Senators Exploring the Trade Market for Alex DeBrincat

Almost 11 months after the Senators landed two-time 40-goal scorer Alex DeBrincat from the Chicago Blackhawks, the Senators are exploring the trade market for the winger.

Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman reported that the Senators have “begun examining the trade market” for DeBrincat.

There are many ways to interpret the news. In Pierre Dorion’s media tour that began with the ‘Locked on Senators’ guys and ended with his appearance on TSN 1200’s ‘The Drive’, he candidly outlined all four avenues the organization could pursue with DeBrincat.

The team could qualify DeBrincat at $9.0 million and have him accept the offer. They could alternatively decide to take the winger to arbitration for the sole purpose of driving down his average annual value to a figure that is less than what his qualifying offer would be to give the team more cap flexibility in 2023-24. The team could continue to explore an extension with DeBrincat or finally, Dorion can explore the trade market to see what is available.

Friedman portrayed the reveal as a likely sign of the Senators doing their due diligence. Being three and a half weeks away from the NHL Draft, if the organization is serious about considering that fourth option, they certainly need to exhaust the market and determine what kind of interest and prospective trade returns are available to them.

On the other hand, it could simply be a sign that DeBrincat has decided that it is in his and his family’s best interests to pursue alternatives.

Postmedia’s Bruce Garrioch followed up Friedman’s article by writing that DeBrincat “hasn’t shown any inclination to sign a contract here and the organization hasn’t been left with any other choice.”

In that same piece, Garrioch reported that Dorion reached out to DeBrincat’s agent Jeff Jackson last week and the representative “informed the organization DeBrincat isn’t ready to discuss a long-term contract extension right now.”

A prevailing belief for the past few months was that DeBrincat wanted to see how the Senators’ ownership situation unfolded before engaging the team in contract extension talks, but as Gary Bettman indicated at his Stanley Cup Final press conference, the Senators’ sale was still a few weeks away from its conclusion and may take an additional few months to finalize.

The longer that process drags out towards training camp, the less likely it seems that the Senators will retain his rights.

For what it’s worth, Garrioch believes that DeBrincat is on his way out the door.

On the ‘32 Thoughts Podcast’ today, Elliotte Friedman expanded on his original column that I referenced earlier.

“As I was researching that story, everyone was speaking to me in codes. They’re like, ‘Well, you’ve got to find out, but they’re exploring what to do,’ and things like that. Basically, it was a euphemism of they’re probably going to trade him but you have to be careful because there’s always a chance that they don’t. But, there certainly appears to be a feeling around the league that it’s much more likely DeBrincat gets traded than not. And to be fair, there were some people who said to me that there’s no chance he’s re-signing there. But, I had other people say to me, ‘Don’t go there,’ because they think that some of those guys really want to try and convince him to stay because they think he can be a real important part of their team for a long time. But, the bottom line is and I completely understand this from DeBrincat’s point of view is, he’s not signing until he understands – at least for the long-term – until he understands who the new owner is going to be and what the plan is. And, we’re not going to know that anytime soon. Even if one group suddenly gets, ‘Okay, you have the right to negotiate to make the sale,’ it’s still going to take two or three months to sort that out. So, Ottawa has made it very clear they at least have to have an idea of who is interested by the draft at the end of the month. So, they’re doing their work there and I think there is interest.”

Holding onto DeBrincat through the finalization of the sale would be one hell of a gamble, but if he likes the young core and can be sold on the direction of the franchise, a long-term extension may have the best payoff on the ice.

Of course, it comes with the risk that he may ultimately elect to leave anyway and by that time, many rosters will be settled and teams will be happy to go into training camp with what they have. By gauging the market now and getting out ahead of this, the market for DeBrincat should conceivably be as big as it is going to get. If Dorion can play multiple interested parties off of one another, the Senators should theoretically be able to maximize the trade return value.

In saying that, however, the problem with Ottawa’s situation right now is that it likely has a lame-duck general manager in a decision-making capacity regarding one of the team’s best and established offensive talents. Pierre Dorion’s interests may not necessarily align with the interests of the hockey operations department that will likely supplant him.

The best mid to long-term value for DeBrincat might be a combination of draft picks and young players, but he could wind up being flipped for established NHL talent that puts the team’s short-term interests ahead of everything.

Jeff Marek brought up the Carolina Hurricanes as a stylistic fit for DeBrincat, but Friedman believed that they would only likely view him as a one-year rental. The more likely outcome that Friedman heard rumblings about are “centralish” teams like the Detroit Red Wings and St. Louis Blues.

“Absolutely, and I’ll say this. I don’t know that this is where he’ll wind up going, but there’s a lot of focus on those central area teams. I shouldn’t say that because Detroit’s not in the central, but Detroit is centralish. We’ll call them that, centralish. Like, Detroit, St. Louis. I had one guy say to me that (DeBrincat) is a Doug Armstrong player. Like, that’s a guy that Doug Armstrong really wants, so those are some of the teams that people are kind of focusing on. But, obviously I think there’s a ton of interest.”

The opportunity to lock up a 25-year-old winger who has two 40-goal seasons under his belt should get teams lined up for his services — especially with the salary cap expected to climb markedly for the start of the 2024-25 season. Teams, even the Senators, that are pressed for cap space in 2023-24 can view a DeBrincat contract as being a short-term complication that can be resolved pretty easily.

The Athletic’s Scott Wheeler ranked the Blues as having the league’s 19th-best farm system and Detroit as the 4th. Having graduated so many talented young players in recent seasons, the Senators’ system was thinning out on high-end talent before the team traded away its 2022 and 2023 first-round picks. As Wheeler’s 24th-ranked system, the opportunity to inject talented and inexpensive young talent into the mix is intriguing. And both of the organizations that Friedman listed have some unique prospects that would be of interest to the Senators.

I just don’t know that it will be the direction Dorion will pursue. Maybe he will prioritize a 2023 first-rounder, maybe he’ll prefer already drafted prospects who have developed longer and are closer to the NHL. Or, maybe he’ll build a deal around a young player who already has NHL experience and can step into the lineup right away while augmenting the deal with lesser picks and prospects.

The unsettling part is knowing that this could go in any number of different directions based on the motivations of a general manager with a checkered trade history who may not be around by the time the pieces in this deal ever pull on a Senators jersey.

In the words of the late Eugene Melnyk, “buckle up.”