With their loss on Nov. 30 to the Los Angeles Kings, the Ottawa Senators have a record of 10-12-1 in their first 23 games this season. The team isn’t keeping pace in the ultra-competitive Atlantic Division. With over a quarter of their season gone, their hopes of making the playoffs next spring are fading fast. Just to pick up a wild card berth in the postseason, the Senators must now win between six and seven of every 10 games they’ll play for the rest of the campaign.
Senators Nation is in its customary December crisis and cries have gone up all over Bytown for the Senators’ president of hockey operations and general manager (GM) Steve Staios to make a blockbuster trade to avert calamity. Yet can the Senators really trade their way out of the hole they’ve dug for themselves this season? Even if they could, is there a danger that panic trades could hurt the club’s long-term prospects?
Let’s have a look at the argument.
Good Trades Are Hard to Do in Today’s NHL
Staios is rumoured to be pushing hard to acquire a defenceman to deal with the problem Artem Zub’s broken foot is causing. If true, that’s at odds with what he said at a Nov. 20 press conference responding to a question about trades, noting, “I think every GM is doing their job by always looking to see if there’s anything they can do (with a trade). But I don’t see any glaring areas where I think this group needs a great deal of improvement because they’ve shown it.”
Related: Ottawa Senators Have Been Constructed to Lose
Staios almost seemed skeptical that a trade would help his club, commenting, “As for making a trade, is one player coming in and another player going out – is that going to change what we’ve identified (as a problem)? I don’t see anything right now.” As if to shut down speculation about a trade, he went on to say, “The group has played some good hockey and proven against some good teams they’re up for the challenge”.
If Staios is unconvinced a trade is what’s needed to turn his team around, that’s for good reason. Because of the NHL salary cap and the fact that most clubs are up against it, trades these days are usually one-for-one. While it’s true that with Zub out of the lineup, the Senators now have $3.8 million in unused cap space, they’ll have almost nothing once the Russian defenceman laces up again as he is expected to do in late December.
To make a trade with almost no cap space, the sun and the moon must align for Staios. Not only must he find another GM who is as motivated as he to make a trade, but that GM must possess a player who Staios and his staff believe could fix one or more of Ottawa’s problems. Once he finds said GM, then the player coming Ottawa’s way would ideally need to have roughly the same salary and term as the player leaving the nation’s capital. Otherwise, the cap space math won’t work. Sure, picks and prospects could round out the numbers so that a deal might work, but that’s not what Staios needs. His club needs roster players who can help them deliver results now.
As Toronto Maple Leafs GM Brad Treliving once observed, “I know everybody screams for change, but we can only do things that are available to you. I can’t click my heels and make things happen. You have to have a trade partner. It doesn’t make any sense for us to give a player away for 50 cents on the dollar. It’s great to say, ‘Go get this guy.’ Problem is, this isn’t fantasy hockey. The idea that you can go pick ‘this player’ off the player tree … it doesn’t happen that way.”
Should the Senators Trade Josh Norris?
The Bytown hockey commentariat has proposed many blockbuster trades with most based on the argument that the Senators need to shake up their core. Yet, Brady Tkachuk, Tim Stutzle, Drake Batherson, Jake Sanderson, Thomas Chabot and Linus Ullmark are all labelled untouchable. That leaves just Josh Norris as the one core piece who, in a trade, would have much chance of fetching a player who could make an impact on the roster.
The problem with Norris is that he’s a tough sell. In a nutshell, he’s overpaid. With a contract featuring an average annual value (AAV) of $7.95 million that runs to the end of the 2027-28 season, he’s on track this season to notch 34 goals and 22 assists. Per point, he’s paid $142,000 and that doesn’t compare favourably to other centremen in the league generating similar point totals.
Here’s a look at a few centremen around the league who racked up approximately 55 points last season and what they are paid with their current club.
| Player | Current Team | Current Salary |
| Tage Thompson | Buffalo Sabres | $7.1 million |
| Quinton Byfield | Los Angeles Kings | $6.2 million |
| Tyler Toffoli | San Jose Sharks | $6.0 million |
| Blake Coleman | Calgary Flames | $4.9 million |
| Casey Mittelstadt | Colorado Avalanche | $5.75 million |
It would be hard to argue that Norris brings much more to a club than these five players. Compared to some, he’s proven over his career that he brings less. What’s more, except for Tage Thompson, all the comparable skaters in this table make considerably less than Norris.
With his history of shoulder injuries and the lengthy term remaining on his contract, Norris would represent a huge risk to any team that acquired him. Yet outside of him, and with six core players judged untouchable, there’s not much aside from journeymen left on Ottawa’s roster who would earn much in a trade.
The Ottawa Senators Should Trade for a Defenceman
On the most recent episode of The Senators Roundtable Podcast, I and my fellow panelists discussed what players Staios should be targeting in return for Norris (see discussion starting at 1:21). What struck me about the conversation was that there were so few targets who could be considered that much of an improvement over what the Senators already have in Norris.
Not only that, but not all the targets discussed were defenceman, even though it’s on the blue line where the Senators need the most help. What stood out for me in the discussion was that there were so few defenders who we thought could make a real impact on the Senators’ blue line.
In his latest piece for The Hockey Writers, Jacob Billington evaluated several options for a Norris trade, two of which were right-shot defencemen – the Chicago Blackhawks’ Connor Murphy and the Columbus Blue Jackets’ prospect David Jiricek.
Related: 3 Potential Trade Destinations for Senators’ Josh Norris
Murphy would be a welcome addition to the Senators’ defence and Chicago could use a centreman. Yet with Murphy making more than $3.5 million less than Norris, it’s not clear who else would be on the train from Chicago to even out the trade. It’s unlikely there’d be picks and prospects since the Blackhawks are rebuilding and Ottawa is in win-now mode. With Jiricek being traded to the Minnesota Wild yesterday (Nov. 30), the Senators are out of luck on the 21-year-old.
Staios Can’t Trade His Way Out of Trouble
It’s easy for fans to demand that Staios shake things up on his roster by making a major trade. Even so, Staios is too smart to give in to the temptation to make a trade for the sake of making one. He knows very well that trades are difficult to engineer and can often backfire.
To wit, look at the many ex-Senators traded away over the years who are now doing very well with other clubs. The players Ottawa received in return are long gone.
