After a pair of offseason trades, combined with internal growth, Senators General Manager Steve Staios likes his overall depth up front.
Senators GM Steve Staios spent much of this week making the media rounds, and one question seemed to follow him from interview to interview: Do the Senators have enough scoring?
In his chat with TSN 1200 radio, Staios defended the club's current scoring ability as a team, but admitted he'd like to add a finisher, which is far easier said than done.
"Well, we were eighth in goals for in the National Hockey League last year," Staios said. "On the surface, do we have a pure sniper? I think everybody is sort of looking at that.
"As we continue to build our group, you'd love to add that."
Every GM would, especially one that just had to pull the plug on the Brady Tkachuk show. Tkachuk isn't regarded as one of the game's pure snipers, but he's a proven 30-35 goal man, and in a league where only 14 men scored 40 last season, he's not that far out of the discussion.
Staios is betting that the two-headed solution of William Eklund and Andre Burakovsky will replace the offence that was lost up front. We do know that, at the very least, both of them are far better skaters than Tkachuk, and the NHL Edge numbers bear that out, which will add to the club's speed.
If you've spent any time on social media this month, you'll know that the value of acquiring Burakovsky has left a lot of fans and media members scratching their heads. So when the scoring question was asked of Staios this week, he made a point to try to sell the virtues of Burakovsky, along with some of the club's lower-scoring forwards that he believes are capable of more than they showed last season.
"Burakovsky had a very good start to last season and dropped off," Staios said. "He's also been on two Stanley Cup-winning teams. He continues to add to the depth of the optionality for the coaching staff.
"That process was an interesting one. As we were going through the players that we could A) acquire or B) look at in free agency, and the process that we went through and dug in on this player, including with the coaches as they dug in on film on Burakovsky, and also with the ability that Travis and his coaching staff have had to be able to elevate individual players' games, we feel like there could be a fit there."
"But along with (Burakovsky), again, we have the Foegeles, the Greigs, and the Zetterlunds, and when I look at our board, I'm curious. Because I don't put the lines together but I'm curious to how this all ends because there's certainly a lot of options for coaching staff."
So, along with the additions of Eklund and Burakovsky, there's also going to be some reliance on players improving their numbers. Shane Pinto is probably the biggest name in that discussion. Pinto's four-year deal is worth $7.5 million and kicks in this fall. He's coming off a career-high 46 points and did it with very few looks on the power play, while expending much of his energy and ice time killing penalties and shutting down other teams' best players.
The idea of moving Pinto to second-line centre and sliding Cozens to the wing has been a much-talked-about topic since Cozens played the wing and looked good there at the World Hockey Championships in May.
"That's certainly an option, absolutely." Staios said. "We also have Ridly Greig, who's a natural centreman who's played in the middle coming through. We also have Stephen Halliday now.
"That is an option and something that has been discussed... I think we have a lot of players that can play the middle of the ice, and that's a good thing in our league. I think there's a lot of teams that would love to have those options at centre ice."
The Senators finished 9th overall in the NHL last season and were the 8th highest-scoring team. So by that standard, they're not far away from contending. But the loss of Tkachuk, combined with some big improvements made by other Atlantic teams, has some Sens fans worried that they may take a step back.
Staios has publicly said the Sens won't do that, and if he's right, it will be because the offence lost with Tkachuk has been replaced by committee.
Eklund will need to make an immediate impact, Burakovsky will have to rediscover some of the offence he's shown in the past, and players like Pinto, Greig, Zetterlund and Foegele will need to provide a little more.
Maybe one of them even emerges as the finisher Staios admits he'd still like to add.
For now, though, the Senators appear prepared to find out just how much offence is already sitting on their roster.
By Steve Warne
The Hockey News
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