Revisiting Senators’ Asset Management in Alex DeBrincat Trades

This past Tuesday marked four years since the Ottawa Senators acquired Alex DeBrincat from the Chicago Blackhawks. This was done in hopes of complementing Tim Stutzle, Brady Tkachuk and Drake Batherson in the top six and helping the Sens emerge from their rebuild.

Today also marks three years since the Sens flipped him to the Detroit Red Wings after DeBrincat didn’t want to extend in Ottawa. Things turned quickly for both DeBrincat and the Senators’ plans, but it seemed like then-general manager Pierre Dorion made the right one for the club’s needs. 

Both the build-up to the acquisition and the departure of DeBrincat were one thing, but most Sens fans might point to the assets lost in both trades as the most frustrating part of the experiment. However, if you look at both moves in-depth, Ottawa might not have lost as much as analysts think four years later. 

07/07/2022 – Acquiring Debrincat

Both Ottawa and Chicago entered the 2022 offseason on completely different sides of their respective rebuilds. The Blackhawks, after stating they were rebuilding in October 2020, were basically forced to start over again after a loss in team depth and the Seth Jones experiment failing to launch. Meanwhile, the Senators were ready to emerge from theirs after four seasons of development from Batherson, Tkachuk and Thomas Chabot. 

Dorion figured his team was close to knocking on the door of contention and that the time for a move to push his team forward was imminent. So, a trade for the two-time 40-goal-scorer was on. The Sens traded three picks to Chicago to get DeBrincat right before the 2022 Draft: their first- and second-round selections that season and a 2024 third-round pick.

At first, the move seemed to be paying off with DeBrincat registering 36 points in as many games, but the 2022-23 season would be filled with many ups and downs for both player and team. After months of .500 hockey, the Sens were finally playing consistently enough for a decent stretch and were in a good spot with a record of 33-28-3 in early March. That was before they lost 12 of their final 18 to end the season and missed the playoffs for the sixth straight year at the time. 

As for DeBrincat, who put up 11 points in those final 18 games, he finished his only season in Ottawa with 27 goals and 66 points in all 82 games, suffering a 12-point drop from the season before and finishing with a career-low minus-31. Because of a combination of factors, DeBrincat made it clear he would not be extending with Ottawa, and a trade was imminent that offseason. 

While the Senators failed in their mission to emerge as playoff contenders that season, the Blackhawks didn’t make out like gangbusters with the return they got, but still did alright,  mainly selecting Kevin Korchinski with Ottawa’s first-round pick at the 2022 Draft. At the time, Korchinski was considered a highly explosive offensive defenceman out of the Western Hockey League, but is still struggling to defend in his own end and has stalled a bit in his development, appearing in just 13 games for Chicago last season. 

The Blackhawks used the other two picks to select another youngster struggling to launch in Paul Ludwinski (2022 second-rounder) and a speedy two-way prospect in AJ Spellacy (2024 fourth-rounder), who is just making the jump to the American Hockey League next season. While it seems like the Senators haven’t lost the deal yet, this is only one half of the DeBrincat dilemma and not the full story. 

07/09/2023 – Shipping Him Out

Amidst DeBrincat’s value plummeting compared to the summer prior, mostly thanks to his drop in production and size, Dorion didn’t have much to work with in terms of league interest in the winger. Getting back the same value given up to acquire DeBrincat would be impossible based on the events of this past season, but there wasn’t a choice since Ottawa would lose him for nothing if they didn’t deal him. 

With their hands tied, the Senators were able to ship DeBrincat to his favoured team, the Detroit Red Wings, for significantly lesser value: a conditional first and a fourth round pick, both in 2024, an average defensive prospect in Donovan Sebrango and taking back Dominik Kubalik’s $2.5 million cap hit.

Kubalik was considered a good middle-six pickup after nodding 20 goals in the 2022-23 season with Detroit, but wasn’t anywhere close to DeBrincat’s calibre for the position the Sens were hoping to replace. In the 2023-24 campaign, Kubalik tallied just 11 goals and 15 points in 74 games as a Senator. He has not been in the NHL since, playing in Switzerland for the last two seasons.

Sebrango, Detroit’s third-round pick from 2020, was an alright seventh-to-eighth defenceman with the Sens for all of four games. He was picked up off waivers by the Florida Panthers last October, meaning Ottawa lost two of their assets from the DeBrincat return for nothing, with Kubalik also leaving the season prior. 

Then come the draft selections used with the two picks. The fourth-rounder was used to select a decent power forward prospect in Blake Montgomery at the 2024 Draft, but Ottawa would package the first-rounder that originally belonged to the Boston Bruins back to them to acquire Linus Ullmark. With that pick, Boston would select 6-foot-7, 220-pound Dean Letourneau, who put up 39 points in 36 games with Boston College this past season. 

So overall, here’s how the full trade went down after four years from the Senators’ perspective:

Ottawa Receives: 

• One year of Alex DeBrincat (66 points) – traded
• One year of Dominik Kubalik (15 points) – released
• Four games of Donovan Sebrango – waived
• Linus Ullmark – starting goalie
• Blake Montgomery – prospect

Ottawa Trades: 

• Kevin Korchinski – prospect
• AJ Spellacy – prospect
• Paul Ludwinski – prospect
• Dean Letourneau – prospect

While it doesn’t seem like the Senators lost out on much, it may be another five-to-ten years until we can determine whether the prospects drafted would have helped them. At this stage of their contention window, however, it is unlikely that Ottawa is worrying about what became of their lost assets from the DeBrincat experiment right now, but they could learn a thing or two about trades like these to avoid losing out on rentals. 

Even when Dorion, who was fired early in the 2023-24 season, rushed to bring in a quality player who did not want to commit to the Senators to begin with, he made the same mistake with Jakob Chychrun during the 2022-23 season. He gave up three picks to the then-Arizona Coyotes for him before that year’s trade deadline in a failed attempt at a playoff push. Chychrun also did not want to stay in Ottawa and was shipped out for significantly less by Steve Staios.

All in all, the Senators did not completly lose in the DeBrincat sweepstakes, but they have to learn about looking at impact players if they want to save their assets while contending. They tried the same thing with Jason Robertson of the Dallas Stars, but wisely backed out since he wouldn’t sign in Ottawa. If there is any silver lining, DeBrincat and the Red Wings have yet to make the playoffs while the Sens are in a slightly better position than their Atlantic Division rivals.