The 2025 NHL Draft is now just one week away, and for some hockey fans, it's like Christmas in June, waiting to see what shiny new toys they'll get under the tree. In this (admittedly lame) analogy, amateur scouts play the role of Santa Claus. They're making their lists and checking them twice, but unlike the big man in red, figuring out which kids have been “nice” often boils down to little more than best guesses.
A better analogy might be a baseball player who’s praised for batting .300, even though it's a pretty serious failure rate. But hitting a curveball is hard, and 18-year-old hockey players throw plenty of them at scouts. Only some of them have the stuff to continue their amateur excellence in the bigs.
But what if you could go back to each of the last 10 NHL Drafts knowing then what you know now? A little time travel. How different would the Ottawa Senators' first-round picks look compared to the players they selected?
Let’s preface this with the usual disclaimers. This isn’t an all-out attack on the Senators’ scouting performances of the past. Everyone knows you could perform this exercise with all 32 teams and end up wanting to swap out the majority of the picks.
So, strictly for fun and interest's sake, we went back over the last 10 first rounds to see who was still on the table when Ottawa made its decisions.
2015
From the Saint John Sea Dogs, the Senators selected Thomas Chabot 18th overall. Then, from the U.S. National Development Program, they grabbed Colin White at 21. These two were joined at the hip early on. They were drafted together, roommates, and share the exact same birthdate.
In our time travel exercise, though, we’d head to customer service and exchange them for Roope Hintz (Dallas) and Kirill Kaprizov (Minnesota).
Chabot has still had a career worthy of a first-round pick, but White is now out of the NHL, spending most of last season with the AHL’s San Jose Barracuda and set to become a UFA. He’s still a drag on Ottawa’s cap, carrying an $875k hit for the next three years due to his buyout.
2016
Logan Brown (Windsor Spitfires) was chosen 11th overall but only played 30 games for Ottawa before being traded to the St. Louis Blues. Brown’s skating was good enough to thrive at every level, just not in the NHL. Not yet, anyway. After missing all of 2023–24, Brown posted 29 points in 33 games for the Syracuse Crunch this season.
Here in the village of Hindsight, we're swapping Brown for defenseman Charlie McAvoy, who was still on the board and went to Boston just three picks later. A rugged, right-shot D with offensive upside, McAvoy is exactly the type of player the Senators hope Carter Yakemchuk might become someday.
2017
Another miss. The Sens selected center Shane Bowers (Boston University), who would be Brady Tkachuk’s college teammate when Tkachuk arrived that fall. Bowers has played just 13 NHL games, though Ottawa dealt him in the Matt Duchene trade while his stock was still decent.
Meanwhile, Jason Robertson was taken 11 picks later by Dallas and has been a star for the Stars for five years now.
2018
No complaints here. Brady Tkachuk at 4th overall was a home run. Depending on what he decides at contract time three years from now, he could surpass even Daniel Alfredsson in popularity.
Quinn Hughes is pretty damn intriguing, but if you want your time machine to finish this exercise and not be destroyed by Sens fans and their torches and pitchforks, then don't even think about setting our destination to 2018.
2019
The Sens’ own pick, 4th overall, went to Colorado in the incoming Matt Duchene deal, and the Avs used it on Bowen Byram. But with Columbus' 19th overall pick (acquired in Duchene’s outgoing deal), Ottawa selected defenseman Lassi Thomson. He recently re-signed with the Sens after a year in Sweden, but has only played 18 NHL games.
There’s not a ton of regret here, though. The best name left on the board is probably Washington center Connor McMichael.
Fashionably Late: Top 10 Ottawa Senators Draft Picks Taken After Round 3It goes without saying that NHL franchises often find their future stars in the early rounds of the draft. That includes the Ottawa Senators, whose best three players, Jake Sanderson, Tim Stutzle, and Brady Tkachuk, were all top five overall selections.
2020
2020 is the best first round in Senators history. Nobody's rethinking Tim Stützle at 3 or Jake Sanderson at 5.
Ridly Greig was a great pick at 28, but some might lean toward JJ Peterka, picked six spots later by Buffalo. As an aside, Ottawa even had another chance at Peterka five picks later but went with Roby Järventie, who’s now reportedly headed back to Finland after a season in Edmonton’s system. But with that empty net slapshot so happily embedded in our brains, we’re sticking with Greig.
2021
With the 10th overall pick, Ottawa took American forward Tyler Boucher, a pick that was immediately panned as being a reach, and that's when his stock was at its highest. He’s one of just six first-rounders from that draft who haven’t played an NHL game, with his development derailed by one injury after another. Pascal Leclaire was an ironman by comparison. Boucher got hurt again this season, but did play a career-high 47 games, putting up 5 goals and 10 points.
In hindsight, Wyatt Johnston (Windsor), now a key piece in Dallas, would’ve been a better choice. Matthew Knies (Toronto, 2nd round) would also have been great, especially since he plays the kind of game the Sens hoped they’d now be getting from Boucher.
2022 & 2023
The Senators traded away their first-round picks in these years to acquire Alex DeBrincat (2022) and Jakob Chychrun (2023). Neither player lasted even 18 months in Ottawa before being moved again. Chicago used Ottawa’s pick to take defenceman Kevin Korchinski. In ‘23, Arizona took winger Daniil But with the pick they got in the Chychrun trade.
2024
New GM Steve Staios’ first draft pick was Calgary Hitmen defenseman Carter Yakemchuk. It’s far too early for even the smallest of regrets, of course, but as he worked on his defensive game, it would’ve been nice to see him maintain the offensive numbers from his draft year. They tumbled significantly.
Meanwhile, available defensemen like Zayne Parekh, Zeev Buium and Sam Dickinson all returned to their amateur clubs with the same 'work on your defence' directions. Parekh and Buium maintained their production while Dickinson’s stats, already great in his draft year, were off the charts en route to a Memorial Cup title.
But again, it’s still way too early to waste gas on a trip to 2024.
Hindsight is always undefeated. But going forward, if the new Senators regime can turn a few more strikeouts into hits, then maybe we won’t feel the need to time-travel in the future.
Steve Warne
The Hockey News Ottawa
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