Ottawa Senators president of hockey operations and general manager (GM) Steve Staios jumped right into the NHL’s free-agent frenzy when it opened on Canada Day. When the dust settled two days later, he had six new players on his roster and had sent eight roster pieces from last season packing.
By now, most if not all the major moves Staios was likely to make this summer have happened. So, it’s time to take stock of his makeover of this team and ask what’s been accomplished.
Projected Roster on Senators’ 2024-25 Opening Night
When the Senators face off against the defending Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers on Oct. 10, here’s what their lineup could be, based on what we know now.
Forward Lines
| Left Wing | Centre | Right Wing |
|---|---|---|
| Brady Tkachuk | Tim Stutzle | Drake Batherson |
| Ridly Greig | Shane Pinto | Claude Giroux |
| Michael Amadio | Josh Norris | David Perron |
| Noah Gregor | Zack Ostapchuk | Zack MacEwan |
Scratches: Angus Crookshank, Matthew Highmore
Defence Pairings
| Jake Sanderson | Artem Zub |
| Thomas Chabot | Nick Jensen |
| Tyler Kleven | Jacob Bernard-Docker |
Scratch: Travis Hamonic
Goalies
Linus Ullmark and Anton Forsberg
By any measure, the Senators’ lineup this season has a much different look. Here’s what I think that could mean for the Senators’ upcoming season.
Senators Add Veteran Experience and Grit to 2024-25 Lineup
Staios always knew he needed to add veteran experience to his club, explaining recently, “As I watched our team last year, I felt like maybe we needed more of that (experience) at times.” With the signing of Perron and Amadio, on July 1, Staios can scratch adding veteran experience off his “To-Do List”.
Perron is a big, gritty left winger and comes with 17 seasons in the league under his belt with six different teams. He plays with an edge and isn’t afraid to mix it up physically. Just ask Artem Zub who he cross-checked in the head during a dust-up in front of the Senators’ net last season. He got a six-game suspension for his trouble.
Related: Senators’ David Perron Was Ideal Free Agency Signing
Even though he is 36 years old, Perron can still play and has notched at least 50 points in almost all of the last five seasons. Not only that, but he knows what it takes to win a Stanley Cup having won one in 2019 with the St. Louis Blues. His two-year contract featuring an average annual value (AAV) of $4 million is good value for the Senators.
Staios added even more veteran talent and grit when he signed 6-foot-1, 185-pound right winger Amadio to a three-year contract with an AAV of $2.6 million. The former Vegas Golden Knight can be expected to put up at least 30 points per season. Like Perron, he too knows what it takes to win Lord Stanley’s silverware having done it in Las Vegas in 2023. During the Golden Knights’ playoff run, he notched 10 points in 16 games.
Staios Fixes Ottawa’s Goaltending Problem – For Now
I’ll say at the outset that I can’t argue with Staios acquiring Ullmark – the Boston Bruins’ 2023 Vezina Trophy winner. To say he’s a massive improvement over former Senators’ starting netminder Joonas Korpisalo is an understatement.
Even so, there are rumblings of unhappiness in the peanut gallery. Perhaps the biggest criticism of the trade is that Ullmark’s contract expires at the end of the season. Twice, Ottawa fans have seen how that movie ends with the departure of Alex DeBrincat last summer and Vladimir Tarasenko at the trade deadline. Both played in Ottawa under one-year contracts and had to be traded before their deals expired. Neither wanted to stay in Ottawa and trades for them didn’t yield much of a return.
I wouldn’t blame Ullmark for not signing an extension with Ottawa right now. He can bide his time, wait to see what kind of team Ottawa truly is and then decide whether he wants to commit. Not only that, but if plays up to expectations this season, he could be tapping Staios for a substantial raise at the trade deadline.
Some fans will argue that the Senators paid too much for Ullmark giving up fourth-line centreman Mark Kastelic, a first-round 2024 draft pick and retaining a quarter of Korpisalo’s salary. Nit-pick all you want, but Kastelic won’t be missed and neither will the first-round draft pick – 25th overall as it turned out to be. What fans should congratulate Staios for was that he managed to dump Korpisalo with Boston picking up the lion’s share of the remaining four-year term of his contract.
Senators’ Overhauled Blue Line
Acquired from the Washington Capitals on July 1, Jensen is a badly needed, stay-at-home right-shot blueliner who’ll be in Ottawa for the next two seasons playing at a reasonable $4 million per year. At 33, he’s a veteran of eight seasons in the league with 592 games under his belt.
Nobody knows for sure, but it’s likely Jensen is coming to town because the Senators lost out in the Chris Tanev and Matt Roy sweepstakes. Even so, he brings stability to the Senators’ blue line. He’ll guard the front door and allow Chabot to open up offensively assuming that’s the pairing the Senators choose for him.
Some will grieve the departure of Jakob Chychrun as part of the deal for Jensen, but what choice did Staios have but to ship him out of Bytown? He made it clear that he didn’t want to be in Ottawa. What’s more, he was a left-shot defenceman in a roster seemingly awash in them.
Not only that, but Chychrun was all about offence. He was the sixth-highest point-getter on the roster, but had one of the worst plus/minus records in the league at minus-30. That puts him among the NHL’s 10 worst defencemen on that measure.
Staios Adds Depth to Senators’s Bottom-Six
Coming into free agency, the Senators knew they had to add some firepower to their third and fourth lines. Its dearth was glaring last season with the bottom-six marking up the scoresheet for just six percent of the team’s total points. Successful teams in the NHL have a bottom-six that poses a scoring threat.
With the addition of Perron, Gregor and Amadio, the Senators’ bottom-six added a trio of forwards who notched 86 points between them last season. That’s more than double the total that all players who toiled on Ottawa’s third and fourth lines recorded.
Staios Puts Pinto Saga to Rest
With the signing of Pinto to a new deal on July 2, Staios put an end to the long-running Pinto contract drama. With the deal, Staios has secured his core of Tkachuk, Stutzle, Norris, Batherson, Chabot, Sanderson and Kleven.
Rumour has it that the two sides couldn’t get a long-term deal done so they signed a two-year bridge deal that will pay the young gun $2.5 million this season and $5 million next. That’s probably a good spot for the Senators to be in. Management can see what they’ve got before carrying on what seemed to be a tradition with former Senators GM Pierre Dorion. That is, handing out eight-year, $8 million per year contracts like candy to kids who showed promise, but hadn’t yet proved anything in the NHL.
Besides, what was Pinto going to do other than sign a deal with Ottawa? He was a 10.2(c) restricted free agent (RFA) and as such had no right to arbitration. His agent, Lewis Gross, who seems to love negotiating via the media, tried to coax other teams into pitching an offer sheet to Pinto. Yet if they had, they would have been forced to give up a first and third-round draft selection to sign him. Besides, there seems to be a gentlemen’s agreement among NHL GMs that they won’t poach each others’ RFAs. It just never happens.
Staios Quietly Took Care of Business in 2024 Free Agency
By the end of the first week of July, Staios had made the moves his team needed him to make. Gone were players the likes of Erik Brannstrom, Dominik Kubalik, Korpisalo and Mathieu Joseph who never lived up to expectations. Bottom-six players like Parker Kelly and Kastelic were replaced with better ones bringing much-needed scoring depth and experience to Ottawa.
Staios managed to do it all without the chaos and overblown promises that marked the off-season during many of the Dorion years. He’s done a solid job so far this summer in fixing the previous management’s mistakes. The team today is better than it was when the season ended in April.
Now, including Norris, Staios has 11 forwards under contract who are sure bets to make his roster. So, does he continue pursuing free agents with the $2 million in cap space he has left? Or does he stay with the talent he has and leave a few spots open on his roster to see if any prospects in Belleville can play their way into a full-time job with the big club?
Stay tuned.
