The Ottawa Senators spent the summer reshaping their forward group, leaning harder into speed and skill with the arrival of William Eklund. But as Travis Green keeps putting his system together, there’s a fair question hanging over the roster: should Ottawa have made room for Eeli Tolvanen?
Tolvanen is now headed to the New York Rangers on a one-year, $1.5 million deal, and that kind of contract has the feel of a missed opportunity for Ottawa and plenty of other teams around the league.
What makes Tolvanen so appealing is that he brings more than one useful trait. He’s not just a winger who can forecheck and lean on people.
He’s coming off a 36-point season with the Seattle Kraken, and he was only one year removed from a career-best 23 goals. Last season, he also piled up more than 180 hits and led Seattle’s forwards in blocked shots.
For a Senators team trying to add more touch and movement through the middle of the ice, Tolvanen would have filled a different kind of need. He could have supplied some of the physical edge that Ottawa is losing with Brady Tkachuk and given Eklund, Tim Stützle and Drake Batherson a better puck-retrieval partner. That matters when you’re trying to win along the walls and keep the puck moving against the heavier teams in the Atlantic Division.
He also brings penalty-killing value and a shot that can punish teams on the second power-play unit. Over an 82-game season, that sort of flexibility matters because it lets a coach shift him up and down the lineup without changing the identity of the line around him.
At $1.5 million, a 27-year-old winger who can chip in secondary scoring, play with bite and help on the penalty kill looks like a bargain. Ottawa still has other areas to sort out, but adding Tolvanen at that price would have made the Senators tougher and deeper up front.
In Other News...
Brad Marchand Is Already Stirring Drama Around The Brady Tkachuk Trade
With Brady Tkachuk now in Florida, the Senators are moving into a new era and one of the biggest decisions on the horizon is who will wear the captains letter next. Tim Stutzle has emerged as a finalist, and the conversation got an extra jolt when Brad Marchand, now with the Panthers, weighed in on social media in a way that quickly turned a routine leadership debate into a little more noise than Ottawa probably wanted.
Stutzle brushed it off, saying he does not care and still respects Marchand as a player, while Drake Batherson also got a look at the exchange and called it typical Marchand. For the Senators, the bigger issue is still internal and far more important than an outside chirp, but the teams next captain is being chosen under a brighter spotlight now, and Marchand managed to make sure of that without even putting on a Senators jersey. [Read more 🡒]
Senators Face Two Huge Decisions After Brady Tkachuks Exit
With Brady Tkachuk now gone, Ottawas front office is working through a pair of franchise-shaping issues at once, and both are tied to the clubs next chapter. One is the contract status of Drake Batherson, an important piece who remains in negotiations with the Senators, with the new NHL CBA deadline adding another layer to how long a deal can be.
The other centers on the dressing room leadership void left behind by Tkachuks move to Florida. Tim Stutzle and Thomas Chabot are among the top candidates to wear the captains C, and the decision would say plenty about where the Senators believe their identity is headed. How Ottawa handles both matters will go a long way toward defining the team beyond this season. [Read more 🡒]
Senators Captain Debate Now Centers On A Post Tkachuk Leadership Choice
Brady Tkachuks move to the Florida Panthers has left the Senators with more than a scoring hole to fill, because the captaincy now becomes part of the bigger reset in Ottawa. General manager Steve Staios has said the club does not plan to regress this season, and the conversation around leadership has quickly turned to familiar voices in the room, with veteran Claude Giroux and defenceman Thomas Chabot among the names being discussed.
Chabots case is easy to understand from the Senators side. He has been around long enough to know the organization, has shown the kind of leadership teams lean on when the room needs stability, and has still managed to contribute despite dealing with injuries. For a franchise trying to move forward after losing its captain, the choice is about more than a letter on a jersey, and Ottawa now has to decide which player best fits the next phase of its identity. [Read more 🡒]