Steve Staios isn’t pretending the Senators wouldn’t welcome a cleaner, more obvious answer in the goal-scoring department. He said as much this week while making the media rounds, and the message was pretty clear: Ottawa would love to add a pure finisher, but that kind of player is hard to find.
“As we continue to build our group, you'd love to add that.”
That was the line Staios offered on TSN 1200, and it landed in the middle of a bigger conversation about whether the Senators have enough offence after an offseason that brought in Andre Burakovsky and William Eklund while also leaning on internal growth.
Staios spent a good chunk of the week fielding the same question from different angles: can this team score enough? His answer was basically that the Senators believe they can, even if the ideal roster would still include one more true sniper.
Burakovsky became a major talking point in that discussion, especially with plenty of fans and media members still trying to make sense of the move. Staios pushed back by pointing to Burakovsky’s track record and the process that led Ottawa there.
“Burakovsky had a very good start to last season and dropped off,” Staios said. “He's also been on two Stanley Cup-winning teams. He continues to add to the depth of the optionality for the coaching staff.
“That process was an interesting one. As we were going through the players that we could A) acquire or B) look at in free agency, and the process that we went through and dug in on this player, including with the coaches as they dug in on film on Burakovsky, and also with the ability that Travis and his coaching staff have had to be able to elevate individual players' games, we feel like there could be a fit there.”
He also framed Burakovsky as part of a wider group, not a one-man solution.
“But along with (Burakovsky), again, we have the Foegeles, the Greigs, and the Zetterlunds, and when I look at our board, I'm curious. Because I don't put the lines together but I'm curious to how this all ends because there's certainly a lot of options for coaching staff.”
That’s the bet Ottawa is making: not one star scorer replacing what was lost, but a collection of players doing enough to cover the gap.
Shane Pinto sits right in the middle of that idea. His four-year deal worth $7.5 million begins this fall, and he’s coming off a career-high 46 points. He did it without much power-play runway, while taking on heavy penalty-killing work and matching up against opposing top players.
The Senators are also kicking around a different look down the middle. One of the more discussed possibilities has been moving Pinto to second-line centre and shifting Cozens to the wing, especially after Cozens looked good there at the World Hockey Championships in May.
“That's certainly an option, absolutely.” Staios said.
“We also have Ridly Greig, who's a natural centreman who's played in the middle coming through. We also have Stephen Halliday now.
“That is an option and something that has been discussed... I think we have a lot of players that can play the middle of the ice, and that's a good thing in our league. I think there's a lot of teams that would love to have those options at centre ice.”
The Senators finished ninth overall last season and ranked eighth in scoring, so the raw numbers say they were already close. But with Tkachuk gone and other Atlantic teams making meaningful gains, there’s real anxiety among some fans about whether Ottawa has enough to hold its ground.
Staios has said publicly that the Senators won’t take a step back. If that proves true, it may come down to the group he’s already assembled doing the heavy lifting.
Eklund will need to hit quickly. Burakovsky will need to find more of the offence he’s shown before. Pinto, Greig, Zetterlund and Foegele will all need to give a little more.
And maybe, somewhere in that mix, one of them becomes the finisher Staios says he’d still love to add.
For now, though, Ottawa seems willing to see how far this roster can go on the offence it already has.
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