Brannstrom played 266 games for the Senators, all in the shadow of the Mark Stone trade.
Ottawa Senators defenceman Erik Brannstrom was scheduled to be a restricted free agent on July 1st. But the writing was on the wall for him at the NHL Draft.
GM Steve Staios selected three defencemen at the draft: one who was 6 feet 3 inches, one who was 6 feet 4 inches, and the other who was 6 feet 7 inches.
When your GM's first draft haul is filled with nothing but bigger players, that sends a serious message about the kind of team he wants to build. For a player like Brannstrom, one of the smallest players in the NHL, the message is loud.
Teams must extend a qualifying offer to restricted free agents to retain negotiation rights, and they had to be in by 5 p.m. today (June 30). A qualifying offer is a guaranteed one-year deal at the same salary as the last year on their previous contract. For Brannstrom, that's $2 million. And at that price, the Senators decided to pass.
The Senators announced on Sunday the full list of RFAs who've received a qualifying offer and Brannstrom, Parker Kelly and Boris Katchouk were not among them. All three are free to shop their wares elsewhere.
Since Brannstrom is still under club control, some have suggested retaining the asset by re-signing him and then trying to trade him this summer. But it's clear the Sens can't find a trade partner for him at that price.
Today's NHL allows for smaller players to thrive, but you'd better be a highly-skilled offensive dynamo to make up for having zero physical impact when you try to battle. In 266 games in Ottawa, Brannstrom had just seven goals and 69 points, or roughly one point every four games.
Meanwhile, the Sens already have 6 foot 4 defenceman Tyler Kleven, who not only fits right in with the team's new commitment to size, but he's on his entry-level deal and will play for about 50% less than Brannstrom.
It's hard today for Sens fans not to mentally revisit the 2019 Mark Stone trade to Vegas. Regardless of whose idea it was for Stone to leave, he was a Sens cornerstone and would have been extremely valuable to younger players as a mentor during the rebuild. He captained Vegas to a Stanley Cup last year.
The silver lining to trading a player like that is usually the wealth of future prospects or assets you get back. But the Sens ended up with Brannstrom, Egor Sokolov, and Oscar Lindberg, who played 20 games in the NHL and then returned to Sweden for good.
To recap, the best player the Sens could manage to get in return for Mark Stone was Erik Brannstrom, and the new Sens regime just discarded him at age 24.
This article was updated on June 30th at 6:30pm.