Two full seasons into the Travis Green era, the Ottawa Senators have started to look like a team built on structure rather than survival. The forecheck is harder.
The scoring is spread across four lines. The defense has become good enough that Ottawa no longer needs Craig Anderson-caliber goaltending just to keep its head above water.
That shift has changed more than the team’s results. It has changed the value of individual players, too.
Shane Pinto is the clearest example. Long billed as a two-way center going back to his college days, the former 2019 second-round pick barely had a reliable role on the penalty kill during his first two full seasons in Ottawa under D.J.
Smith from 2022-2024. Now he is one of the Senators’ most-used penalty killers, and his five-on-five defense has taken a major step forward as well.
That growth showed up on this year’s Selke ballot, where Pinto picked up more first-place votes than all but two other candidates and finished sixth overall.
Michael Amadio also earned Selke recognition. The winger, who is in the third and final season of his three-year, $2.6M per year deal, received two second-place votes and placed 20th in the voting.
He had already shown himself to be a useful two-way depth winger in Vegas, but Ottawa has leaned into his shutdown value, often using him with Pinto against opposing top lines. More often than not, they handled those minutes well.
Then there’s Dylan Cozens, the biggest swing of the bunch. Once criticized for his defensive play in Buffalo, the 2019 seventh-overall pick had even been viewed as a bad contract before Ottawa pulled off the 2025 deadline trade involving Josh Norris, another player whose value has improved when healthy. Cozens got a quick introduction to Green’s training camp after blocking a shot, and while tracked data still has him below average at suppressing rush chances, his work with the puck and in his own end has improved enough to earn him two third-place Selke votes and a 30th-place finish on the ballot.
He also, like Pinto, scored a shorthanded goal against the Leafs in the playoffs.
The broader picture is where Ottawa’s transformation really jumps off the page. The Athletic’s offseason cap-efficiency rankings measure projected value against salary, and the Senators have climbed from fifth last season to third this year, even with their goalie numbers dropping.
Jake Sanderson is a huge part of that math. According to the model, his $8.05M cap hit comes with a $17.5M value, making him the NHL’s second-best contract.
With six seasons left on the deal, that works out to $56.7M in positive value.
Sanderson and Tim Stützle drive most of Ottawa’s surplus value, but the bigger story is how many players have been lifted by the system around them. Pinto, Amadio and Cozens all became more useful defensively under Green, and that kind of improvement shows up clearly in the Athletic’s three-year value projections:
Shane Pinto: $6.2M, $5.8M, $10.1M
Mike Amadio: $2.4M, $3.2M, $4.9M
Dylan Cozens: $6.7M, $5.6M, $9.3M
Thomas Chabot: $6.1M, $7.4M, $8.7M
Drake Batherson: $5.8M, $7.2M, $8.5M
Artem Zub: $5.0M, $6.2M, $8.2M
Tim Stützle: $10.7M, $12.7M, $12.7M
Jake Sanderson: $10.8M, $11.9M, $17.5M
Chabot, Batherson and Zub are in there too, and all three have seen their projected value rise over the same stretch. Put it all together, and Ottawa is looking at more than $40M in cap space next year with its franchise defenseman and top three centers signed for at least the next four seasons.
That is the window Green and GM Steve Staios have built. The next few seasons matter.
In Other News...
Drake Batherson Just Became Ottawas Biggest Contract Decision
Drake Batherson is back on the Senators contract radar as Ottawa and the winger have begun extension talks heading into the final year of his current deal. It is a familiar kind of summer business for a team trying to keep its core intact, especially for a player who has given the club strong value relative to his contract and remains open to staying in Ottawa.
Batherson has said he would like to get something done this summer, which is exactly why the situation carries more weight than a routine negotiation. The Senators would like to avoid letting the matter drift into the season, but for now the sides are still feeling out where the fit is on a new deal, and the longer it goes, the more this one starts to look like a defining decision for the franchise. [Read more 🡒]
Travis Green Thinks Ottawa Took A Real Step Toward Contending
After the Senators were swept out of the first round by Carolina, Travis Green did not sound like a coach trying to spin a disappointing finish into something shiny. He talked instead about a team that spent the season building something sturdier, leaning on its identity, handling injuries and other adversity, and finding ways to stay together long enough to earn a playoff berth. Ottawas season ended sooner than anyone in the room wanted, but Green framed the year as a meaningful step for a club that finished ninth in the league and still showed real growth.
Greens bigger point was about where this group sits on the long road back to true contention. He said the Senators are closer to winning a Stanley Cup now than they were when he first arrived, a sign that progress is being measured not just by results, but by how the team has learned to respond when things get difficult. For a fan base that has waited through plenty of false starts, the challenge now is turning that confidence and identity into something that lasts well beyond one encouraging season. [Read more 🡒]
Calgary Flames Face Tough Dustin Wolf Decision During Rebuild
Calgarys rebuild is already forcing some awkward planning questions, and Dustin Wolf is right at the center of them. As the Flames sort through the next phase of their roster, his age and contract stand out against a younger core that is still coming into focus, creating the kind of timeline mismatch teams usually hope to avoid when they are building from the ground up.
For a club trying to climb back into contention, the challenge is not just identifying talent but lining up the right windows so the best pieces peak together. The Flames can look at other NHL rebuilds for examples of how to speed things up, but the hard truth is that accelerating the process is easier to talk about than to execute, especially when the clock is already ticking on a goalie in his prime years. [Read more 🡒]