As the contract negotiations between the Senators and Shane Pinto drag through the preseason and the risk of the centre missing regular season games mounts, the pressure on general manager Pierre Dorion to create the cap savings grows commensurately.
CapFriendly lists the Senators as having 22 skaters signed to a combined cap hit of $83.379 million — leaving the organization with approximately $121,000 in cap space. The team can save an additional $762,500-$775,000 by returning Parker Kelly or Egor Sokolov to Belleville.
That $800,000 does not represent half the savings the Senators need to fit Pinto in. Heck, it might not even represent a third of what is required.
A player on the parent roster must be moved to create the savings Ottawa needs.
Consider it a necessity created by Dorion’s big offseason splash: free agent forward Vladimir Tarasenko.
I will not use this space to belabour the point that a reasonable discussion should be had over whether that was the appropriate allocation of cap space. I have already spent enough time analyzing whether it would have been more prudent to sign a combination of alternatives (ie. Tomas Tatar, Pius Suter) who cost less, have stronger two-way games, and would have preserved the cap space to sign Pinto without having to move another player.
The reality is that the Senators brought Tarasenko into the fold and will now have to do some cap gymnastics to fit all the pieces of the puzzle together.
The likeliest casualty appears to be Mathieu Joseph. Elliotte Friedman reported that the Philadelphia Flyers are willing to acquire the winger… it is just going to come at a cost.
2. The good thing for Ottawa is Philadelphia likes Mathieu Joseph as a player. They see a fit. The bad news is that it doesn’t mean the Flyers will make it easy. They’ve got the leverage and aren’t afraid to use it. They want a high-level prospect or maybe the first-rounder sent by Detroit in the Alex DeBrincat trade. To this point, Ottawa’s not willing to do that. It’s a poker game. San Jose is another team I’ve wondered about.
Joseph has three years left on his four-year contract which carries an average annual value of $2.95 million. It is not an egregious figure. It should not even be a contract that hampers the team long-term because of the projected cap increases. It is just a deal that looks worse because of the team’s cap situation now, the relative lack of inefficient contracts, and most importantly, his five-on-five production last season.
In 56 games, Joseph failed to score one five-on-five goal. He finished the year with three goals and 18 points. No one should have expected him to reproduce his production levels when he recorded four goals and 13 points in 12 games following his trade at the 2022 trade deadline. But, for a player who has been a 12.9 percent shooter throughout his career, last year represented a significant drop.
He is one of the few players on the team who can reliably be counted upon to regress positively in 2023-24, which is important because he was still a valuable defensive presence at five-on-five and on the penalty kill.
As much as everyone believes that an improved top-four will take a lot of the pressure off the team’s forwards defensively, on a team that lacks a ton of quality two-way forwards, a concern in moving Joseph is that it could exacerbate one of the team’s biggest weaknesses.
Although Friedman talks about the leverage the Flyers believe they have, that leverage is only predicated on the idea that it is Joseph who has to leave.
He does not have to be.
The Alternatives
The philosophical question facing management is whether it is in the team’s best interests to trade Joseph and some sweeteners or look at alternatives like Erik Brannstrom or the recently acquired Dominik Kubalik.
Replacing Erik Brannstrom with Tyler Kleven probably makes the most sense from a depth/role and readily available replacement perspective. The only question is whether it creates enough financial wiggle room. The cost savings from Brannstrom ($2.0M) to Kleven ($916,667) is a hair under $1.1 million — probably not enough to get a Pinto deal done.
Swapping Kubalik ($2.5M) with Ridly Greig ($863,663) would create more cap flexibility. It is probably not reasonable to assume that Greig could produce at Kubalik’s level in his first year, but if he can provide some secondary scoring and play a solid two-way game, maybe he can accrue enough two-way value to replace the value that the more one-dimensional scorer offers.
Similarly, if Kubalik is projected to line up on the third line with Pinto, does Pinto have enough playmaking ability to make the most of Kubalik’s strengths? If not, it could certainly make the decision to entertain offers on Kubalik easier.
The optics of moving Kubalik so quickly after acquiring him could look bad, but perhaps management never anticipated the possibility of adding Tarasenko. If Dorion viewed the Senators as the favourite to land Tarasenko at the time of the DeBrincat trade, maybe that would have changed the parameters of the return from Detroit.
Should the Senators Consider Moving a Goaltender?
As one follower (@SmittyScrolling) pointed out on ‘X’, the Senators could move Anton Forsberg to create room, but that would be one hell of a gamble.
Obviously, Forsberg’s knee injuries and having a year left on his deal are reasons for considering a trade. When he has been healthy, however, Forsberg has been good. Very, very good.
Over the last three seasons per Evolving-Hockey, only 16 goaltenders have a higher number of goals saved above expected (GSAx) than Forsberg. Management is paying Joonas Korpisalo to be the team’s 1A, but there is some risk involved. His 2022-23 season represents the only year in which he has been really good. There is some context because he has dealt with injuries and he spent a considerable amount of time playing behind a terrible Columbus team, but 2022-23 was one of only two seasons in which his GSAx was above 10. In five of his seasons, that stat was between -7.95 to -18.06.
If the Senators move Forsberg and Korpisalo is beset by injury, that puts a tremendous amount of pressure on Mads Sogaard to play at a high level and carry a team with playoff aspirations.
The 19 appearances he made last season should help Sogaard’s development, but his performance in those games left something to be desired.
It started out promising enough. He was named the NHL’s ‘Rookie of the Month’ for February after putting together a 4-0-1 record with a 2.33 goals-against average and a . 922 save percentage. After that though, the wheels came off.
Sogaard eventually finished the season with a line of 8-6-1 with a 3.32 goals against average and an .889 save percentage. Evolving-Hockey had his GSAx at -4.38.
As a prospect with size and pedigree, there is an obvious upside to him, but it would be unfair to put a young player in that position.
Shining a Light on Dorion’s Work
Regardless, the longer this drags out, the more it will shine a light on Dorion’s body of work. Between the $5 million in dead cap space, and the organization jettisoning valuable assets out to move even more money off the books (ie. Nikita Zaitsev, potentially Joseph), it only fuels the perception of Dorion work as incohesive.
Just one year ago, the rebuilding Senators moved a valuable trade deadline asset in Nick Paul while eschewing futures because it believed this team was at a stage to add more depth pieces it could move forward with. And now, Mathieu Joseph might be sent packing with sweeteners attached.
It’s frustrating because it feels like his struggles to effectively manage his roster around the assembled young core have cost the team valuable assets and time. At a time when this team is positioned to take a step forward, there is a very real concern that Dorion’s next trade will actually make the team worse and hurt its playoff chances.
Experimenting with Chabot and Chychrun
When it came to projecting the Senators’ lineup this season, every expectation was that it would be Jakob Chychrun who would play his off-side on the first pairing with Thomas Chabot.
On Sunday night D.J. Smith experimented and actually used Thomas Chabot on the right side and the pairing’s results were very strong.
The pairing played 25 minutes and 37 seconds together in all situations. When they were on the ice, the Senators generated 56.52 percent of the shots (CF%), 51.43 percent of the shots on goal (SF%), and 69.69 percent of the expected goals (xGF%). The pairing was on the ice for one goal for and two against, but the numbers were very encouraging. With some better luck, the actual results would have been better.
Chychrun and Chabot were two of the most valuable players on the ice and most importantly, they both added a ton of defensive value. Obviously, it is a one-game sample in a preseason game in which both teams were not icing their full roster, but the results were encouraging.
Chabot, in particular, needs a strong bounceback in terms of his defensive play. Last season represented one of his worst statistical defensive seasons and if this team is going to take a marked step forward, they need him to be much better defensively.
Line Combinations and Establish the Bottom-Six
TSN 1200 put out the lines from this morning’s skate on ‘X’. Joonas Korpisalo is expected to play a full 60 minutes tonight. The line rushes were as follows:
Kubalik Bailey Joseph
Smejkal Greig Sokolov
Kelly Kastelic MacEwen
Imama Chartier Reinhardt
McPhee Ostapchuk Saulnier
Brannstrom Hamonic
Sebrango JBD
Heatherington Toure
Kleven MacKinnon
Tonight’s game against Montreal is going to give the team’s bottom-six candidates every opportunity to showcase themselves.
It is intriguing to see the organization’s utilization of Josh Bailey. In camp on a PTO, he is lined up with Kubalik and Joseph. It represents a unique opportunity to play with the established NHL talent who will be dressed for tonight’s game. D.J. Smith and his staff are putting him in a position to succeed and potentially earn an NHL contract — which makes me wonder whether there is already an offer in place that will be announced once the Senators clear more salary in a trade.
As the de facto fourth-line centre, I actually like Mark Kastelic and believe he does some things well. I like his defensive aptitude and his ability to use his body and size to protect the puck. I believe with the right linemates who complement his ability to work the cycle and control the puck, the Senators could have a fourth line that could eat up offensive zone time and tire the opposition, but I don’t know if archetypal wingers like Parker Kelly and Zach MacEwen are the answer.
MacEwen will likely be the team’s 13th forward and a candidate to play when there’s a pugilist on the other side. Almost all of his value lies in his intangibles and the possibility that his presence will curb Brady Tkachuk’s willingness to drop the gloves. As much as I love Tkachuk’s spirited and non-staged tilts, the captain is more valuable to the Senators when he is on the ice. Last season’s eight majors represented a career-high for Tkachuk, so if he can stay out of the box more, that is a plus.
Other News and Notes:
The Athletic ran their projected season preview for the Ottawa Senators. The team clocked in at 94.3 points with a 52.3 percent chance of reaching the postseason.
The Senators’ social media team has been killing it with their content of late. This behind-the-scenes video of Michael Andlauer’s first day is exceptional. Give it a look if you have not already.
Good article. It would be worth waiting until the team is sure about Norris' shoulder before pulling the trigger on any deal. As far as a deal for Joseph, all the stories seem to be coming from the Philly side, with the obvious bias that entails.