The Senators added some veteran depth in the offseason
After months of sitting on the sidelines while seemingly every other team fought for the Stanley Cup, Pierre Dorion has made up for lost time in the past month. Ottawa has made numerous signings and trades, bringing in higher-end talents such as Matt Murray and Evgenii Dadonov, and plenty more of depth additions, including Alex Galchenyuk, Austin Watson, and Erik Gudbranson.
It’s the latter group I want to focus on today, as Murray and Dadonov are the types of players that should immediately make the team better and were acquired at a reasonable cost. The depth additions though are much less certain, and there’s an inherent risk in the sheer volume of the moves Dorion has made.
To better understand these risks, we’ll weigh the pros and cons of the moves.
Pro: The team is better
While the depth additions don’t move the needle in the way a Murray or a Dadonov do, they’re mostly capable lower-end players who should provide a slight boost to Ottawa’s on-ice performance.
That would be much needed as the 2019-20 team was atrocious. Last season, Ottawa finished 30th overall, ahead of only the historically bad Red Wings. Mind you, the depth additions are not good per se, and Ottawa still projects to finish near the bottom of the standings in 2020-21, but even in lost seasons you need to ice a lineup every game, and the team now has more options to put the best 20 players forward every night.
An added bonus is that while the additions will make the team marginally better, they shouldn’t be good enough to move the team out of a good draft slot, meaning Sens fans can look forward to a year of reading every article and watching every highlight of projected 2021 first overall pick Aatu Raty.
Con: What about the kids?
As the team constantly reminds us, The Kids Are Alright. More than alright actually, they are among the best in the league. But at some point, this potential needs to translate into NHL success, and with more veterans slotting into lineup spots, there are less and less available slots for the team’s top prospects.
The increasing uncertainty surrounding the 2020-21 AHL season only adds to these concerns, as Ottawa may have to get creative to find the spots for their youngsters to play. So far they’ve been content with loaning players such as Vitalii Abramov and Filip Chlapik overseas, but if that’s the long-term plan we’re then looking at 18 months of players not playing within the organization.
It’s possible the NHL comes up with a variation of the ‘taxi squad’ we saw in the MLB this season, which would allow for prospects to spend time with the big club even if there isn’t a spot for them in the lineup. But until that happens, we’re left with many questions about how this unique situation will impact player development.
Pro: There will be injuries
This seems like an odd factor to consider positive, but injuries are a fact of life in the NHL and, especially in a potentially truncated season where some players have been off for nearly one year, you can never have too much depth.
Last season, injuries to Christian Wolanin and Anders Nilsson, the latter of whom still hasn’t recovered, opened the door for Erik Brannstrom and Marcus Hogberg to play 31 and 24 games respectively. Already this season, top prospect Tim Stuetzle is questionable for the start of training camp, and it’s a safe bet at least a couple of projected starters will be unavailable for the start of the season, whenever it gets underway.
Even though there does not seem to be enough space for many of Ottawa’s prospects to make an impact this season, the wear and tear of the NHL all but guarantees that plenty of them will get to spend significant time with the big club when spots open up.
Con: Long-term impact
Ottawa still seems to be at least one season away from being a legitimate playoff contender, so the fact that some high-end prospects might not make the team this season may not be a big deal, but what about 2021-22 and beyond?
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Many of the recent depth pickups are signed beyond, meaning they’re unlikely to be one-and-dones in Ottawa.
Josh Brown is signed through 2022, Austin Watson through 2023, with an ugly off-ice situation that makes shipping him out even more difficult, and Nikita Zaitsev is making $4.5 million against the cap through 2024. It’s certainly possible some or all of these players finish out their contracts elsewhere, but Ottawa would need to find a partner for the trade and depending on their on-ice performance, may have to include something of value as well to get them off their books.
So after weighing the pros and cons, what does that leave us with? The cons would suggest that Ottawa was locked themselves into a number of mediocre players at the expense of letting young talent thrive, but the pros demonstrate the team actually has a lot more flexibility than meets the eye.
In the end, I think I’m more or less on board with the team’s general trend of signing veterans to improve its depth, but I still have some very real concerns about where the team’s top prospects will play next season.