Joined: Jul. 2016
Posts: 10,514
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What a terrible deal that would be for Ottawa
- Matheson turns 29 y/o this season and is often injured. He has a 4.875 AAV so not a very attractive contract
- He also makes 6.5 M$ in salary per season the last 3 years, which makes it even worse
- Sens have ZERO need on LD, they might have the best LD in the NHL in the near future (Chabot, Sanderson, Brannstrom). Brandwagon has been the revelation so far this season
- Hillis has zero value and Sens don't want him even for free.
So let's say you remove Matheson and the 2nd from the deal... Ottawa would never give a divisional rival a 1st round pick to dump a guy... they are not even forced to dump.
Zaitsev is only owed 2.5 this season, Sens are totally fine regarding cap space
It's not that bad of an idea to keep him as the 7th or even 8th D-man in case the team hits an injury bug on defense. He could even be sent to Belleville and help them down there, like Michael Del Zotto did last season.
Then after the season, either buy him out (probably the best option, and even more with the possibility that the cap goes up by 4 M$) or pay his bonus and dump his very reasonable 2.5 AAV for 1 season