The Ottawa Senators held their seasonal exit meetings last Saturday, the final assignment for a fine young NHL club that took a huge step forward this season, forcing their way into the playoffs for the first time in eight years.
After seven months of battling, they said their goodbyes, not knowing for sure if they'll ever play together again. Most of them will. Some will not. It's always the way.
For GM State Staios, some major choices lie ahead, and for every roster addition he considers, there's at least one other move required to accommodate it.
So let's begin with the Senators taking care of their own to see how much money they have to go shopping with.
Staios has several NHL players on expiring contracts. They include unrestricted free agents Claude Giroux, Nick Cousins, Adam Gaudette, Matthew Highmore, Travis Hamonic, Dennis Gilbert, and Anton Forsberg.
With Nik Matinpalo now taken care of, the list of NHL-calibre restricted free agents includes defenceman Tyler Kleven, winger Fabian Zetterlund, and goalie Leevi Merilainen.
At the moment, according to Puckpedia, the Senators have $17.57 million in cap space to work with for next season. Conservatively, it’s fair to expect the three RFAs to absorb around $5 million of that, bringing their spending room down to $12.5 million.
In all likelihood, the Senators won’t re-sign Hamonic, Gilbert, or Forsberg. With the emergence of Kleven and Matinpalo, Hamonic and Gilbert watched from the press box in the playoffs. Acquired in the Josh Norris trade from the Buffalo Sabres, Gilbert played just four regular-season games with the Senators.
Forsberg is a solid backup and a great teammate, but with a younger and less expensive option in Leevi Merilainen ready and waiting in the wings, the Sens will likely welcome the cap savings. Mads Sogaard is also in play, armed with a one-way deal for this fall.
But we're banking on Merilainen, so our summer spending money is still at roughly $12.5 million, which brings us to Giroux, Cousins, Gaudette, and Highmore. The Giroux of ten years ago might have take all that remaining cap space.
But you don’t have to dig deeply into Giroux’s stats to see that his decline has begun. Age eventually gets everyone. He missed only one game total in his last three seasons in Ottawa, and his point totals have declined every year:
2022–23: 79
2023–24: 64
2024–25: 50
It should be noted that Giroux got 48 fewer power-play minutes this season than he did the previous one.
But he remains a valuable asset, loaded with intangibles and leadership. Giroux said on Saturday that he hasn’t spoken with the team about a contract yet, but it’s clear to everyone that he wants to stay. The Sens want him to stay. The fans want him to stay. It’s impossible to believe the two sides won’t work something out on a one- or two-year deal.
Expect Giroux to pull roughly another $3.5 million out, leaving the Sens with $9 million in their allowance. If Giroux's ask is much more than that, and we doubt it will be, then that conversation might change.
Gaudette, Cousins, and Highmore were useful players who saw plenty of action this season. None of them cost more than a million dollars, so it wouldn’t take much to lure them away. By the same token, the Sens aren’t so smitten with them that they’d overpay to keep them.
In glass-half-full scenarios, since Gaudette and Highmore have finally found their way back to regular and semi-regular NHL status, they may not want to mess with a good thing. Cousins, who’s on his sixth team in as many years, may be hoping to put some roots down—with a two-year-old in tow and a baby boy on the way this month.
As long as they’re not asking for meaningful raises, it’s easy to see at least a couple of those guys coming back. But even if they all leave, their replacements will probably come in, also hovering near the NHL’s version of minimum wage, or roughly $2.5 million total.
Thanks to the league's $7.5 million hike in the cap, the Sens still have money to play with at $6.5 million. While it’s easy for us to say, we’ll assume that Michael Andlauer is willing to continue spending to the max, now $95.5 million in 2025–26.
Right now, if it goes as outlined above, the roster looks like this:
Tkachuk-Stutzle-Giroux*
Perron-Cozens-Batherson
Greig-Pinto-Amadio
Cousins*-Gaudette*-Zetterlund*
Highmore*
Sanderson-Zub
Chabot-Jensen
Kleven-Matinpalo
Ullmark
Merilainen*
* No contract yet for 2025-26
That’s not a great deal of change from this year’s entry. Granted, the team should be naturally better through playoff experience and being another year older, although the theory that getting older is good doesn't apply to the five veterans who are well north of 30.
But the Senators can’t just rely on internal maturing because it probably won’t be enough. There also isn’t a single prospect in the system that’s a slam dunk to make the team this fall, let alone be an impactful NHL player.
To be considered a Cup contender, they’ll probably need two more top-nine forwards and another defenceman who can play with a hard edge at playoff time.
It will be hard to find even one of those assets with $6.5 million in cap space, so someone has to go. Fans should expect a body or two (and their contracts) to head out the door, and that's beyond the obvious UFAs who won’t be retained.
It's not dramatically different than last year when, for various reasons, Sens fans bid farewell to useful players like Jakob Chychrun, Mathieu Joseph, and Mark Kastelic.
But there’s really no other option. Whether you look at things financially or athletically, “Steady Steve” still has some rebalancing to do this summer, and to make it happen, we're betting that his list of untouchables isn't very long.
Steve Warne
The Hockey News
