With a $5 million deal for Tarasenko, the Senators are now right up against the cap for next season.

At the 2010 NHL draft, the Ottawa Senators held the 16th overall selection. And one of the players that was available to them at that point was Russian winger Vladimir Tarasenko. 

But instead of selecting Tarasenko or someone else, general manager Bryan Murray opted to trade the pick to the St. Louis Blues for defenseman David Rundblad. Rundblad was a first rounder from the previous year the Senators obviously liked better than anyone left on the 2019 board.

For the record, Murray seemed to have grown somewhat wary of Russian players, so there's a good chance he wouldn't have taken Tarasenko anyway.

But the Blues were all over Tarasenko and made out like bandits in the deal.

While Rundblad played sparingly over the next six years before returning to Europe, the Blues used Ottawa’s pick to take Tarasenko. And all he did was put up 270 goals and 574 points in 675 games. To their credit, the Senators mitigated things a year later by turning Rundblad into some guy named Kyle Turris, who had a pretty good run here.

Now, 13 years after that draft day decision, the Senators have circled back on Tarasenko, signing him Thursday to a one-year deal worth $5 million.

"Vladimir's a natural goal scorer," Senators GM Pierre Dorion said in a club press release. "He's a dynamic player who can score from anywhere in the offensive zone, as well as an underrated playmaker who's made a career out of driving offence for he and his linemates. An established performer in the regular season and in the playoffs, we're thrilled to add a player of his caliber to our lineup."

For the better part of a decade, Tarasenko was a 30-40 goal scorer for the Blues before finally being traded to the New York Rangers at this year’s deadline. Between the two clubs, he had a total of 18 goals and 50 points in 69 games last season.

Tarasenko will now almost certainly move into the top six of Ottawa's batting order, probably bumping newcomer Dominik Kubalik down to third line duty. Kubalik, of course, was acquired in the DeBrincat deal which now, in a way, looks like this:

DeBrincat gets traded to Detroit and the Sens end up with Tarasenko, Kubalik, prospect Donovan Sebrango, a first rounder and a fourth rounder. However, just like DeBrincat was, Tarasenko and Kubalik are on deals that expire after this year. This time next year, will either of them entertain a return to Ottawa?

Meanwhile, the $5 million investment means the Senators have almost no salary cap room remaining. They have just over $784,000 in cap space left and they still haven't signed restricted free agent Shane Pinto.

So now the two giant questions are, once they sign Pinto, what current Senator will be moved out to help them get back under the cap before opening night? And if Tarasenko is truly still an excellent top six option, why was he still available to Ottawa on such a reasonable deal, almost a month into free agency?