The Ottawa Senators have already had a rough summer, and the biggest unfinished item on their list might be the one that hurts most if they get it wrong: Drake Batherson.
Batherson is heading into the final season of a six-year deal that pays him $4.975-million per year, and the timing puts Ottawa in a tough spot. He’s coming off a career year with 33 goals and 71 points in 79 games, and the 28-year-old has stacked up at least 22 goals and 66 points in each of the last four seasons. That kind of production doesn’t come cheap, and it certainly doesn’t stay cheap for long.
The Senators have already watched captain Brady Tkachuk pull the chute on them and engineer his way out of Ottawa. Their goaltending didn’t exactly get a boost either, with former Philadelphia Flyers netminder Samuel Ersson arriving in a move that may have made the position worse. Around the Atlantic Division, the picture got even tougher, with Toronto and Florida improving.
There were a few positives for Ottawa. The club brought back veteran center Claude Giroux, added 23-year-old center William Eklund from the San Jose Sharks, and picked up journeyman left winger Andre Burakovsky from the Chicago Blackhawks. But none of that changes the fact that Batherson is the key name hanging over the franchise.
According to THN.com’s Steve Warne, the Senators and Batherson are not close in extension talks, and that’s an uncomfortable place for Ottawa to be. Still, a slow start in negotiations doesn’t always mean a deal is doomed. Sometimes the gap gets closed and both sides land where they need to be.
If the Senators want to keep Batherson, they’re going to have to pay him like a star. Doubling his salary is basically a given, and his next deal is shaping up to be in the same neighborhood as what Alex Tuch got from the Washington Capitals this summer. An eight-year extension is also on the table if Batherson signs with Ottawa before September 16.
Batherson’s age makes the length less of a problem than it might be for someone closer to the back end of his career. He’s in his prime, and he knows it. That means the money will matter, whether he stays in Ottawa or tests the market elsewhere as a UFA a year from now.
For the Senators, the stakes are obvious. They’ve qualified for the playoffs in back-to-back years, but they’ve also been bounced in the first round in back-to-back years, and there’s no guarantee they get back in a crowded Atlantic Division.
Without Batherson, the outlook gets a lot murkier. With Tkachuk already gone, losing Batherson too would be a brutal blow.
That’s why Ottawa should be prepared to make him its highest-paid player. A deal with a 10- to $11-million cap hit would put Batherson well ahead of Tim Stutzle, who is currently the team’s top earner at $8.5 million per season. The Senators, though, have the room to do it, with $40.4-million in cap space available.
And for a smaller-market team, that matters. Ottawa can’t afford to look like it can’t afford to keep its own core pieces. Batherson is one of those pieces, and if the Senators want to avoid turning one disappointing summer into something far worse, they need to pay him like it.
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