The Senators reportedly pursued St. Louis Blues centre Rob Thomas at the deadline. If they revisit the idea this summer, who would might they give up in return?
As relatively nondescript as this year’s iteration of the NHL trade deadline was, one of the more interesting developments comes in the following days when NHL insiders try to shed light on the big swings some organizations took, but ultimately came up short on.
According to Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman, the Senators were one of those teams that were aggressively kicking tires.
Speaking on his ‘32 Thoughts Podcast’ alongside Kyle Bukauskas, Friedman expressed a belief that the Senators were one of the teams that were interested in St. Louis Blues centre Rob Thomas.
“I suspect Ottawa was in on Rob Thomas as well,” stated Friedman.
“I would think that they were around that. There were a lot of reports about (MacKenzie) Weegar. I had mixed responses to how far it went with Weegar in Ottawa, but (Steve) Staios said he tried for some big things. I think Rob Thomas would have been one of them.”
In his post-deadline media availability, general manager Steve Staios certainly acknowledged that he was active in trade talks.
“(We had) plenty of conversations,” the general manager admitted. “We took the approach with this deadline that it was an opportunity, like always, to try and make our team better. We looked at just about everything. At the end of the day, we feel very good about our team, the direction that it's moving, and the way we've been playing more recently.”
If the Senators had an interest in Weegar, it would have made sense.
Although the 32-year-old defenceman is on the wrong side of 30 and has experienced a noticeable dip in performance this season, he is a local hockey product whose individual performance can possibly be explained, at least in part, by the fact that he played for one of the worst hockey teams in the league this season in Calgary.
The Utah Mammoth paid a relatively large price for Weegar, giving up three 2026 second-round picks, forward prospect Jonathan Castagna and veteran defenceman Olli Maatta.
But if there was an opportunity to buy low on Weegar, the Senators certainly could have used another right-shot defenceman. Nick Jensen has generally been ineffective this season, following offseason hip surgery. Jensen is also an impending unrestricted free agent, and with the possibility that Carter Yakemchuk still needs development time to iron out his defensive wrinkles at the AHL level, it made sense to add another veteran with term who could also give the organization the flexibility to be patient with Yakemchuk.
Interestingly, Friedman heard mixed reports on the Senators’ level of interest in Weegar, but given general manager Steve Staios and his staff’s reputation for exhaustively examining options and analyzing the market to determine asking prices and fits, it would make sense for the general manager to do his due diligence before determining whether or not Weegar was an appropriate fit for an appropriate opportunity cost.
Not surprisingly, given some of the relative trade costs that other organizations were comfortable paying for right-shot defencemen, the Senators stood pat on the back end. They elected to retain their limited assets and maintain the status quo.
Up front, the Senators did acquire Warren Foegele from the Los Angeles Kings the day before the trade deadline, but their reported interest in Robert Thomas is fascinating.
The intrigue stems from the fact that one of the Senators’ biggest strengths is its young talent at the centre position. Tim Stützle, Dylan Cozens and Shane Pinto are all 25 years old or younger, and Ridly Greig is a 23-year-old alternative who can play the middle but has been relegated to the wing because of this quality of depth. Stephen Halliday is another young centre who has demonstrated in limited minutes this season that he can be a productive player.
Granted, that interest could simply be another example of the organization performing its due diligence, but given this depth, it is worth asking whether the opportunity to add Robert Thomas and upgrade a team strength would be worth the significant opportunity cost of acquiring him.
That said, Robert Thomas is an incredibly talented two-way player.
The 26-year-old centre has scored 20-plus goals in each of the last two seasons while playing at a point-per-game rate.
- 2023-24: 82 games, 26 goals, 86 points
- 2024-25: 70 games, 21 goals, 81 points
Through 47 games this season, Thomas has tallied 15 goals and 42 points, but his five-on-five goal rate is the highest of his career, and his points per 60 rate (2.52 Pts/60) is higher than his 2023-24 campaign (2.26 Pts/60), but just shy of his 2024-25 mark (2.79 Pts/60).
HockeyViz.com‘s data demonstrates that he’s an incredibly impactful player in both the offensive and defensive zones.
Thomas is more of a playmaker than a finisher, the latter of which the Senators need more of, but Thomas would certainly represent an upgrade. Together with Stützle, he would give the organization two talented point-per-game producers who play responsibly in their own end.
The question is, if the Senators were interested in Thomas, who would go the other way?
Shane Pinto is the team’s shutdown centre, whose offence largely suffers because of his role and his effectiveness in it. He is principally tasked with playing against the opposition’s most skilled lines while exclusively taking defensive zone draws.
Dylan Cozens is arguably experiencing his best year as a professional. Through 63 games, he has recorded 23 goals and 49 points while improving his defensive play.
He is on pace to reach the 30-goal mark for the first time since the 2022-23 season, but Cozens has markedly improved as this season has progressed. Part of the explanation for that may be his adjustment to playing on a physical, hard-on-the-forecheck dump-and-chase line alongside Brady Tkachuk and Ridly Greig.
The Senators have fared exceptionally well when this trio have been on the ice. In 160 five-on-five minutes together per Evolving-Hockey, the Senators have recorded 61.33 percent of the shots (CF%), 65.27 percent of the shots on goal (SF%), 70.45 percent of the total goals (GF%), and 65.49 percent of the expected goals (xGF%).
Of the 83 lines that have logged more than 160 minutes of ice time this season, here is how the Tkachuk-Cozens-Greig line ranks across these metrics:
- 61.33 CF%, 8th
- 65.27 SF%, 1st
- 70.45 GF%, 10th
- 65.49 xGF%, 3rd
They have been incredibly good, but the question the Senators have to ask is whether Cozens is a candidate for regression. It is unmistakable how much of a jump Cozens has had regarding his production on the power play. Although he has looked great from the bumper position, Cozens has 12 goals with the man advantage while only scoring 12 goals across his previous three seasons combined. And, of the players who have logged more than 175 power play minutes, only nine players in the league have a higher shooting percentage than Cozens’ 27.91.
Here is a look at Cozens’ isolated impacts via HockeyViz.
If there are concerns about sustainability or reservations about how much the Senators’ structure or Tkachuk’s play-driving capabilities have benefited Cozens’ numbers, this could be an opportunity for management to recognize these likelihoods and sell high in hopes of landing a better player in Thomas.
With Thomas having four years left on a contract with an $8.125 million average annual value, his contract has the same term left as Cozens’ while costing $1.025 million more.
There is also the added wrinkle that Tkachuk and Thomas are incredibly close friends. It is a relationship that began in Thomas’s first NHL campaign when he was living at the Tkachuk household. Brady’s future in Ottawa has certainly been a topic of discussion, given the post-Olympic media attention of the United States’ gold medal and the fact that he’s an American captain playing for a Canadian franchise. The outside noise has never been louder.
With only two years left on his contract at the conclusion of the 2025-26 season, the attention will inevitably shift to Ottawa’s chances of extending their captain. The addition of Thomas would inevitably help sell the Senators as a viable destination.
t is a conversation that will have to wait for the offseason, however.
Although at his post-deadline availability, Staios noted that he had conversations he could revisit.
“I would say so, yeah,” Staios said while describing how there was groundwork done for prospective deals in the summer.
“There are certainly a lot (of conversations). I don't know what the number was, but I think it was a light year for trades. I didn't really go back and recap at all, but it seemed light. Certainly, when you have these conversations about a possible transaction, and you don't get there a lot of times, those conversations do pick up in the offseason.”
Graeme Nichols
The Hockey News