Ottawa Senators: Grading Pierre Dorion’s 2020 Off-Season Moves

Alex Galchenyuk signed for 1 year, $1.05 million

Why it made sense at the time: Like many of the moves Ottawa made this off-season, they needed to shore up their depth and found an intriguing option for cheap. As a former 3rd overall pick, Galchenyuk still had some of that shine on him, so he seemed like a good player to take a flyer on. Much is made of his 30 goal campaign in 2015-16, but even after that he was a dangerous scorer, putting up 17 the year after that followed by back-to-back years of 19. While his defence has always been a major concern, it wasn’t until last season where he really saw his offence crater, and even then he managed a respectable 8 goals in 59 games.

How it looks so far: Galchenyuk struggled in his brief Sens career, seeing the ice in only 8 games before being shipped out as part of the Ryan Dzingel trade. He put up a solid 51.78 xGF% in all situations, but that was largely propped up by powerplay minutes in the games he did play. He also was only able to tally one pint in those 8 games, and that was a powerplay goal.

Grade: C, as a free agent signed for just over the league minimum, there wasn’t many ways the signing could be bad. It wasn’t but Galchenyuk never really fit in Ottawa and I’m not awarding bonus grades for the Dzingel trade, since I hardly think that was the intention at the time.