The Senators’ roster picture looked a lot cleaner before the injuries piled up.
With Monday’s deadline looming, Ottawa has already started trimming camp, but the process is being twisted by a long list of absences that make the final lineup far less straightforward than it should be. The club sent five players out on Sunday, including defenseman Scott Harrington, who logged 68 games for Belleville last season and came to camp on a professional tryout. The other players released from PTOs were Landen Hookey, Luke Mistelbacher, Cal Uens and goalie Vadim Zherenko.
Zherenko had been viewed as the fallback option if the Senators lost Leevi Merilainen on waivers. That scenario played out when the Vancouver Canucks claimed Merilainen, but Ottawa responded by bringing in Jonas Johansson in a trade with Tampa for future considerations after the goalie had been sent to Syracuse. That move left Zherenko on the outside looking in after camp.
The Senators also loaned 10 players to Belleville, and every name in that group is waivers-exempt: Djibril Toure, Oskar Pettersson, Kasper Halttunen, Tomas Hamara, Eskild Bakke Olsen, Matthew Andonovski, Gabriel Eliasson, Lucas Ellinas, Jackson Parsons and Kevin Reidler.
A different set of Belleville-bound players still has to get through waivers first. That group includes Tyler Boucher, the team’s 10th overall pick in the 2021 NHL Draft, along with Samuel Blais and Philip Tomasino, both of whom turned in strong camps. The rest of that mix is Samuel Bolduc, Xavier Bourgault, Philippe Daoust, Ryan Suzuki and Christian Kyrou.
All of that would be complicated enough on its own, but the injury list has turned the Senators’ roster math into a moving target. Ottawa is dealing with injuries to Artem Zub, Jake Sanderson, Shane Pinto, Warren Foegele, Andre Burakovsky and Kurtis MacDermid. Sanderson and Burakovsky both exited Saturday’s action hurt.
Ridly Greig is also unavailable for the first two games after being suspended for a sucker punch he threw in last spring’s playoffs.
That leaves the club projecting a likely NHL roster that still has some room for debate, especially on defense. The one real question is whether Carter Yakemchuk earned a spot in the top six. If he did not, Nikolas Matinpalo would likely take the sixth spot on the blue line, with Ben Hutton as a possible seventh defenseman if Ottawa wants Yakemchuk to keep playing.
Defensemen in the mix are Thomas Chabot, Jake Sanderson, Artem Zub, Jordan Spence, Tyler Kleven, Nikolas Matinpalo, Carter Yakemchuk, Cameron Crotty, Jorian Donovan, Ben Hutton and Hoyt Stanley.
Up front, the list includes Michael Amadio, Drake Batherson, Andre Burakovsky, Nick Cousins, Dylan Cozens, William Eklund, Warren Foegele, Claude Giroux, Ridly Greig, Shane Pinto, Tim Stützle, Fabian Zetterlund, Stephen Halliday, Kurtis MacDermid, Hayden Hodgson and Blake Montgomery.
The deadline is here, but for Ottawa, the injuries have made the final call anything but simple.
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