If Not Chychrun, Here Are some RD to Consider Targeting
After spending the last few articles detailing how important it is for the Senators to upgrade their right defence position, it is now the middle of August and the organization still has not addressed their position of weakness.
General manager Pierre Dorion has repeatedly emphasized the importance of adding a top-four defenceman, so it stands to reason that he cannot be too comfortable with the status quo.
It’s already the middle of August, so the fall is just around the corner and with it, there is a tendency for teams to become more comfortable with their rosters as training camp approaches.
Dorion still has time to act and the delay to make an addition could be complicated by the fact that a lot of teams are pressed up against the cap ceiling. As teams try to finesse their way through some cap gymnastics, there may yet still be some dominoes to fall before training camps open.
For the Senators, that is good news because it means there is still a chance to upgrade their right defence position. The prevailing assumption is that the team is waiting on the price for Jakub Chychrun to come down, but based on the reported asking price, no one should blame the Senators for waiting and hoping that the price comes down.
In saying that, there is significant pressure on the Senators to improve their right side. They can ill afford to waste a year of development on this young core or on the one-year of control on Alex DeBrincat’s contract not to put their best foot forward.
So, if the Senators need to upgrade their right defence without breaking the bank on Chychrun, what can they do?
Here is a list of alternatives who could help the team.
Chad Ruhwedel
More like Chad Who(?)wedel.
If you’re probably wondering why I am leading off with Chad Ruhwedel, that’s totally understandable. It’s all about the shock factor here.
Ruhwedel is a now 32-year-old journeyman who, after playing parts of nine seasons in the league, finally established himself and received full-time regular minutes last season in Pittsburgh.
There is some concern that Ruhwedel thrived against weak competition, but this isn’t simply just a case of a defender whose metrics are being boosted by playing for the Penguins, Ruhwedel posted some decent underlying numbers while playing for an underwhelming Buffalo Sabres squad.
So why would the Penguins move him?
After acquiring Jeff Petry and signing Jan Ruuta this summer to go along with Kris Letang, Ruhwedel is now on the outside of the Penguins’ blue line situation and looking in.
The good news is that Ruhwedel’s cheap too. He signed a two-year extension with the Penguins back in February and it pays him a modest $800,000 per season. For the budget-conscious Senators, he would have been a cheaper and better alternative to Travis Hamonic. Throw in the cost savings that would allow them to allocate money elsewhere while affording prospects like Jacob Bernard-Docker and Lassi Thomson to develop their games, he would have been a fine stopgap for the team’s third pairing.
Zach Whitecloud
Not that long ago, one of the unlikelier guys in this piece who could be moved would have been Vegas defenceman Zach Whitecloud.
Fortunately, with yesterday’s announcement that Robin Lehner will miss the entire 2022-23 season, the opportunity may be ripe for the Senators to strike here by centering a trade return around goaltender Cam Talbot.
Why would the Senators move a goaltender that they just acquired to bolster the position?
If the opportunity to improve their right defence situation presents itself, the Senators at the very least have to explore it. Cam Talbot played behind a really strong defensive unit in Minnesota, but his underlying metrics were not impressive.
Looking at all situations hockey, Evolving-Hockey had Talbot recording some of the worst goals saved above expected (GSAx) marks last season. At all situations, Talbot posted a -17.26 GSAx and at five-on-five, it was -13.55. Amongst the qualified goaltenders, Talbot’s totals were the fourth-lowest recorded in either category.
Talbot obviously has a lot of qualities that the Senators like. He’s an experienced goaltender who has enjoyed success and with Anton Forsberg, the Senators obviously felt more comfortable having these two split starts than giving Filip Gustavsson an opportunity. And if the Senators did consider moving Talbot to exploit another organization’s goaltending situation, they themselves would have to go back into the market to find someone for themselves.
In saying that, Talbot’s 35 years old and is an unrestricted free agent at the end of the 2022-23 season. He is simply a short-term solution to the Senators’ goaltending situation, so it would be foolish for the Senators not to kick tires and see what kind of assets they could acquire.
Zack Whitecloud would be an interesting piece for a few reasons.
He is 25 years old and is about to enter the first year of a six-year extension that carries an average annual value of $2.75 million. The combination of age and cost control over a significant term is really desirable — especially with the expectation an escalating salary cap over the course of Whitecloud’s contract.
He can also play.
There is also a degree of familiarity since Whitecloud was partnered with Thomas Chabot at the 2022 World Championships. If Whitecloud was acquired, the Senators could use the reliable Artyom Zub to slide in alongside Jake Sanderson on the second pairing and Ottawa’s top-four would begin to look really good.
Scott Mayfield
This is probably one of my ideal targets simply because Mayfield’s a competent defender who plays tough minutes against the opposition’s top lines.
Mayfield only has one year left on his deal that takes him to unrestricted free agency. He will be paid just $2.0 million but carries a cap hit of $1.45 million.
The cost-effectiveness of his contract alone is incredibly valuable to the Senators if we are to believe that they are close to reaching their self-imposed internal budget.
Why would the Islanders move Mayfield?
There are rumours circulating that the Islanders are aggressively pursuing free agent centre Nazem Kadri. Between that prospective signing and the fact that the organization has Noah Dobson, the team’s 12th overall pick in 2018, in need of a contract extension, their cap situation will be tight. Dobson should not come cheap. The defender is coming off an impressive 2021-22 campaign in which he tallied 13 goals and 51 points in 80 games.
Since the Islanders already have Ryan Pulock locked up to a long-term deal, maybe Mayfield is a realistic candidate to be moved.
In a perfect world, the Senators could find a way to reunite Nikita Zaitsev with Lou Lamoriello, but this kind of move would require a lot of financial juggling to make it work on the Islanders’ end.
Trevor Van Riemsdyk
The first time I had heard of Trevor Van Riemsdyk was when he was a development camp invitee of the Senators back in 2012.
As an undrafted collegiate talent out of the University of New Hampshire, Van Riemsdyk signed an entry-level deal with the Blackhawks in March of 2014. He has played parts of eight NHL seasons with the Blackhawks, Hurricanes, and Capitals carving out a niche as a solid depth defenceman.
Van Riemsdyk has established himself as a bit of an analytics darling. NaturalStatTrick’s data shows that when he has been on the ice, his teams have historically put up some exceptional shot and expected goal rates.
Slated to hit unrestricted free agency after the 2022-23 season, it is possible that the Senators could find a way to pry Van Riemsdyk loose. The Capitals already have John Carlson and Nick Jensen playing ahead of him.
If there is any concern, it is that Van Riemsdyk has thrived playing third pairing minutes against weaker competition. Would he be able to replicate that success playing second-pairing minutes against tougher competition?
He may not be able to, but when the alternative is a Travis Hamonic who has struggled to perform well against weak competition as well, Van Riemsdyk would certainly represent an upgrade there.
Perhaps it would have made sense to target him as part of the trade return when the Senators traded Connor Brown to the Capitals earlier in the summer, but maybe there is still a chance for the Senators to add him now.
The Capitals certainly are not under any pressure to make a move. Although CapFriendly lists them as having a projected cap hit of $88.8 million, the team has Niklas Backstrom on LTIR making $9.2 million. The organization’s outlook is that they will be playing the entire 2022-23 regular season without the 34-year-old centre, so it is not like the team desperately needs to trim the roster and find savings.
Connor Murphy
Having already made a huge splash this offseason acquiring Alex DeBrincat, can Pierre Dorion go back to the same well and add another piece that could boost the team’s performance on the blue line?
Thanks to the Blackhawks’ decision to tear the roster down and rebuild, there may be a chance that the team would be willing to listen to offers on Connor Murphy.
The 29-year-old is in the first year of the four-year contract that he signed in 2021. Murphy’s deal carries an average annual value of $4.4 million. Rather than carry a veteran who is entering his 30’s, the Blackhawks could elect to trade Murphy to acquire more draft picks and prospects to restock their system.
The Senators possess all of their first and second-round picks across each of the next three drafts — in addition to a 2024 second-round pick that was acquired from Washington in the 2024 NHL Draft — so the team has the draft Capital and prospects to make a deal. And perhaps most importantly, Chicago has the cap space to take on one of Ottawa’s bad contracts belonging to Zaitsev and Hamonic. If the Senators can attach enough capital to one of those players and land Murphy, the Blackhawks may be the ideal trade partner here.
Unlike a few of the other defenders mentioned earlier, Murphy’s track record is not necessarily as strong.
NaturalStatTrick’s data shows that Murphy has only played one full season in which his team’s five-on-five expected goal rate was greater than 50-percent. Historically, his teams have always been caved in with him on the ice as well.
The rub is that Murphy’s played on some pretty bad defensive clubs over his career and that the underlying data may not support the idea that he cannot defend.
HockeyViz.com provides some interesting isolated defensive impact data.
It is clear that while Murphy may not provide an offensive impact, he could provide the stabilizing defensive support that more traditional puck-movers like Thomas Chabot and Jake Sanderson could use.
The Free Agents
This late into the summer, the only unrestricted free agents left on the market are P.K. Subban and Anton Stralman.
At 35 years of age, Stralman is no longer the defensive player that analytic prognosticators salivated over from 2012 through 2016.
Over the past four years, Stralman has been in a steady decline and can no longer be expected to play meaningful minutes on a good team.
Unlike many of the guys that I have written about in this piece, P.K. Subban is a more impactful offensive defenceman than he is a defender. In the right situation, he could be a nice depth piece who could play on a second power-play unit.
The Senators are expected to run four forwards on their first unit and with players like Thomas Chabot, Jake Sanderson and Erik Brannstrom in the mix, there are already enough offensive blue liners to consider for the power play roles to consider bringing in Subban whose defensive capabilities have continued to erode with age.
For a team that is looking to bolster its group defensively, Subban may be a more impactful player overall than a Hamonic or a Zaitsev, but his qualities probably do not make him a great fit for the Senators at this time.