For the New Ottawa Senators Regime, The Clock Starts Now

In the dog days of summer, after a winter of patience and evaluation, the Ottawa Senators' new ownership and management team have finally put their own stamp on the club and given fans something to talk about. 

A vision for this team is now forming – a roster that combines hope, balance, reliable goaltending, and the right players slotted into the right roles. GM Steve Staios and his management team have cleared the decks of pretty much every ill-fitting prospect or roster player; cost be damned.

Some off-season moves, like the trade for Linus Ullmark, have been slam dunks. Others, like the Jakob Chychrun deal, have been underwhelming, at least on the surface. Online general managers love to declare each trade a winner or a loser based on statistics, free of any context like cap space, roster fit, upcoming contract negotiations, or overall team need. 

So instead of going through each trade, signing, and draft pick one by one and stamping it with approval or disdain, let’s imagine that every move this off-season was part of one giant trade, and let’s see if the Senators are better off now than at the end of last season. 

For the sake of simplicity, we've ignored some of the smaller or minor-league moves.

Out ($20.885 Million in Salary, 15.885 million not counting buyouts and retention):

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In ($16.5 million in salary):

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So whether you think this is a good change or not, it’s clear that management has prioritized acquiring role players and steady veteran leaders who play the right way and are appropriately slotted throughout the lineup. 

Could they have gotten more for Chychrun? Did they have to let Brannstrom go for nothing? Did they have to add a sweetener for St. Louis to take a useful speedster like Mathieu Joseph? 

Maybe not, but the moves still look like a major step in the right direction for a cohesive unit that plays the right way. The team now has the 2023 Vezina winner in net, proper veteran leadership in the bottom six, a steadying right-shot defenceman, and a coach with no interest in country club shenanigans. There's even a little cap flexibility if they need another body or two. 

The new regime has shown that patience, process, and low-key moves are the order of the day now. It’s a welcome change from making splashy, impulsive moves that don't fit.

Patience is a tough ask of this fanbase, one that watched their team be mostly competitive for a 20-year span from 1996-97, when the Sens made the playoffs for the first time, to the magical run to the Eastern Conference Final in 2017. 

In that 20-year window, the Senators made the playoffs 16 times, including 11 in a row. They won a President's Trophy in 2003, made three conference finals, and one Stanley Cup final. These are startling numbers for a franchise that has become the poster child for mediocrity since then. Only missing the playoffs four times in 21 seasons sounds pretty good after sitting out the last seven. 

That’s to say nothing of the countless “this could only happen to the Senators” moments like Ubergate, criminal charges against Alex Formenton, a gambling suspension for Shane Pinto, losing a first-round pick in the Dadonov trade boondoggle, and the long, dragged-out sale of the team that helped derail the season.

With all that, one of the great sins of the Senators franchise in the last several years has been an odd mix of procrastination and not being patient enough. 

The Sens probably waited too long to sign Mark Stone, then made a poor trade. They kept DJ Smith and Pierre Dorion for about two seasons too long. The Sens were eager to go big-game hunting, so they traded multiple high picks for Matt Duchene, Alex DeBrincat, and Chychrun without really confirming they had any chance to keep them or how they would fit on the roster. In hindsight, no one would trade a 4th, 7th, and 14th overall pick for less than a year and a half of each player and the returns they brought back on the way out the door. 

The Sens bet big on large contracts for Joonas Korpisalo and Matt Murray, all while losing multiple goalies who became useful somewhere else. Meanwhile, their own crease imploded season after season. 

It seems like every bet and big swing, outside of the Erik Karlsson trade, quickly blew up in their face.

So what happens when an impatient fanbase collides with a brand new management team that's committed to patience, process, making decisions based on sober observation, instilling a vision and culture, willing to torch the season in the name of research, and not scrambling for change-for-the-sake-of-change after a protracted sales process? 

You get online discourse that essentially amounts to fans screaming, “Do something!” 

With all due respect to interim coach Jacques Martin and fourth-liner Boris Katchouk, their additions didn’t really count as "doing something." Unfortunately, this team’s Achilles heel in this sorry stretch has been that they’ve been all too willing to “do something” without an eye for the future. 

Now, a vision is taking shape, and the judgment can truly begin this season. This management has now put its stamp on this team...with a sledgehammer. So, they shouldn't be judged for taking their time. They should be judged only by results. Does that mean playoffs next season? Who knows? But there’s a clearer path to them now than there has been. 

The stock has been taken, the expendables have been exiled, and new players and staff have arrived to foster a more clearly defined paradigm of winning culture. 

Steve Staios and Michael Andlauer’s vision has now taken its first step towards reality, and the clock starts now.