-sightedness of the league’s business model, and we’d be right to do so, but even on a contending team spending to the cap, this kind of move is pretty smart. Add to that that Smith was on waivers last year and Chicago could have had him for nothing, and it’s even more impressive that Dorion managed to get anything for the player whose value seems to be entirely wrapped up in character and grit at this point.

Of course, players aren’t just static assets with fluctuating value – they’re people, and Smith was beloved in the room and by a great number of fans. Even Matt Duchene, who was relatively new to the team at the time, said it was a kick in the balls when Smith was put on waivers. He played for the Senators for 11 seasons, put up 25 goals once, and was even nominated for the Selke in that season. As James and Luke noted on our latest podcast, he was a part of the glorious line-brawl beatdown of the loathsome Habs in what might have been the most satisfying Senators game in franchise history. 

There is something uniquely soul-crushing when you see a product of the franchise, drafted and developed over the years and integral to the fabric of the team, traded away for the sake of $1.5M. This was a smart move from an accounting perspective, and also a sobering reminder that this game is a shitty business carried out by shitheads who run a shitty world shittily.

Ranking: St. Margaret Clitherow, pressed, on her back, over a sharp stone, with a door on top of her that was topped with an 800-pound weight, which may or may not have been a metaphor for capitalism.

• Sens sign free agents Tyler Ennis and Ron Hainsey

Two aging veterans accept low-paying one-year deals that don’t involve them having to move their families or buy American health insurance and in exchange will probably be turned inside out every time they play a shift. Sun rise, sun set. Sun rise, sun set.

Haisey and Ennis have nothing left in the tank and would struggle to get ice time on anything but the worst teams in the league. Luckily for them, Ottawa is one of the worst teams in the league, which means they might get more exposure than they would elsewhere and be traded at the deadline to a contender. That’s really the only upside I can think of: that Tyler Ennis, receiving 20 minutes a night playing alongside Anthony Duclair and Brady Tkachuk, breaks double digits in goals despite a minus 48 +/- and the Sens manage to recoup that third-rounder they gave up in the Zaitsev deal. Hainsey, meanwhile, seems like the kind of guy who would help you move a couch. 

Hopefully, they can draw on their extensive NHL experience to recede somewhere inside themselves and go zen long enough to not crack entirely before they’re traded to next year’s equivalent of the Blue Jackets for a glorious kamikaze run at a first-round flameout. Personally, I don’t want vets who played for good teams with nice facilities anywhere near my good young players, who might get ideas about getting the hell out of dodge.

Ranking: St. Cassian, Hacked to Death by Children

• Sens receive Ryan Callahan and a 2020 5th round pick for Mike Condon and a 2020 6th round pick

The Senators have a weirdly deep goaltending pool, having re-signed Handsomest Man Alive Anders Nilsson while running out the clock on franchise great Craig Anderson’s contract. (Remember when the Sens had to choose between Anderson, Lehner and Bishop? No? Me neither.) In the pipe they have Gustavsson, also re-signed Hogberg, who had a hell of a season last year but needs to put it together now or never, and Joey Daccord. This put Mike Condon, currently exiled to MacArthur Island, on the outs, and the Senators managed to turn his deal into the also-permanently-injured Callahan and a slight upgrade on inconsequential picks. 

All that to say that if you were looking for a deal to help you understand the ins and outs of long-term injured reserve and contract insurance, this might be the one to do it. The Senators end up saving money and in the process, they give up a goaltender who might still be able to play (but it’s unlikely). Callahan also has a gigantic cap hit, which they can allow to count against the cap to get them above the floor. It’s the kind of move that might have once garnered all kinds of coverage and today feels like an analysis of equity tranches and collateralized debt obligations. Let’s hope that the trade of Condon’s contract was viewed with sober hindsight as a reminder NOT TO SIGN GOALTENDERS ON A HOT STREAK TO TERM FOR CHRISSAKE.

Ranking: St. Bartholomew, Flayed

• Sens let Magnus Paajarvi, Jim O’Brien, Oscar Lindberg and Brian Gibbons walk and re-sign Anthony Duclair, Marcus Hogberg

I’d read somewhere that the Senators were considering re-signing PDO king Brian Gibbons, an undersized overager, and this is what victory looks like in The Broke Ass Melnyk Age of Senators fandom: they didn’t. They also allowed Cheap and Serviceable Depth Players Magnus Paajarvi and Oscar Lindberg to walk, and both of whom promptly went unsigned by any of the other 30 NHL teams. Lindberg, who came over in the fiasco of a Mark Stone trade, seemed to accord himself well on the terrible Senators, and I thought they’d re-sign him if only to keep Stone-for-Brannstrom from being one-for-one-and-a-pick. Well, folks, the Senators have now officially traded one of the very best two-way forwards in the entire league for a good prospect and a 2nd. Mark my words, shit will go down in infamy.

Let’s take a second to lament the second departure of Jim O’Brien, Bryan Murray’s first draft pick as Senators GM and legitimately On the Ice for some nice goals, including Turris’ OT winner against the Rangers.

Bringing back The Duke for another year seems like a smart move, either in the sense that he’s young enough to fit in with a young team or the Sens can pump his stats with lots of powerplay time and then trade him to his 45th team in three years at the deadline. I am genuinely surprised that the Senators re-signed him at $1.6M when they probably could have signed both Paajarvi and Gibbons for that same amount of money because they are, objectively, worse than Duclair. I take my victories where I can find them.

Ranking: St. Dymphna, Beheaded by Her Father After Refusing to Marry Him

Conclusion: There is no god and every sacrifice you make is in vain.

I subscribe to the belief that in a league of extreme parity, almost nothing you do around the edges of an NHL team will make any sort of difference. You’ve got hot and cold goaltenders, hot and cold shooters, random events, and Very Good Franchise Players who actually move the needle on a team’s ability to generate goals and wins. You only get those guys really high in the draft or when an idiot gives you Mark Stone for a prospect and a second-round pick. Your only other option is to go full Hurricanes and build out an entire system of puck possession with no finishers and bank your entire existence on enough wacky shit happening along the way to win you games. It’s terrible hockey, hence the extracurricular fun stuff the Canes resorted to keep people interested, but it can win you some games. Anyway, the Senators are being run out of a garage by Dorion’s son, so I don’t think a Tulsky-like renaissance is about to occur.

All that to say that none of this really matters. The Senators don’t have those needle-movers yet. Tkachuk, Chabot and Brannstrom might be those someday, but they aren’t now. The Senators might draft Lafreniere, but on the other hand, they might drop to 4th overall. Even if the Sens had run away with the opening of free agency and the draft, they’d be at the mercy of hockey’s capricious forces and are destined to finish dead last this season. It’s their destiny.

Play ball!

In this episode: Luke and James enjoy a few cold ones and discuss how Cody Ceci is a Maple Leaf, Nikita Zaitsev is our new favourite shit-talking Russian, the Senators are the Maple Leafs, DJ Smith’s number one job is keeping Brady Tkachuk happy, Zack Smith is Artem Anisimov is Zack Smith, we love our large goalies, and this podcast remains a Melnyk Free Zone.