Report: Senators Kicked Tires on Seth Jones
Desperate to address his team’s biggest weakness, general manager Pierre Dorion is reportedly kicking tires on every NHL defenceman he believes might be available in a trade.
Elliotte Friedman relayed a rumor he heard this weekend on today’s episode of the ‘32 Thoughts’ podcast.
“We’ve talked about how the Senators have looked at every possible defenceman that you can think of. I think one of the guys that they at least asked about, and I don’t think it went anywhere, but I thought was interesting… I think one of the guys they asked about was Seth Jones. They just made the call and said, ‘Would there be (any interest in moving him)?’, and they’ve dealt with Chicago before in the DeBrincat deal. I think they just called and just felt it out. I don’t think it’s happening. I don’t think it’s going to, but I heard that on the weekend. They’re calling on everybody and they called on Seth Jones, but I don’t think it’s happening.”
Yes, the Seth Jones.
The 28-year-old is currently in the first year of the eight-year contract extension that he signed with the Blackhawks in July of 2021 worth $76 million ($9.5 million AAV). Jones’ contract was essentially panned from the moment it was signed. The Athletic’s Dom Luszczyszyn ranked it as being the second-worst in an article detailing the league’s 10-worst contracts.
It is not that Jones is a bad player.
He logs a ton of minutes. Last season his 26:13 led the league in average ice time per game and over his last six seasons, he has averaged more than 24 minutes of ice time per game.
Jones has also enjoyed some offensive success. He has recorded three seasons in which he has had more than 40 points.
Having a defenceman who can log minutes and put up points is a valuable commodity, but the problem with Jones is that his five-on-five impacts are not that impactful. In Jones’ career, he has only produced one season in which he had a positive isolated impact offensively per HockeyViz.com.
Defensively, Jones’ best defensive seasons came playing for strong defensive teams in Nashville and Columbus. Albeit, he posted a strong isolated defensive impact last season in Chicago.
There is also the issue of Jones’ contract. CapFriendly shows that $44.25 million of the $76 million owed to Jones will be paid in signing bonuses. That is a ridiculously high total that the Senators have been averse to committing to in the past. The organization has acquired contracts with signing bonuses before, but when it comes to signing its own players, its internal policy of not handing them out has held strong. Acquiring a contract like Jones’ would represent a significant deviation, but with the prospect of new ownership facing the club, maybe Pierre Dorion believes that the contract will be someone else’s problem years down the road.
As Luszczyszyn so eloquently put it:
“(Jones) came to Chicago as a supposed needle-mover and proceeded to not move the needle. He’s being paid to be a true number one who can provide 2.1 wins of value per season, but he’s closer to a strong number two defenceman at around 1.3 wins. Good player, just not elite.
The problem with Jones’s deal isn’t really what he is now, it’s the length of the deal. Eight years is a very long time and if he already isn’t worth it at 27, what’s that going to look like at age 35? Probably not good.
Evolving-Hockey’s goals above replacement (GAR) and wins above replacement (WAR) metrics have put Jones’ value as below that of a replacement-level player in two of the past three seasons. If Jones’ best seasons were in the past, it’s in Ottawa’s best interests not to overpay for past production — especially at a time when Jones is exiting his prime and about to enter his early 30’s and the declining phase of his career.
There is no question that Jones would represent an upgrade over players like Nikita Zaitsev and Travis Hamonic, but as I’ve written about in this space repeatedly, this is not the highest of bars to clear.
If Jones is not worth the value of his contract now, what would that mean to the Senators when the team’s young core is in the latter stages of their prime years and the team has this expensive and unmovable contract lingering over their roster? At a time when the team will be pressured to maximize the value of its cap space, spending $9.5 million on Jones three to five seasons from now would be foolish.
It is not like the Senators would just be absorbing Jones’ contract either. Acquiring the player would have cost the Senators some combination of draft picks and prospects. If the contract itself is unpalatable, the combination of throwing future assets to acquire Jones with it makes the cost way too steep.
In fairness to the organization, maybe this is simply an instance in which the organization is doing its due diligence to see which players are or aren’t available on the trade market. Perhaps their level of interest in Jones was not incredibly high and they were simply kicking tires to gauge interest or potentially set up future negotiations to see if the Blackhawks would move another defenceman like Connor Murphy instead.
Or, maybe the team’s interest in Jones can be chalked up to a general manager in Pierre Dorion who knows that his time with the Senators is coming to a close. Whenever this team is sold in the near future, new owners will likely want to bring in their own hires to run this organization. If Dorion believes he’s a lame duck, maybe he’s more willing to roll the dice and blindly sacrifice the team’s roster flexibility for the future by making such a myopic trade now.
Fortunately, Chicago hung up the phone and refused to even discuss Jones.