“Boat just sank,” headlined the Ottawa Sun on Monday. “Disastrous weekend,” read theathletic.com.
It’s like today finally realizing the inevitable: the Ottawa Senators will likely miss the playoffs for a sixth straight year.
With just five games left in the regular season, Ottawa is six points behind the Pittsburgh Penguins and the last playoff spot, and five points behind the Florida Panthers, the first club excluded.
This is an acknowledgment of failure due to the efforts made by general manager Pierre Dorion for a year to skip a few steps in the reconstruction of the team.
Dorion, we recall, gave up his seventh overall pick and his 39th pick, at the start of the second round, in 2022, and a third-round pick in 2024 for Alex DeBrincat.
Then, last month, with still some hope of participating in retail, Dorion gave up his 2023 first-round pick, a 2024 second-round pick and a 2026 second-round pick for highly talented defenseman Jakob Chychrun. , but unfortunately often injured. Despite arriving, Ottawa went 4-6-1… before seeing Chychrun fall in battle again on March 23.
The management of the guards did not help. We bet on a 35-year-old athlete in fragile health, Cam Talbot, obtained for a 24-year-old goaltender on the rise, Filip Gustavsson, 24, 20-9-6, 2.03 GAA and save rate. .932 saves at Minnesota this season.
Dorion’s decisions will not have dramatic consequences in the medium term since DeBrincat, 62 points, including 26 goals, in 77 games, but record of -29, is only 25 years old and Chychrun 25 years old.
On the other hand, despite a sum of 6.4 million on the salary cap, DeBrincat receives 9 million this year. It will therefore be necessary to offer him this sum to retain his services at the end of the season, unless we agree on a longer term with him, one year from his complete autonomy.
Will the new owners want to pay a hefty salary to a striker whose production has dropped from 41 to 26 goals and whose numerically equal vulnerability is known? He could therefore only have one year left with the Senators.
Chychrun is still under contract for another two years at a very reasonable annual salary of 4.6 million. But he will have played only 48 games this season, one more than the previous season. He has played an average of 60 games per year since the start of his career seven years ago (the years cut short by the pandemic have been adjusted pro rata to an 82-game season).
Was Dorion in too much of a hurry? Hard to deny it. But his decisions can be defended. Its core, with Josh Norris, Tim Stützle and Shane Pinto in the center, Brady Tkachuk, Drake Batherson on the wings, Jake Sanderson and Thomas Chabot in defense, all aged 26 and under, was already formed.
The Senators GM was also experiencing pressure that his counterparts in Detroit and Buffalo, two rebuilding organizations like him, weren’t facing: the impending arrival of a new owner. One can understand a general manager hoping for quick favorable results to impress his new bosses.
Without pressure, so without sacrificing draft picks, the Red Wings and Sabers struggled like the Senators for a playoff spot for most of the winter. Buffalo even leads Ottawa by one point, with two games in hand, and Detroit is down three points, with one more game to play.
The Red Wings were able to draft eighth overall in 2022 young Austrian center Marco Kasper. He has just been recalled to Detroit after a promising season of 23 points in 53 games in the Swedish first division (SHL) and we can see him at work against the Canadian on Tuesday evening.
Not only do they have their own 2023 first-round pick at No. 11, but they also have an additional first-round pick at No. 17 (from the Canucks, previously acquired from the Islanders) for defenseman Filip Hronek , an additional 2024 first-round pick for Tyler Bertuzzi, traded to the Bruins at the trade deadline, and they hold three second-round picks this summer.
Despite an already impressive core of young players, led by Rasmus Dahlin, Owen Power, Tage Thompson and Dylan Cozens, among others, the Sabers have been drafted three times in the first round in 2022, including twice in the top-16. They still hold their 2023 first-round pick, located around No. 13, and three second-round picks.
Ottawa didn’t draft until No. 64 in 2022, with the second-to-last second-round pick. And unless they make a trade by then, they won’t have a draft pick until the fourth round this summer. For the sustainability of an organization, this is a huge void, especially for a team that has not made the playoffs since 2017.
Some are now clinging to the slim hope of seeing Ottawa sink further in the standings so as to enter the lottery. The first-round pick offered for Chychrun is indeed transferable to 2024 if he is in the top five.
Right now, they hold a 2.9% chance of winning the lottery and moving up from 12th to 2nd place, and 2.4% of winning second prize and moving up from 12th to 3rd place.
The Senators also have a slim chance of picking first place if they are topped in the standings by a team among Washington, St. Louis and Detroit, all three points behind. Thus, Ottawa would hold 3% of winning the first prize and 3.3% of winning the second prize. Take out the lanterns.
“Some organizations are in too much of a rush to finish their rebuilding,” Arizona Coyotes head coach André Tourigny told our pages on Monday.
Tourigny was not targeting anyone in particular and was not necessarily referring to Ottawa, his former organization. Time will tell if the Senators will fall into this category.
“During a streak on Sunday, four first-round picks, Moritz Seider (2019), Simon Edvinsson (2021), Lucas Raymond (2020) and Marco Kasper (2022) found themselves on the ice at the same time, in a scrum , wrote Kevin Allen on Monday. They held their own in the scrum to recover a puck, even after the officials intervened. We had the future of the Red Wings in front of us. »
There is not much left to eat at the Canadian with the injuries to the best young players Caufield, Slafkovsky, Dach, Guhle, Xhekaj and Harvey-Pinard. On the other hand, it could be interesting to observe Tuesday evening at the Bell Center against the Red Wings the future of a rival club of the Atlantic section. We risk cursing them for the next decade…
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