As long as they’re not overpaying them and giving everybody no-move clauses, they’ll be ok. Worst case, if things get tight they can move one of them and get good value for him if he’s on a good contract, though usually it’s the $4-5M guys who get moved to clear cap space, not the top guys.

Five guys over $7.9M may seem a little top heavy, but none of them are over $8.35M, and they’re all locked in until at least 2028 so they now have long-term cost certainty on their core. Ottawa will actually have less money tied up in their top 5 than Toronto will in their top 3, and that hasn’t prevented Toronto from building a cup contender, so I don’t think what Ottawa is doing is a bad strategy. They just have to be careful not to give out too many big contracts to guys who aren’t going to live up to them. I guess the jury’s still out on Norris, but so far they’ve been pretty good at identifying the right players to bet the big money on.

No, thinking you can compete when an average defender’s your best defender is what makes you in trouble… Especially when you have over 20 mill next year locked up in LDs alone

And minus Giroux, how many games in the playoffs have the guys that are locked up have combined, asking for a friend

Wow talking about over reacting 😅 I wasn’t mad at all. I truly appreciate your take on the matter. Maybe i was reaching a little bit but you’re taking it to a completely another level.

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.

Ottawa's top 5 will cost $40,500,000 next year.

Toronto's top 3 will cost $35,100,000 next year. (Matthews @ 13.2 / Tavares @ 11.0 / Marner @ 10.9)

And will likely cost around $35,000,000 the year after. (Matthews @ 13.2 / Marner @ 12.2 / Nylander @ 9.6)

Tavares likely takes a $6-8 million pay cut when Marners extension starts (or he walks, but I think he wants to retire in TO).

Get real man.

I feel like they anticipate Chychrun playing the right side with Chabot. If so, that's a pretty sick top-4

That doesn't mean anything. As a buffalo fan, Toronto's top 3 is far better than Ottawas

Sorry, I miscalculated. I must have left somebody out when I did the Ottawa calculation. And I agree with the Buffalo fan who said Toronto's top 3 is better than Ottawa's, but I think Ottawa is building a potential contender. I see Ottawa being where Toronto was a few years ago when they were locking up their young stars long term (maybe not as long as they would have liked, but I think it's worked out ok).

This's going to end bad for Ottawa. High risk, high reward signing would be for max. $4M. Jake is a really good player but this may break his work ethic completely.

Treliving’s not giving Marner 12… He’ll trade Marner before giving him that kind of contract and Tavares will settle in the 6/7.5 range for 2-4 years

And you forgot to mention another thing: out of the 8 players you are discussing, the Leafs have the 2 best and have all 4 out of the top 6 players

He did not get front-loaded money or signing bonuses. This means that he could lose 66 percent of his contract if he is bought out anytime in the next 4 years (before the age of 26). So while I agree with you that some players do coast once they get paid, the Senators can get out of most of this contract if he is bad.

Look what happened to Colin White. Even accounting for the 1.2M Florida paid him, he so far has lost 9.3 million dollars, and it doesn't look like he is going to make much of that back at this point.

You can't really compare Ottawa and Toronto's contracts in the future because they are apples and oranges. Ottawa is where Toronto was 5 or so years ago when Toronto signed all the young players they acquired in their rebuild to RFA contracts. The Tavares contract, along with the upcoming extensions to Matthews, Marner, and Nylander are all UFA contracts. Of course they are going to be more expensive than RFA contracts signed on ELCs.

The window for most teams to win is when their stars are on RFA deals. Ottawa is going to be in a better position than Toronto to load up over the next 3-5 years because the core will be underpaid and the cap will theoretically go up. As much as I hate Toronto, they were one of the teams hurt the most by the timing of COVID and the flat cap. They should have had a 2-3 year period where the cap was 88.5-100 million and they still had Matthews and co. under their RFA cap hits. They would have been able to go all in. Instead, they had to make consolations to account for the flat cap. Yes, other teams also had to do the same thing, but you can still measure which teams were hurt the most based on where they were in their build. Toronto was at the worst possible stage to be hit with a flat cap.

I hope everyone rereads their comments who said this contract was bad after watching Sanderson fly this season