Both Pierre Dorion and Guy Boucher held their season-ending press conference yesterday.
And as you’d expect, there were plenty of interesting updates about the remarkable season that just ended but also some thoughts about what comes next for the Ottawa Senators.
Dorion opened up the press conference by listing off 15 players that finished the season with some sort of injury including Erik Karlsson, Craig Anderson and Mark Stone. While Dorion didn’t say much about the severity of any of the injuries and none of the players will require surgery, it gives you a sense of the incredible grind this team went through to go as far as they did.
While the General Manager was predictably tight-lipped about the organization’s plans heading into the expansion draft and post-season, it will be a busy few months in the Senators front office.
They have two prominent RFAs to deal with in Jean Gabriel Pageau and Ryan Dzingel and then UFAs in Tom Pyatt, Viktor Stalberg, Tommy Wingels, Chris Neil, Chris Kelly and Mike Condon. On Condon, Dorion made it clear that they’d like to bring him back but he didn’t exactly seem optimistic about the talks to this point. Still plenty of time to find some common ground and listening to what Condon said in his season-ending remarks, it’s clear he wants to come back.
Dorion mentioned that he wants to meet with both Chris Kelly and Chris Neil in person to talk about their plans for next season. Of the UFAs, Tom Pyatt certainly seems like the most likely to return.
It doesn’t sound like there will be big changes in Ottawa this off-season with the core of the team locked in place. With that said, there will be important decisions to make in the bottom six that will shape the look of this team next fall.
You can catch the full 40 minutes press conference below.
