The Senators are taking RFA Alex DeBrincat to arbitration, with the hopes of signing him long-term now starting to fade.

It’s looking more and more like the Ottawa Senators’ game plan for Alex DeBrincat is to trade him sometime this summer.

Postmedia’s Bruce Garrioch cited a source Thursday that said the Sens have opted to take the restricted free-agent forward to arbitration. The rules say that when it’s a club-elected arbitration, players are guaranteed at least 85% of their previous salary in the first window of arbitration. So the Senators (or any team they might trade him to) could get as much as a 15% discount on the $9 million DeBrincat made last season.

No matter what happens in arbitration, on the off-chance this thing actually makes it to a hearing, DeBrincat would only be entitled to a one-year term. That’s the rule in this case for RFA’s in the final year of their deals.

And that’s meaningful because, if that’s where the Senators are willing to take this, it almost certainly means they’ve lost all faith that a long-term extension with DeBrincat is in the cards.

That shouldn’t be interpreted as DeBrincat wanting out, disliking Ottawa or the team. As we reported earlier, a source close to the DeBrincat family recently told us that “Alex likes the coach a lot and loves the team. He would like to stay in Ottawa, but knows this is the deal that needs to have term in it. Like a Cole Caufield.”

That's a big "but."

In an update, our source described DeBrincat as unique – a player who stays right out of contract negotiations, ignoring the noise, and deferring entirely to his agent and the people closest to him. Some may, quite fairly, interpret that as semantics, a cop out or using the agent as a scapegoat, but our source insists it isn't the case.

“Alex is different. He isn’t your typical star. He’s beyond humble. Like I said, he’s happy in Ottawa and would be happy to stay. But he’s going to do what the people he trusts tell him to do.”

Right now, the people he trusts are in no hurry. They'd happily sign a one year deal between $7.65 and $9 million and return to Ottawa this fall. With RFA status, there's not much other choice. But DeBrincat's crew won't forego the open auction of unrestricted free agency next summer – not unless the Sens (or any team they might trade him to) step forward and really make it worth their while between now and then.

But the Senators are in no mood for UFA-level overspending – not now, not next year and not because they’re trying to save a buck. CapFriendly.com has the Sens at a little over $17 million in cap space with only 11 players signed to their active roster.

When you factor in that, along with the upcoming contractual desires of Jake Sanderson and Jakob Chychrun, Dorion might actually have ended up in trade mode anyway, no matter what he was hearing out of the DeBrincat camp.

After a pair of three year contracts signed in Chicago, this is DeBrincat's first chance to go deep on a long-term NHL home run and his people want to get it right, whether it's this summer or next. And that's completely reasonable.

On the other side of things, it’s also completely reasonable that the Senators want to try and push forward to get the best deal they can.

With no picks in the first three rounds, there’s no question Dorion would like to get back in the draft in a meaningful way. But if that's all he gets, Sens fans will be hard pressed to fully understand what the point of the deal was. So Dorion will likely be angling for both a decent pick and at least one asset that can help the Senators right now. 

The GM, who's kind of in limbo right now, will want to get this right. He needs the new owner to be suitably impressed when he looks at what The Cat dragged in.