Will the Ottawa Senators be able to sign Jakob Chychrun to an extension before he hits UFA in 2025?
At the risk of spoiling the Jake Sanderson extension party, it's hard not to let one's mind wander a little to next summer when the Ottawa Senators' salary cap situation might be even trickier than it's been this summer.
The Senators are already in cap trouble at the moment, with less than a million dollars in cap space remaining. And that won't be enough to re-sign Shane Pinto – not without coming up with a creative roster purge first.
Next year, with Sanderson's cap hit going from $925K to $8.05 million, something's gotta give. For example, Vladimir Tarasenko, Dominik Kubalik and Erik Brannstrom will all be looking for new deals. Claude Giroux will be eligible for an extension.
And so will Jakob Chychrun.
If he's finally stomped on the injury bug for good, Chychrun could be part of the club's core group for a long time. But he's an unrestricted free agent in 2025. If he's to forego the open auction of free agency, even though he has strong family ties to Ottawa, he's probably going to want to be paid as well as Chabot and Sanderson at $8 million-ish.
There are already three forwards in Ottawa checking in at around $8 million. So it's hard to believe the Senators will also be able to carry three defencemen at the same pay grade.
At the moment, only 17 defencemen in the entire league have a cap hit of $8 million or more. At a quick glance, it looks like the New York Rangers are the only team with even two (Jacob Trouba and Adam Fox).
Meanwhile, should we read anything into the fact that Sanderson is being paid just a little more than Thomas Chabot? It would be interesting to know which side wanted to leave Sanderson the equivalent of a tip – that extra $50K per season that barely nudges him past Chabot, when it would have been totally painless to pay them exactly the same.
Was it Sanderson's agent, insisting his guy be number one? Or was it GM Pierre Dorion, maybe firing a motivational shot across Chabot's bow? The latter option would seem unnecessary. Chabot has eyes. He can see that he now has two high-end teammates who are both good enough to challenge for his prime time minutes. He knows, if he doesn't quickly return to his old form this season, he will surrender them.
Regardless of who arranged it, that extra $50k has meaning.
So with Sanderson wildly trending upward, it's quite likely the Sens might need to make a really difficult decision over the next two years on Chychrun or Chabot. Since we expect them all to be really good, the Sens would love to keep all three. But this is the downside of a cap world and, in these parts, it's going to take some getting used to. It's brand new and deeply unfamiliar.
On the bright side, maybe the cap will rise so substantially over the next two years that the Senators won't have to part with any of their elites. But you also can't pay everyone in the bottom half of your roster minimum wage and hope to thrive.
In any event, this was just a quick glance at a potential issue that's way down the road. In the present, Sens fans have every reason to be nothing but excited about their team, the new NHL season ahead, and the fact they no longer cheer for a club that pinches every penny.
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