Mads Sogaard re-committed this week to an improved but murky Ottawa goaltending situation that's probably still months away from being clarified.
Ottawa Senators goalie Mads Sogaard signed a two-year extension with the club this week. The first year is a two-way deal, but the second is a one-way, meaning he'll make NHL money even if he's still in the AHL in season two.
"They were great to deal with throughout the process, and I'm just excited to be a part of the organization for another two years," Sogaard told TSN 1200 radio this week. "I'm just thankful for the opportunity and now excited to get to work."
While the second year of his new deal provides financial clarity, Sogaard has no idea how the organization might deploy him in 2025-26. No one does. Sogaard might still be in the AHL, a backup in the NHL, or he might be counted on to be Ottawa's new starter in 2025.
His role with the organization, short-term, rests in the hands of newcomer Linus Ullmark.
Sogaard said all the right things about Ullmark's arrival, even though the kid's path to the NHL looks much different than it did before the Senators added the 2023 Vezina Trophy winner to the roster.
"Yeah, (Ullmark) is obviously an extremely talented goalie, and whether I'm going to be in Ottawa or Belleville, I'm still going to have some time to work with him, and I'm going to make sure that I'm being a sponge and just learn as much as possible from a guy like that."
Ullmark and his probable backup, Anton Forsberg, will both be 2025 UFAs, so the door might open wide for Sogaard. However, if Ullmark plays well, loves his life here, and signs an extension in Ottawa, Sogaard will have to get used to, at best, wearing a ball cap for 60 nights a year.
But Ullmark hasn't committed to anything one way or another.
It can't be overlooked that the Senators do have a long recent history of trading away top veteran players in the final years of their contracts: Erik Karlsson, Mark Stone, Matt Duchene, Kyle Turris, J.G. Pageau, Alex DeBrincat, and Jakob Chychrun, to name a few. Some moves were strategic, and some were part of a firesale. Some players had some interest in staying, and some did not.
Will Ullmark's case end up any different?
Who knows? But we'll say this. It's a lot to ask any star player to skip over the open auction of free agency to sign an extension with a team he doesn't know. Some very good things will have to happen this season, on and off the ice.
At the very least, assuming he plays well, Ullmark will likely give the Senators a much-needed morale boost as they attempt to right their ship and learn to play the right way. It may already be too late in some cases, but the Sens' core needs to develop a winner's mindset, and that can't happen by allowing sub-par goaltending to continue for even one more season.
So even if Ullmark ends up being here in a one-year bridge role, there's significant value in that. It restores confidence to a core that's lost a lot of swagger since their draft years. And it takes the club to 2025, when they hope Sogaard may be ready to step into the starter's role.
If Ullmark suddenly doesn't play well, it will at least help with Steve Staios's big-picture evaluation of this team. It will confirm that the Sens' defensive issues run way beyond goaltending, that the core is irredeemably flawed, and that Staios needs to put down his surgeon's knife and pick up a sledgehammer.