The Bridge Window for Brady Tkachuk
What would an Ottawa Senators offseason be without some kind of discussion of money?
According to the indispensable CapFriendly.com, the Senators have spent approximately $52.95 million on their roster after signing restricted free agent Victor Mete to a one-year contract ($1.2M) yesterday.
The Senators are slightly over $7 million away from reaching the $60.24 million cap floor, but with Brady Tkachuk and Drake Batherson needing new contracts as restricted free agents, surpassing that benchmark.
It has been an eerily quiet offseason considering that 2021 was billed as the first of Ottawa’s five years of unparalleled success.
The promise made by Eugene Melnyk to team sponsors at a corporate event in February of 2019 occurred before the pandemic, so it is fair to assume that abbreviated seasons and no gate revenue have negatively impacted Ottawa’s revenue streams.
Given the circumstances, it would be foolish to assume the tight-budgeted Senators would fulfill their promise to spend. However, when Melnyk appeared on Bob McCown’s podcast recently and not so casually dropped the nugget of information that the team would aggressively be looking to add a number one centre and a defensive defenceman who could play in the team’s top-four.
Whether it’s the contracts or the assets required to acquire said players, these types of pieces do not come cheaply.
Or, they may not come at all.
It is early in the offseason and the Senators still have time to wheel and deal, but they appear content to ride into next season with few impactful changes. Gone are veterans Derek Stepan, Ryan Dzingel and last year’s big splurge, Evgenii Dadonov. The Senators dumped the final two years of Dadonov’s deal to free up some money and some of that money has been reinvested into the blue line. Nick Holden and Michael Del Zotto are two veterans who have been brought in to add depth to the blue line.
The modest changes have not really moved the needle much. In his analysis of the NHL offseason thus far, The Athletic’s Dom Luszczyszyn noted that the Senators effectively cut almost $6.0 million in salary so far, while adding -0.8 wins of value before concluding that “the team is worse, but not by much.”
The organization is probably not banking on these moves to make the team significantly better, but for the team to improve, it will require significant growth from its young players and a significant improvement from its goaltenders.
The first factor should occur naturally, but it may take time for some of Ottawa’s younger players to develop and become productive players.
Another year of patience to afford the young players an opportunity to display their talents and evaluate how good they can be is admirable, but it does not come without a cost.
Every expectation around Brady Tkachuk and the Ottawa Senators is that the left-winger will sign a bridge deal. Like his brother before him and many other young stars, it has become trendy for these players to ink short-term deals. Today’s young talents are trusting their abilities. They simply hope to maximize their earnings during their restricted free agent years before giving themselves more negotiating leverage when they are at or one year removed from unrestricted free agency.
Rather than potentially leave money on the table in the fifth, six, seventh or eighth year of a contract, players are hoping that the economic landscape will continue to grow.
If a player’s preference is for a bridge deal, outside of an egregious overpay on a long-term deal, there is not much an organization can do to sway players into avoiding bridge deals. I suppose you could also negotiate through the media and threaten not to give a player the captaincy of a team, but nobody does that, right?
If Brady Tkachuk signs a three-year bridge deal, that will take him through 2023-24 season. A contract ending in 2024 would give the Senators one more year of team control before Tkachuk’s eligible for unrestricted free agency at the age of 25. Given the intangibles, the rare combination of strength, physicality and skill, Tkachuk’s going to be a very desirable commodity.
I don’t want to stoke fears about the player leaving Ottawa, but the reality is that the Senators are going to have to show Brady that they are committed to building a winner.
That puts a tremendous amount of pressure on the Senators.
This organization took a significant public relations hit with the high-profile departures of players like Mark Stone and Erik Karlsson. Even though their absences were described as a function of the decision to gut the roster and endure a lengthy rebuild, the suspicions that these losses were fueled by money and not hockey-related factors will not go away.
The trust and confidence that this fan base has in ownership is shaken.
A bridge deal gives Melnyk a window. He will have three years to prove to Brady that he can build a winner. Two if the first of these seasons has the Senators evaluating their core and spending near the bottom of the league again.
A time will come during this window when the Senators have to go all-in. An owner cannot continue to spew bravado without there being any consequences if his actions don’t live up to his promises.