The 2001 trade with the New York Islanders was not only one of the best in Sens history, but it also continues to produce in 2026.
It's been more than 25 years since the Ottawa Senators traded Alexei Yashin to the New York Islanders in one of the most important deals in franchise history.
Yashin was the Senators' first real star in the 1990s, and still the only player in team history to be nominated for the Hart Trophy.
But after many seasons of discontent, which included contract complaints, holdouts and claims of broken promises, the Senators, just as they did this summer, traded away their team captain.
And incredibly, it's a trade that still has a chance to pay dividends today.
On June 23, 2001, the Senators sent Yashin to the Islanders in exchange for Zdeno Chara, Bill Muckalt and the second overall pick in the 2001 NHL Draft.
Later that day, the Sens used that #2 pick to select Jason Spezza.
Chara emerged as one of the NHL's top defencemen during his four seasons in Ottawa, while Spezza developed into one of the most talented offensive players in franchise history.
Chara eventually left Ottawa as a free agent in 2006, and Muckalt spent just one season here, so two of the three branches of the Yashin trade tree came to an end a long time ago.
But the Spezza branch is still alive.
Spezza played 11 excellent seasons with the Senators, scoring 251 goals and 687 points in 686 regular-season games. He still ranks second all-time in Sens scoring.
In the summer of 2014, in the proud tradition of Sens captains wanting out, Spezza requested a trade, and Bryan Murray sent him to the Dallas Stars.
The Senators received Alex Chiasson, Nick Paul, Alex Guptill and a 2015 second-round draft pick.
That created four new branches on the Yashin trade tree.
Three eventually came to an end.
Chiasson spent two seasons in Ottawa before being traded to Calgary for Patrick Sieloff, who's best known for clobbering a recovering Clarke MacArthur in a preseason scrimmage. The Senators later flipped Sieloff to Anaheim for Brian Gibbons, who had 14 points in 20 games for the Sens before leaving as a free agent that summer.
Guptill was included in a multi-player trade with Buffalo in 2016 that brought Phil Varone, Jason Akeson and Jerome Gauthier-Leduc to Ottawa. It was strictly a minor league deal that never yielded another asset to the Senators.
The 2015 second-round pick acquired from Dallas also took an interesting path.
Ottawa packaged the 42nd overall selection with another pick to move up to No. 36 in the 2015 draft, where the Senators selected Gabriel Gagne.
Gagne was eventually traded to Toronto in 2019 for former first-rounder Morgan Klimchuk. Klimchuk played one full season in Belleville, then retired at 25.
That left Nick Paul, the fourth and final branch. Teammates would often say, "Nicky Paul does it all," and that apparently included nursing trade trees back to life.
The tree could have easily died at any point when the Sens exposed Paul to waivers on three separate occasions, but he went unclaimed and eventually became a very solid middle-six forward for the Senators.
In a trade that certainly hasn't aged well for Ottawa, the Sens deal Paul to the Tampa Bay Lightning at the 2022 trade deadline for Mathieu Joseph and Tampa Bay's fourth-round pick in the 2024 NHL Draft.
Joseph spent two more full seasons with the Senators before Ottawa traded him to St. Louis in 2024 along with a third-round sweetener just to free up some cap room for some big changes in Ottawa that summer.
That ended the Joseph portion of the tree.
But there was still that 2024 fourth-round pick, a single remaining bud.
The Sens used it to select winger Blake Montgomery, and he's the sole reason why a trade tree that sprouted in 2001 is still alive today.
After falling in the NCAA Final with Wisconsin, the 21-year-old joined the pro ranks late last season, signing his entry-level contract and getting into three games with Belleville.
So, in a nutshell (I've decided the tree has nuts), the history of the Spezza branch looks like this:
Alexei Yashin → 2001 No. 2 pick → Jason Spezza → Nick Paul → 2024 fourth-round pick → Blake Montgomery.
It's one of the more intriguing trade trees in Senators history, and whether it ends with Montgomery or not remains to be seen.
By Steve Warne
The Hockey News
This article was first published in The Hockey News. For more Sens coverage at The Hockey News, click on one of the Sens headlines below:
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