Quoting: drewjenkins
Am I missing something, or is Ottawa looking awfully capped out next year?
$8,400,000 | Timothy Stutzle (F)
$8,200,000 | Brady Tkachuk (F)
$8,000,000 | Joshua Norris (F)
$8,000,000 | Jake Sandeson (D)
$8,000,000 | Tomas Chabot (D)
$6,500,000 | Claude Giroux (F)
$5,000,000 | Drake Batheson (F)
$4,600,000 | Jakob Chychrun (D)
$4,600,000 | Artem Zubbens (D)
$4,000,000 | Jonas Korpisalo (G)
$3,000,000 | Mathieu Joseph (F)
$2,800,000 | Anton Forsberg (G)
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71,200,000 | 12 Player Totals
12,300,000 | 11 Player Budget
Even after adding cap growth, can they afford to re-sign these guys?
$5,000,000 | Vladimir Tarasenko (?)
$3,000,000 | Dominik Kubalik (?)
$3,000,000 | Erik Branstrom (?)
$3,000,000 | Shane Pintos (?)
For the 2024-25 season, the Senators project to have 13.7M of cap space under an 87.5M cap ceiling. This is with a 16 player roster. That means that the Senators can spend an average of 1.957M to fill out a 23 player roster, or 2.74M to use a smaller 21 player roster.
I don't think Erik Brannstrom will be qualified. He will have arbitration rights. After playing out the 23-24 season, he will have accrued nearly 300 games played. Given that he is a #5-7 type defenseman on Ottawa, I doubt the Senators will want to take the chance that he is awarded a settlement that is higher than he is worth to them, but not high enough for them to be able to walk away from it. He will either be traded some time this season, or they won't qualify him. He is not a big piece. They might get a late pick for him in a trade from a team willing to try him out and gamble to see if he can get to that next level.
As far as Pinto goes, I suspect the Senators pay the price to dump Joseph and that money goes to Pinto. If that is the case, that would leave enough to keep one of Kubalik or Tarasenko, or to let both walk and acquire another 3M-5M type forward to replace them. The rest of the roster would get filled out with players who make 1M or less.
The question isn't how will the Senators fill out a roster or keep everybody. All the core is locked down now. They should have the cap flexibility to keep their RFAs on bridge deals. They may have to move on from some veterans like Tarasenko, Kubalik, Forsberg, or Hamonic - but those aren't core guys.
The real question or concern is, what will the Senators do if one of the core pieces does not live up to their contract. Norris and Korpisalo both come to mind, maybe even Chabot if he has another questionable season. Everybody is locked in for 4-8 years now, and it is tremendously difficult to move big contracts with term. There is very little margin for error with how Dorion has locked in the team. Dorion has basically ensured that regardless of whether he is fired, the Senators team of the next 5 years will be the team that he constructed, because outside of something diabolical like trading Brady Tkachuk or Tim Stutzle, there would not be a reasonable way for a new GM to put their stamp on the team. We almost never see two legit young stars traded for each other, so the only reason Tkachuk, Stutzle, Sanderson, Chabot, or Norris would be traded is if they aren't living up to their contracts - in which case, they would be impossible to trade. The team core you see now is locked in for the next 5 or so years, and it will be very difficult for whoever is in charge to ice anything other than Dorion's vision.