It hasn’t exactly been a busy off-season in the Nation’s Capital.
Evgenii Dadonov out. Nick Holden and Michael Del Zotto in. If you were expecting fireworks from the Ottawa Senators this summer, this certainly ain’t it.
While there’s still time for an addition up front before Camp, it certainly looks like Pierre Dorion is more than willing to start the season with the current roster.
Despite the lack of flashy additions, the Senators have still been busy. Only their focus has been on locking up key pieces of the team’s young core.
On Friday, they signed 23-year old Drake Batherson to a six-year deal worth a shade under $5 million a season. There is some risk in making this kind of long-term commitment to a player with one good season under his belt but it’s the kind of roll of the dice required in a salary cap world.
With one big name RFA locked up, the Senators will turn all of their attention to another. Sorry Logan.
As you may have heard, Brady Tkachuk, the now 21-year old fan favourite and Captain-in-waiting, is still without a contract. And with Training Camp now just a couple weeks away, we have officially entered crunch time in one of the most important contract negotiations in Sens history.
To recap- here’s what we know about the talks to date…
The Ottawa Senators are a franchise operating in the National Hockey League. They are looking to sign Brady Tkachuk, an American-born forward, to a contract of some sort.
And that about covers it.
From the beginning, both sides have made it pretty clear they plan to keep this thing under wraps. There have been bits and pieces of information leaking out along the way but for the most part, nobody really has any clue how things are going. We know the Senators would prefer to lock-up Tkachuk a long-term contract (ideally max term) but beyond that, there is a ton of unknown here.
On Friday, Dorion called the talks ‘productive’. Reassuring, right?
What we do know is this is a big one. This is another one of those defining moments in the rebuild.
In just under 200 games, Tkachuk has carved out a role for himself as one of the league’s most effective power forwards. He’s become the face of the franchise here in Ottawa. They’ve built this team around him. He’s a throw-back player of sorts because he can do it all. Score, hit, fight and maybe most importantly…lead. The kind of guy that makes players around him better. As we’ve heard so many times during his first three seasons in the NHL, he drags his teammates into the fight.
It’s easy to see why the Senators want to lock up a guy like that long term.
Although in this particular instance, a bridge deal is okay too. It may not come with the same excitement as an eight-year contract but as long as it’s three years or less, it keeps Tkachuk as an RFA during the next negotiation. Something to keep in mind as we await that new contract.
While his all-around impact is fairly unique, there are still a few good comparables. Andrei Svechnikov is the same age and has produced at a similar rate. He just signed an eight-year deal at $7.75 million a season. Meanwhile the three-year bridge deal Matthew Tkachuk signed in Calgary (3 years, $21 million) gives you some sense of what a shorter deal might look like. Although it’s worth pointing out that Matthew was coming off a 77 point season when he signed that contract.
Salary and term are obviously important here but in the case of Tkachuk, it seems like structure might be a key consideration too.
Recently, the Senators have shown a preference for back-loaded deals with exactly zero signing bonus. And on the signing bonus part, it really doesn’t seem like there is a ton of flexibility from Ownership. Perhaps no flexibility at all. The Senators still found a way to lock up Thomas Chabot, Colin White and Drake Batherson without signing bonuses though so it shouldn’t be a deal-breaker.
And so we wait. For one of the most important contracts in franchise history.
Seems to me, if you were going to lock up the face of the franchise and make him Captain, you’d want to have him in town when you do it. Make a real show of it.
Brady Tkachuk is expected to arrive in Ottawa early next week.
