The Ottawa Senators have brought in another option for their blue line, signing defenseman Ben Hutton to a professional tryout contract ahead of 2026-27 training camp.
Hutton, a Brockville native, arrives with plenty of NHL mileage and a familiar connection to head coach Travis Green’s past in Vancouver. The move also lines up with what general manager Steve Staios told Bruce Garrioch of the Ottawa Citizen: the Senators would look at PTO contracts if the concern around Artem Zub’s injury continued into camp.
That concern appears to be real enough for Ottawa to add depth now.
Hutton spent the last five seasons with the Vegas Golden Knights, where he carved out a rotating role and picked up one Stanley Cup along the way. Injuries were a constant obstacle during his time there, including stints on IR in both the 2023-24 and 2024-25 seasons.
Even with those absences, Hutton appeared in 196 games for Vegas and put up 14 goals, 48 points, and 74 penalty minutes. On a per-82-game basis, that works out to six goals and 20 points, solid production for a defenseman who averaged 15:21 of ice time.
His best offensive season remains his first NHL year, when he posted 25 points in 75 games with the Vancouver Canucks in 2015-16. Since then, he’s built a career that has stretched to 575 games and 11 seasons, leaning on steadiness and two-way reliability more than scoring punch.
The underlying numbers have generally backed that up. Hutton finished with an expected-goals-for percentage above 50 in four of his five seasons in Vegas, including a 55.7 percent mark in 2023-24 per HockeyStats. Over his career, his teams have averaged 2.41 goals-against per game, a number that sits right around league average and one he has beaten multiple times over the past decade.
For Ottawa, the timing matters. Injuries thinned out the Senators’ defense during the push to finish the 2025-26 season, and the team now looks ready to give top prospect Carter Yakemchuk a full-time role next season. Behind him, Nikolas Matinpalo, Jorian Donovan, Tomas Hamara, and Hoyt Stanley are all in the mix for the extra defenseman spot.
Hutton could jump ahead of that group if he turns in a strong camp. At 33, he brings more than a decade of NHL experience and gives the Senators another experienced body while younger defenders get reps in the AHL.
In Other News...
Travis Greens First Camp Decisions Say A Lot About Ottawas Ceiling
The opening days of Senators camp have looked less like a scramble for jobs and more like an early test of chemistry. Travis Green is spending his first practices sorting out combinations and seeing what fits, a sign Ottawa is approaching this season with a different kind of urgency after back-to-back playoff appearances and a clear desire to keep climbing in the Eastern Conference. The coach has stressed having options, but the bigger point is that the roster already feels settled enough for him to focus on how the pieces might actually work together.
Some of the early groupings hint at the sort of top-end talent Ottawa wants to lean on, with Tim Stutzle alongside Andre Burakovsky and Drake Batherson as one of the more intriguing looks. Greens approach suggests he is trying to identify which alignments can drive play rather than simply fill out a lineup card, and that matters for a team that no longer wants to be judged by just getting in the door. The next step is figuring out whether these looks can translate from camp drills into the kind of balance and depth contending teams usually need. [Read more 🡒]
Senators Blue Line Move Raises New Concern About Artem Zub
The Senators have brought veteran defenseman Ben Hutton into training camp on a professional tryout, a move that adds some extra depth to a blue line already dealing with a familiar kind of uncertainty. Hutton arrives with more than 400 NHL games on his resume since 2015, giving Ottawa a seasoned option to look at while it sorts through the back end in camp.
His presence also puts a sharper focus on Artem Zubs status, with the defenseman currently unavailable. Ottawa is already trying to map out its early-season picture on the blue line, so any added help has a purpose beyond just filling a practice spot, and this latest move suggests the club still has questions it wants answered before camp settles in. [Read more 🡒]
Artem Zubs Camp Setback Creates An Early Senators Concern
The Senators are heading into camp with an early dent in their blue line plans, after the club confirmed Artem Zub will miss the first two weeks because of a lower-body injury. For a team trying to settle its defensive pairings and get on the ice with some continuity, any delay for a veteran minutes-eater matters, even if it comes before the real games begin.
There is at least one piece of reassurance for Ottawa in that Zub avoided surgery, which keeps the situation from sounding worse than it is at this stage. Still, the setback pushes back the start of his camp work and leaves the Senators waiting a little longer to see how quickly he can ramp back up once he is cleared to return. [Read more 🡒]