For the second time over the past few weeks, Senators general manager Pierre Dorion has made the news cycle after being seen scouting the Minnesota Wild.
The first instance occurred in late January when Dorion and senior vice-president of player development Pierre McGuire scouted the Wild’s 8-2 victory over the Montreal Canadiens.
It would be one thing to chalk that appearance to happenstance if the game was in the nearby Montreal. But, it wasn’t. The general manager and McGuire watched that game in Minnesota and Dorion was recently seen in Winnipeg watching the Wild face the Jets.
The Athletic’s Pierre LeBrun downplayed Dorion’s visits by writing that the Wild aren’t the only team that the general manager has taken multiple first-hand viewings of.
“In the meantime, Dorion wasn’t with the team this week, he went to Winnipeg to take in Wednesday’s Wild-Jets game and Thursday night’s Kraken-Jets game. He also took in a Habs-Wild game last month so the in-person attention to Minnesota obviously draws attention.
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But I also think Dorion wanted to catch the Jets twice this week. In between the Wild (who will have cap issues this summer) and the Jets, my sense is Dorion is doing some advanced prep on potential offseason discussions with those teams.”
The Wild currently reside in third place of the Western Division with a four-point lead on the Nashville Predators. Considering the state of the Senators and the Wild’s playoff aspirations, it seems unlikely that these two teams would be a good match at this juncture.
Minnesota will not be looking to move a significant piece of their roster and with the Senators’ rebuild, they simply don’t have many desirable assets that they are open to moving. With the exception of Nick Paul or Erik Brannstrom, the only pieces that the Senators will look to move are middling depth pieces that should fetch modest returns.
Unlike Wild general manager Bill Guerin, Kevin Cheveldayoff may have an appetite to shake up his roster. With the exception of Blake Wheeler, his roster’s best forwards are mostly in their late 20’s. There are young pieces like Pierre-Luc Dubois and Cole Perfetti, but given what we know about aging curves, most of Winnipeg’s players are likely already towards the tail ends of their offensive primes. If this team was a contender and the talent was elite, it would be one thing. But, the talent isn’t dynamic enough to overcome the roster’s holes and it has often put the Jets in that undesirable middle ground. The team is not strong enough to compete regularly in the postseason, but it’s not weak enough to bottom out and land higher chances of landing coveted draft selections.
Heading into the 2022-23 season, the Jets currently have 13 skaters under contract who combine to earn $70.67 million. If the Jets spend to the cap ceiling next season, that would leave the team with just under $11 million to spend to fill the rest of their roster. That’s not a lot of money for a team that only has seven forwards on the parent roster under contract next season, which means that they could be open to a deal.
Speaking of cap management issues, Minnesota will be faced with one this summer when the buyouts to Zach Paries and Ryan Suter really hit the team’s wallet. Together, their buyouts only cost the Wild approximately $4.74 million of cap space this season. That figure will grow to almost $13 million in 2022-23 and almost $15 million in 2023-24 and 2024-25.
The Wild will have to perform some cap gymnastics and walk that fine edge that sees the team cut salary while still trying to preserve its competitiveness.
These two situations make the Jets and Wild ripe for a trade, but it’s the kind of thing will likely have to wait until the offseason.
So, what pieces should Dorion target?
Ottawa’s biggest need right now is a top-six right winger. Kevin Fiala seems like the obvious fit because he’s 25 years old and will be a restricted free agent this summer. Fiala has scored 20-plus goals three times in his career and has 14 in 46 games this season. He’s an impactful offensive player who has an opportunity to leverage his situation since the 2022-23 season will be his last season in which he qualifies as a restricted free agent.
That can be used as leverage for Ottawa, but it could be precarious, as well. The Senators already have a number of good young players that they will want to commit good money to in the near future and if the opportunity cost to acquire Fiala is high, it will put a lot of pressure on the Senators to extend him. Any acquiring team will not want to view Fiala as simply a rental. And, even though he’s a significantly more impactful player than Matt Murray was at the time the Senators acquired him from Pittsburgh, the prospective pressure to get a deal done when the player has almost all of the leverage is significant.
On the other hand, if there is no confidence in Fiala even wanting to get an extension done, perhaps that drives the market price down and gives the organization and player a look to see if they’re a good fit. If everything breaks right, maybe a fair deal can be reached that works well for both teams.
If not Fiala, Ryan Hartman would be an intriguing piece. He can play the centre and right wing, but at an average annual value of $1.7 million, he’s too valuable as an inexpensive and productive piece to be moved.
On the blue line, the Senators may be interested in a veteran piece to help insulate their youth. Thomas Chabot and Jake Sanderson should be entrenched on the left side, but Artyom Zub will only have one year left on his contract extension. Nikita Zaitsev has two more years left on his deal, but he’s been relatively ineffective this season while there's no certainty that prospects like Jacob Bernard-Docker or Lassi Thomson will be ready to play effective NHL minutes.
The Wild do have a few blueliners under contract, but their most desirable one, Jared Spurgeon, will not be going anywhere. Jonas Brodin makes too much money and plays the left side where Ottawa has the most depth, so he doesn’t make too much sense. Jon Merrill could be of interest, but he suffers from the Ryan Hartman problem. He has too much value as an inexpensive and effective depth option, to be considered expendable. One player who I could see Ottawa kick tires on is Matt Dumba because he plays the right side.
Dumba is currently on the injured reserve, but he did play in the win over Montreal that Dorion attended.
The only knock to his situation is that he only has one year left on a contract that will bring him to unrestricted free agency. Even more than Fiala’s situation, Dumba would likely be a pure rental. For a team that should be trying to maximize its assets, that kind of trade should be a non-starter for Dorion.
Winnipeg’s situation is different in that there simply don’t appear to be too many fits or desirables who Cheveldayoff would be comfortable moving. Players like Dubois, Connor and Perfetti are not going anywhere and on the blue line, it’s an unheralded group of veterans who are all locked up for at least the next two seasons.
Nikolaj Ehlers would be a terrific addition for the Senators because he’s 26 years old and is already locked up through the 2024-25 season at an annual average salary of $6.0 million. With Ehlers, the Senators would not have to be worried about contract negotiations and he affords some flexibility in the sense that he’s a left-shot winger who has experience playing his off-wing.
The only problem is that he may not be available and for those wondering, Ehler is also on the injured reserve and was not available in any of the games that Dorion watched.
Although Dorion’s attendance at these games may raise some eyebrows, I believe it is good that he’s out doing some scouting. The Senators will definitely have to make moves this summer and if watching these games adds another layer of familiarity that the general manager will be comfortable with, that may not be a bad thing. Obviously, the wrinkle to that is that there is the risk of romanticizing or being overcritical of a small sample size of games that were viewed firsthand, but the Senators’ recent struggles to identify and acquire good pro talent are very real.
At the NHL level where games and public or proprietary data are so readily available, it’s alarming how poor the Senators’ decision-making has been. And having assembled a good, young core of players who need support, finding and acquiring quality depth to surround these players is going to be paramount to this team’s success moving forward. To have the general manager be out in the field doing the legwork in preparation for this summer’s dealings should be a good thing.
I hope it’s a good thing, but interestingly, Pierre LeBrun had one more interesting nugget of information from that aforementioned piece.
“Dorion says Minnesota was a team that in Ottawa’s internal pro meeting discussions in mid-January led to the GM having different opinions on some of the Wild players than his pro scout who covers that team, which is no big deal, but it made Dorion decide to catch a few Wild games in person.”
No organization should be filled with like-minded individuals. Compelling arguments and different perspectives should enrich the experience and allow organizations to make the most informed choices they can, but with how poorly Ottawa’s evaluated talent at the pro level, it is easy to understand why this disagreement in player valuation between a general manager and a scout could raise some eyebrows.
Re Sens mgmt decisions, I can't understand them taking lightweight depth players while passing on middleweight forward Aube-Kubel who was on waivers. Colorado took him, and he is a regular for them. He's 25, 5-11, 187.