Sanderson becomes only the ninth Ottawa Senator to make the NHL's all-rookie team.

When the Calder Trophy finalists for NHL Rookie of the Year were named last month, they were all fine choices. But die-hard Ottawa Senators fans weren't particularly pleased that their favourite freshman wasn't on the list.

Sens defenceman Jake Sanderson was overlooked in favour of Matty Beniers of the Seattle Kraken, Owen Power of the Buffalo Sabres and Stuart Skinner of the Edmonton Oilers. At Monday's awards ceremony in Nashville, Beniers was selected as the winner of the award.

But on Monday night, Music City set aside a silver lining for Sanderson. 

Effectively, with Power getting a Calder nomination, that makes Sanderson – according to the voters – the NHL's second best rookie defenceman for 2022-23. If you'd told the Senators last fall this was how the kid's first season would go, they'd have been thrilled. Sanderson is now one of the few Senators to ever make the all-rookie squad.

With 32 points in 77 games, Sanderson finished eighth in Senator scoring, but for those who watched him every night, stats were only part of his story. Sanderson is an excellent skater and extremely solid at both ends of the ice.

But what really sets Sanderson apart is his stick handling and poise with the puck. In that area, he's already elite, and not just by rookie standards.

Even under duress, Sanderson constantly manages to juke and spin to cleverly find the open ice he needs to buy time and make a smart play. He'll be a weapon at the top of Ottawa's power play for a long time. 

Sanderson obviously shares the same soft hands as his father, Geoff Sanderson, an NHL forward who had a long successful career, scoring 355 goals and 700 points.

Thomas Chabot and Jakob Chychrun will begin the season as Ottawa's ice time leaders, but it won't be long before Sanderson forces D.J. Smith to change that. And as long as we're calling our shots, it also won't be long before Sanderson outperforms the rest of the NHL's all-rookie team.

Meanwhile, as we watch things unfold this week at the draft and in free agency, it's more than safe to say that at least some of GM Pierre Dorion's decisions will be coloured by the big money deal that Sanderson will command as an RFA next summer.