The Ottawa Senators have built themselves an excellent, exciting young hockey team that’s good enough, on paper, to finally get back to the playoffs and maybe even do a little springtime damage.

But getting here came at a cost. To get here, Senator fans have had to endure a six-year playoff absence, the longest in club history and the third-longest active drought in the NHL. The club has also said goodbye to a number of very good players – some of them traded in the name of a rebuild, some of them traded by mistake, and some of them just weren't re-signed as the club ever-so-slowly upgraded.

So today, I’ve assembled the 2023-24 Former Senator All-Star Team, made up only of active players.

It’s hard to say what compelled me to go in this direction today, taking you, the good reader, on this exercise of regret. Maybe it’s that summer is busily preparing to abandon us again. Maybe it’s this cloudy, rainy August morning in the nation’s capital. Or maybe it’s the mood one falls in when their golf tournament later today is in jeopardy of postponement.

No matter why I’m in this headspace filled with regrets (I’ve had a few), this is what’s happened. So let’s have a glance at what our spicy new All-Regret Team looks like.

Goalies

Filip Gustavsson

Joey Daccord

I don’t know. Goaltending is voodoo. Vegas just won with Adin Hill. This is more than fine. I apologize to the fellas, in advance, for the blue line I’m about to give them.

Defence

Nick Holden-Erik Karlsson

Chris Wideman-Dylan DeMelo

Mike Reilly-Erik Gudbranson

Great googly-moogly. As the GM of this team, I plan to make an aggressive S.O.S. phone call to Pierre Dorion later today (unless golf is still on) to see if he’ll part with a couple of his young defenseman down in Belleville.

Forwards

Alex DeBrincat-Mika Zibanejad-Mark Stone

Nick Paul-Matt Duchene-Connor Brown

Nick Foligno-JG Pageau-Anthony Duclair

Austin Watson-Patrick Brown-Michael Amadio

You could win some games with this. There are some available forwards (Hoffman, Namestnikov) out there who might out-skill a few of the players who were excited to make our final roster, but we tried to take into account roster balance, defensive commitment and character.

So there it is. The 2023-24 Former Ottawa Senators All-Star Team. And I’ll tell you what. To make up for the big deficiencies on defense, we’ll even bring back former Sens head coach Jacques Martin to coach ‘em up and lock things down. 

As for me, as is tradition, I will stay on as GM for the next seven years no matter how bad my record is.

All in all, there are some good pieces there. In a non-cap world, there are probably half a dozen guys who would upgrade the current team. So, while it's not really an all-regret team, it's probably a lot better than Senators fans would like it to be.