The Ottawa Senators’ 2023-24 season has been defined by patience. Michael Andlauer had to be patient when the sale of the team took far longer than expected, only taking ownership days before the season began. He needed patience after the NHL stripped the Senators of a first-round pick following the Evgenii Dadonov trade, which led to general manager Pierre Dorion being fired. Steve Staios also had to be patient in finding a new general manager, and after nearly two months, named himself and Dave Poulin as the duo to lead the front office. Before that, he had to fire head coach D.J. Smith, naming coaching consultant Jacques Martin as the interim head coach – a replacement still hasn’t been named.
Every step under Andlauer has been done carefully and methodically. Even trades have been few and far between despite reports that Staios was one of the most active general managers at the trade deadline. But with the season winding down and the Senators again outside the playoffs, the situation is starting to pick up.
On Apr. 6, Staios announced that two scouts, Jim Clark and Rob Murphy, had been let go. This seems like a minor change, but Murphy was the organization’s head pro scout, a position he took over from Clark at the beginning of the season, and both were former directors of scouting. This might be the beginning of something big.
According to the Ottawa Sun’s Bruce Garrioch, “It’s expected there will be more changes to the Senators’ scouting staff before the NHL draft in June. Staios wants to put his stamp on the team, so he’ll bring in his own trusted advisors” (from “THE BREAKDOWN: Ottawa Senators officially eliminated from playoffs with loss to Devils,” Ottawa Sun, 06/04/2024).
The 2024 NHL Draft could be one of the most important dates for the Senators since 2020 when they had the third and fifth overall selections. Those two picks, used to select Tim Stutzle and Jake Sanderson, propelled the rebuild forward, but the previous management group didn’t finish the job they started, adding roster players before completing the process. That job now falls to Staios and company, and their patience is exactly what the Senators need to succeed in the future.
Senators Scouting Department Needs Help
At one point, the Senators had one of the best farm systems in the NHL, but those days are long gone. The Hockey Writers’ Best Farm System Ranked placed Ottawa 32nd overall – although that’s partly due to several recent graduates like Stutzle, Sanderson, and Ridly Greig, it’s mostly thanks to a misguided strategy of trading away high picks or using them to draft role players with limited potential.
In 2021, Tyler Boucher was taken 10th overall, and then in 2022 and 2023, Ottawa’s first-round picks were traded for Alex DeBrincat and Jakub Chychrun. It also hasn’t helped that, since 2020, the Senators have traded 10 second and third-round picks for practically nothing; of everything acquired in those deals, only Travis Hamonic and Tyler Kleven remain.
The pro scouting side hasn’t been much better. Last season, the team acquired Chychrun, DeBrincat, and Cam Talbot, all of whom were expected to give the franchise a major boost, but they didn’t mesh well with the team, leading to DeBrincat being dumped to the Detroit Red Wings, Talbot walking in free agency, and Chychrun appearing in numerous trade rumours. That season also saw the Senators dump Matt Murray, acquired the previous season, and Nikita Zaitsev, acquired in 2019-20.
There were bright spots during the Dorion era. Mathieu Joseph has generally done well in his given roles, and Claude Giroux has meshed with the core nicely. Shane Pinto has also emerged as a valuable player despite the criticism of his draft selection. However, there’s just been too many blunders that have stripped the team of any rebuilding momentum.
There are good signs, though. Staios made just one move at the 2024 Trade Deadline, moving Vladimir Tarasenko for a fourth-round pick in 2024 and a third-round pick in 2025 and picking up Boris Katchouk on waivers. A week later, he moved a 2024 sixth-round pick for Jamieson Rees and future considerations for Wyatt Bongiovanni, two older prospects who still have some intriguing potential, even if that’s just as leaders in the American Hockey League (AHL). These aren’t big moves, but they hint at a shift in priorities that has helped some of the more successful rebuilds.
Staios Takes a Lot of Lessons From Yzerman
There are a lot of similarities between the Senators and Red Wings. They both began their rebuild around the same time – Detroit started in 2016-17, and Ottawa followed suit a season later – and both have struggled with consistency over the last few years. Staios has also been described as “…an extremely engaging, bright and friendly guy, but the minute you start pressing him for hockey-related information, he does an excellent job of putting up a wall,” which is exactly the way Steve Yzerman handles business in Detroit (from “Senators mailbag: Reasons for hope, and what has new ownership brought to Ottawa?” The Athletic, 28/03/2024).
However, there are two major differences between the two franchises. The first is obvious – the Red Wings have a far superior farm system. Their prospect pool was ranked 4th in Logan Horn’s Farm System Ranking, boasting top prospects like Marco Kasper, Simon Edvinsson, Nate Danielson, and Sebastian Cossa, who will join Dylan Larkin, Moritz Seider, and Lucas Raymond in the NHL soon. The team also has found underrated stars in Jake Walman, Alex Lyon, Robby Fabbri, and Daniel Sprong through trades and free agency.
But the Red Wings have such a good farm system because of their commitment to development in the front office. Detroit has Kris Draper and Shawn Horcoff serving as assistant general managers, three people in player development, six pro scouts, seven amateur scouts plus a chief amateur scout, five European scouts, and a head of goaltending scouting and development. That’s 25 people involved in scouting, drafting, and developing prospects. Ottawa, on the other hand, has 15.
Related: 4 Senators Who Won’t Be Back Next Season
Not every NHL team needs such a large group working to build a competitive roster, but when you prioritize development, a bigger team is usually better. Detroit has long valued finding top players in the later rounds (Pavel Datsyuk, Henrik Zetterberg, Tomas Holmstrom, Gustav Nyquist, and Darren Helm were all picked after the third round) and waiting until those prospects are absolutely ready to take an NHL roster spot. Staios, as the general manager of the Ontario Hockey League’s (OHL) Hamilton Bulldogs, had one of the biggest scouting staffs in the league, employing 10 scouts in his last season with the team. There’s little doubt that he’ll continue that practice in the NHL, and that’s a great sign for the Senators.
Teams That Work Together Win Together
But maybe Staios’ most Yzerman-like attribute is his ability to bring in the right people for the job, whether they are big names or not. On top of Horcoff and Draper, the Red Wings’ staff includes Nicklas Lidstrom, Nicklas Kronwall, Dan Cleary, Jiri Fischer, Chris Yzerman (Steve’s brother), and Kirk Maltby, all of whom played with Yzerman at some point in his career. There’s also a strong contingent of former Red Deer Rebels, featuring Wallin, Boyd Gordon, and Bryce Thoma. Yzerman has prioritized hiring people he knows he can work well with or others can work well with.
Andlauer is doing something similar in Ottawa, bringing in Staios and Poulin, two people he’s known for years, and Staios, in turn, brought in Dale McTavish, a former player, and Mason McTavish’s father, sometime before the trade deadline. Although the two haven’t worked together, their sons played on the Bulldogs in junior, which likely resulted in a connection.
Staios is also good at recognizing talent; he allegedly shoulder-tapped Don Boyd, who has been with the team since 2013-14, to take over as the head amateur scout. Boyd worked with the Columbus Blue Jackets as the director of amateur scouting from 1999-2005, and he tried to convince GM Doug MacLean to select Anze Kopitar instead of Gilbert Brule sixth overall. He wasn’t the only one who saw Kopitar’s potential, but according to MacLean, he was the most passionate about it.
Every NHL executive brings in their friends. Kyle Dubas has notoriously hired multiple people from the Soo Greyhounds and signed former players he managed. But, until now, the Senators under Dorion chased high-profile names to try and boost the franchise’s reputation among the rest of the NHL. There was very much an us-against-the-world mentality under him, which led to many missteps, most infamously the trade that led to his firing. Staios and Andlauer, on the other hand, have reached out to former players who have felt slighted in the past and are trying to rebuild those connections.
Now, the Senators are looking ahead to 2024-25 and have identified several areas that need work. Goalies, defence, scoring, and coaching all come to mind as priorities. But Staios & company have smartly decided that the first steps are to get a competent, cohesive front office in place first, which just goes to show that this group is addressing the right issues first. Those beliefs and attitudes trickle down. If the team believes it is well-run, that will likely influence how the on-ice product performs. It’s no coincidence that volatile ownership creates poor teams, and that, thankfully, looks like it will be a thing of the past in Ottawa.