Following Saturday’s big win over the Montreal Canadiens, the Senators carried that momentum into their rare back-to-back home games against the Red Wings on Monday and Tuesday night.
In what were arguably two of the team’s most important games since the team’s run to the 2017 Eastern Conference Final, the Senators rose to the occasion. They absolutely decimated the Red Wings in every facet of the game. The atmosphere in the Canadian Tire Centre had an electric playoff vibe to it as the Senators punished the Red Wings physically and outscored them 12 to 3.
At five-on-five, the shot and goal metrics were equally impressive. The Senators outshot the Red Wings 42 to 30 (58.33 SF%) while generating 71.42 percent of the total goals for (GF%) and 59.92 percent of the expected goals for.
When the stakes were at their highest, this team responded. A lot of credit deserves to be given to the team’s best players. The swagger and way Claude Giroux, Tim Stützle, and Brady Tkachuk played was incredible. Their inspiring performances helped drag their teammates to follow their lead.
Ottawa’s playoff odds have essentially doubled over the last 48 hours clocking in at 12.3 percent as of this morning per Hockeyviz’s model. Sitting five points back of the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Eastern Conference’s second wild card seed does not seem like an insurmountable task, but three teams currently separate Ottawa from nabbing that spot.
Nevertheless, Derick Brassard believes the players have earned the right for the general manager to improve this team’s competitiveness at the deadline.
"I honestly think that we've earned the right to … maybe for [general manager] Pierre [Dorion] to add a player at the deadline," Brassard said. "I think, this group, we're trying to get to the next step and we've progressed all year long. We had some tough moments, but the last two months I think our play, it's well deserved for [an addition]. We'll see what Pierre's going to do. I'm sure he's going to try and help us. But I feel like, this group, we're going to go all the way to the end and we're right there.”
Well, what Derick Brassard wants, Derick Brassard gets.
In a massive deal, it announced tonight that the Senators traded a conditional 2023 first-round pick, a conditional second-round pick (that the team previously acquired in the Connor Brown trade), and a 2026 second-round pick to the Arizona Coyotes for defenceman Jake Chychrun.
The conditions of the picks were laid out by the organization in a tweet.
The presence of the conditions speaks largely to management learning from its Matt Duchene experience. If it bottoms out, it has done well to guard against that possibility.
In saying that, the opportunity cost is a relatively significant one, but it was one the organization believed was a sound investment.
Adding Jake Chychrun is a massive boost to the team’s blue line and projecting out, it gives the team the best top-four (Chabot, Zub, Sanderson, and Chychrun) that the team has had since the mid-2000s. It is staggering to think that it has been almost 20 years since the team had a good defence, but this shortcoming is one of the biggest reasons why this team has struggled to sustain success.
Thomas Chabot and Jake Sanderson were two great draft choices, but poor valuations at the professional and amateur levels have caused this organization to spend a ton of draft capital on players who simply have not been able to bolster the blue line. It has essentially been a revolving door of defencemen who simply do not spend more than a season or two.
In Chychrun, the Senators add a quality option that checks a lot of boxes. Not only can he defend against top competition, but he also has an offensive element to his game too.
Through 36 games played this season, Chychrun has scored seven goals and compiled 28 points.
Despite playing on one of the league’s weakest teams in Arizona, Chychrun’s shot and goal metrics are really strong. Of the Arizona regulars who have logged more than 120 minutes of five-on-five ice time, he is the only skater in which the Coyotes have a positive shot rate (50.41 CF%) when he is on the ice. The Coyotes’ expected goal percentage does dip (48.36 xGF%) below the 50 percent mark, but it is still one of the strongest marks on the team. And, in terms of the percentage of the actual goals, the Coyotes have scored 58.33 percent of the total goals (GF%) when Chychrun has been on the ice.
Echoing that data, Hockeyviz shows that Chychrun’s isolated impacts on both sides of the puck are beneficial to his club.
Aside from the on-ice value, Chychrun’s contract brings back a ton of cost certainty and that carries a lot value.
After this season, he has another two years left on the six-year contract that he signed in 2018 which carries an average annual value of $4.6 million. Chychrun will earn $5.4 million ($1.0M signing bonus + $4.4M base salary) and $7.0 million ($1.0M signing bonus + $6M base salary) in real money over the next two seasons. Chychrun is slated to hit unrestricted free agency following the 2024-25 season.
What makes this deal important is that Pierre Dorion added a soon-to-be 25-year-old (his birthday is March 31st) whose age meshes incredibly well with the team’s young core. Like Alex DeBrincat, they represent a departure from the past when the organization would routinely flip draft picks to bring in older players who were exiting or had already exited the prime years of their careers.
Chychrun’s young and he’s not an inconsequential player. Adding a capable defender at this reasonable cap hit was a no-brainer.
Ignoring the possibility of the Senators pushing for a playoff spot this season, on paper, Chychrun should solidify the top four and give this young core a chance to compete. From what we know about modern aging curves and realizing that the average NHL player’s prime is between 22 and 27 years of age, the Senators needed to maximize the best years of its young core. Considering how this team’s best young players, Tim Stützle and Jake Sanderson being the exceptions, fit in this age range, the time to strike now makes sense.
Despite the depth of a well-regarded 2023 draft class, the likelihood that their protected first-rounder or either of the two second-round picks that they moved today would have helped the team significantly in the next two to four years was smaller. Significantly smaller than the value that Chychrun will bring to the fold during this period of time.
That isn’t to say that there are no risks involved either.
As a natural left defenceman, Chychrun’s addition means that either he or Jake Sanderson will have to switch to their off-side. Both players have experience doing it, but for Sanderson, he has never done it at the professional level. Interestingly, Chychrun’s most common defensive partner this season was Shayne Gostisbehere and it was Gostisbehere who wound up playing the majority of those minutes on his off-side.
There will have to be an adjustment, especially since Chychrun has been held out of Arizona’s games since their February 10th match against the Blackhawks. It may take him time to acclimate himself to a new team and defensive partner, but if there are sustained issues with a player playing his off-side, it could open the door to fans wondering whether the team should have targeted a natural right defenceman instead. On the other hand, having one of Sanderson or Chychrun on the right side cannot be worse than what Hamonic has contributed in his top-four minutes this season. According to Evolving-Hockey’s metrics, Hamonic has been one of the least valuable defencemen in the league this season. Reducing his minutes and responsibilities and giving them to Chychrun should be incredibly beneficial to the Senators.
With a thinning farm system that has graduated a ton of talent to the parent level, trading a lot of high-draft picks now could wind up coming back to haunt the team. Re-signing Alex DeBrincat and Jake Chychrun could help curb those concerns, but if either player elects to leave, the chances of recouping what Ottawa gave up today will be small.
What surprised me the most about today’s news wasn’t the trade itself. Pierre Dorion has never been shy about trading draft capital for players he believed could help this team’s competitiveness. What was surprising was that, given his uncertain future as the general manager, he has been allowed to move as many high-draft picks as he has over the past several days.
Then again, if Dorion recognizes the likelihood that his days are numbered, he and the board probably don’t really care too much about this team’s long-term prospects. I doubt today’s deal really changes Dorion’s long-term future with this club, but what it represents is him pushing all the chips in to give this team’s young core a better chance to compete — not just for the remainder of the 2022-23 season, but for the next two seasons as well.
Whenever the Senators had been previously linked to Chychrun it was commonplace for the rumour mongers to suggest that the Coyotes were pushing hard for a return featuring names like Ridly Greig, Shane Pinto and goaltender Mads Sogaard. Looking at how this season has played out and how Ottawa’s season has been carried by special teams and a top-heavy lineup, it was important for the organization not to give up inexpensive quality young talent. (As an aside, this may reflect poorly on a number of prospects that the Senators have drafted. Some of the draft picks that Ottawa moved are quite far away, so it’s curious that the Coyotes would have preferred some already drafted prospects — Jacob Bernard-Docker, Lassi Thomson, Tyler Boucher, etc.)
To make the deal that it did today without giving up Greig or Pinto was huge considering how both players should play large roles during this team’s window of competitiveness.
Other News and Notes:
Following today’s trade, I was looking at how Erik Brannstrom and Travis Hamonic have fared as a pairing. Using Evolving-Hockey’s defensive pairing tool, I found that they had only logged 24:48 of five-on-five ice time together this season. It really is too small of a sample size to glean anything really important from, but for those wondering, the Senators have fared really well with those two on the ice. The Senators have generated 63.27 percent of the total shots (CF%), 56.21 of the total shots on goal (SF%), 67.1 percent of the total goals (GF%), and 72.5 percent of the expected goals (xGF%).
Speaking of Hamonic, I was curious to see whether there was any news of an injury that he suffered getting tangled up with Moritz Seider last night. Hamonic would return in the third period, but he only took five shifts and four of them lasted 32 seconds or less.
Mads Sogaard was named the NHL’s ‘Rookie of the Month’ for February. The goaltender posted a 4-0-1 record with a 2.33 goals-against average and .922 save percentage in six appearances. Sogaard becomes the second Senator to receive the honour after Shane Pinto was named the ‘Rookie of the Month’ for October.
The Senators announced that Chychrun will wear the number six on his jersey.
Spitballing here, but now that the Senators’ top four is solidified for the future, I wonder if the Senators would do well to try and move some of their Belleville prospects like JBD or Lassi. Since the third pairing is the only place where there is a real opening on the roster next season, both prospects may provide more value to the organization as a trade chip than as a long-term piece. Mind you, if Arizona preferred the draft pick capital to pieces that were closer to playing as NHL regulars, maybe that’s a sign of how the rest of the league values some of Ottawa’s prospects.
Sens need some cheap contracts to provide depth given that they will be close to the cap. For that reason, JBD would be on my Sens roster next season, for sure. I am less certain about Lassi.