Ottawa Senators

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Senators ink Chabot to massive eight-year, $64 million deal

By Joey AlfieriSep 19, 2019, 10:16 AM EDT

Ottawa Senators owner Eugene Melnyk has a reputation of being a little tight with his wallet, but on Thursday morning he handed out a massive extension to one of his better young players.

The Senators announced that they’ve signed Thomas Chabot to an eight-year, $64 million contract extension. The 22-year-old put up 14 goals and 55 points in 70 contests last season. He also averaged over 24 minutes of ice time per game in his second NHL season.

“Thomas is an exceptional talent and an outstanding teammate, who is impactful both on and off the ice. He is the type of player that can develop into a core member of a championship-level team in the National Hockey League,” said Senators general manager Pierre Dorion. “He is an NHL all-star; an elite skater and puck-mover who plays with pace and determination. We are convinced Thomas will have a significant impact on the Ottawa Senators as we develop and grow into a highly competitive team over the coming seasons and we are extremely proud that Thomas will continue to be a key part of our team’s future success moving forward. Today is a great day for the Ottawa Senators franchise.”

Chabot still has one year remaining on his entry-level contract, so this extension will only kick in at the start of the 2020-21 season.

Thomas Chabot’s eight-year contract has an average annual value of $8 million, with the following breakdown: $7M in 2020-21, $7M in 2021-22, $4M in 2022-23, $8M in 2023-24, $10M in 2024-25, $10M in 2025-26, $10M in 2026-27 and $8M in 2027-28.

— Sens Communications (@Media_Sens) September 19, 2019

Per Cap Friendly, Chabot has a modified no-trade (10-team no-trade) clause in the final four years of the extension.

This is a major signing for the Sens. Not only does it keep their best player under team control for the next nine years, it also shows a commitment to keeping and paying their high-end talent. Also, the fact that Chabot is willing to commit to Ottawa and the Senators franchise for a long time.

After the Erik Karlsson and Mark Stone fiascos, the Sens couldn’t afford more bad press with their star players. So the fact that Melnyk was willing to open the vault to lock up a young player is a good sign. They already locked up Colin White to a six-year extension this summer and they will have to do the same thing with Brady Tkachuk in the next two years.

Ottawa has some good pieces on their roster, but the young talent isn’t surrounded with enough quality. After Chabot, their blue line is made up of Nikita Zaitsev, Ron Hainsey, Mark Borowiecki, Dylan DeMelo, Christian Wolanin and Christian Jaros. None of those guys is worthy of being on a top pairing right now.

As good as the Chabot news is, it’s still going to be a while before the Sens become contenders again.

MORE:
• Previewing the 2019-20 Ottawa Senators

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Joey Alfieri is a writer for Pro Hockey Talk on NBC Sports. Drop him a line at phtblog@nbcsports.com or follow him on Twitter @joeyalfieri.

Previewing the 2019-20 Ottawa Senators

By Joey AlfieriSep 19, 2019, 9:42 AM EDT

Hockey’s ultimate journeyman goalie calls it a career

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Associated PressAug 28, 2019, 8:30 AM EDT

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Mike McKenna isn’t sure where to start on the craziest stories from his long and winding road of a career.

”We could be here forever,” he said. ”I mean, do you want to talk about me, or do you want to talk about when the bus caught on fire? Or do you want to talk about swiping a Volvo on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge? These are things that have happened. You can’t make that up.”

McKenna’s path through hockey looks stranger than fiction. The journeyman goaltender announced his retirement Tuesday after stints with 15 NHL organizations and 22 professional teams in all, enough material to fill a novel.

”I never expected this, and it turned into my career path and that’s just the way it was,” McKenna said in an interview during the Stanley Cup Final earlier this year. ”To me, yeah, it was crazy. There has been a lot of stops along the way. But I just made so many friends, I’ve been in so many places and got to experience so much, I feel like I’ve had a pretty full life in the game with 15 organizations to go through.”

McKenna said his eldest daughter being in school changed the equation. The 36-year-old had been open to playing another season but wanted to be rooted in one place and joked that he would’ve been the only No. 3 goalie in the league with a no-movement clause.

Instead, he will move on after playing 15 games for the Lightning, 10 for the Senators, four for the Blue Jackets, two each for the Stars and Devils, and one apiece for the Coyotes and Flyers. Since being a sixth-round pick of the Nashville Predators in 2002, he played in the NCAA, ECHL, American Hockey League and NHL.

McKenna spent a vast majority of that time in the AHL, which gave him some colorful stories. He thinks it’s hard to top the Portland Pirates’ bus catching on fire on the way to a game.

”We had a right rear (tire) blow and I don’t why it happened, but something lit up a hydraulic line or something,” McKenna said. ”Next thing you know, the right rear of the bus was on fire and the flames were licking over the side of it and our bus driver got off and told us in the middle of the road in Rhode Island or Mass or whoever we were: ‘Everybody off! We’re on fire!”’

McKenna and his teammates had to play that night and lost. He blames it on smoke inhalation.

So many stops along the way provided McKenna with 18 different masks, all of which he still has. The jerseys? Well, that was more difficult.

”You don’t get to keep jerseys from teams. They don’t give you those,” McKenna said. ”I have most of my jerseys, and I’ve probably been given a jersey by a half-dozen teams I would say, but the other ones I’ve either had to pay for or have traded to get.”

It takes time just to list the teams he’s played for professionally: Las Vegas, Norfolk, Milwaukee, Omaha, Portland, Tampa Bay, Lowell, Albany, New Jersey, Binghamton, Peoria, Springfield, Columbus, Arizona, Syracuse, Texas, Dallas, Belleville, Ottawa, Philadelphia and Lehigh Valley.

Last season, a trade and subsequent waiver claim by Philadelphia gave him three teams in four days.

”I’ve never done that before,” McKenna said. ”With goalies, this can happen. You order some white gear and hope it shows up soon.”

McKenna and his family have had a house in St. Louis for a decade now and will make it home. The need for white gear and a new mask is over, but not before he could indulge in some self-professed ”dark comedy” about bouncing around like a puck on choppy ice.

”There’s probably a lot of punch lines out there associated with what I’ve done and you have to be able to laugh at yourself in life,” he said.

PHT Power Rankings: Which NHL teams are ready to bounce back?

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By Adam GretzAug 26, 2019, 1:02 PM EDT

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After looking at individual players ready to bounce back (or regress) ahead of the 2019-20 NHL season, it is time to shift our focus to the teams that are on the verge of doing the same.

This week’s PHT Power Rankings takes a look at the 15 teams that missed the Stanley Cup Playoffs a year ago and which ones are most likely to make a return trip to the postseason in 2020. It is pretty much a given that at least two or three of these teams is going to qualify this season, it is just a matter of which ones did enough.

To the rankings!

1. Florida Panthers. They have one of the best all-around players and salary cap bargains in the league in Aleksander Barkov, a good core of players around him, and just added a No. 1 goalie that is one of the best in the league to fill their biggest need. Maybe Sergei Bobrovsky‘s contract turns into a salary cap disaster in three years, but he can still make a huge impact in the short-term.

2. New Jersey Devils. It would require a pretty dramatic one-year turnaround, but with the additions of P.K. Subban, Nikita Gusev, Jack Hughes, Wayne Simmonds, and the return of a healthy Taylor Hall it is not an impossible thought. The wild card will be a possibility if they can get something that resembles decent goaltending.

3. Chicago Blackhawks. There is reason to be concerned with their forward depth and their defense (the latter is a huge question mark), but they still have a couple of superstars and at least have the potential to have an outstanding goalie duo with Corey Crawford (assuming he is healthy) and Robin Lehner. This is still a team that believes it can win right now.

4. New York Rangers. After a huge offseason that featured some big scores (Artemi Panarin, Jacob Trouba, and Adam Fox) and some good luck (moving to No. 2 in the draft lottery to select Kaapo Kaako) expectations are going to be high in New York. (Maybe too high?) They are not yet a championship contender, but they will be a lot better.

5. Philadelphia Flyers. They made a lot of moves but I’m not sure if they are really any better than they were at the start of the offseason. That said, the game-changer here could be if Carter Hart is as good as advertised.

[Your 2019-20 NHL on NBC TV schedule]

6. Arizona Coyotes. They were crushed by injuries all season and still nearly made the playoffs. Better injury luck and the additions of Phil Kessel and Carl Soderberg might be enough to give them that extra push to sneak in.

7. Montreal Canadiens. Maybe this is little low for a 96-point team that was just two points back of a playoff spot, but I also think they played a little over their heads. What if Max Domi and Tomas Tatar aren’t as good as they were this past season? What did they do to add to the roster in any meaningful way? If anything, they only subtracted from it by dealing Andrew Shaw (19 goals, 47 points in only 63 games) back to Chicago.

8. Minnesota Wild. Paul Fenton may have only been there for one season but the damage he left behind could linger for a few years. There is a path back to the playoffs this season, but a lot needs to go right.

9. Buffalo Sabres. They actually had a really solid offseason, but they are so far behind the top-three teams in the division (and probably Florida now, too) that the playoffs still seem like a real long shot.

10. Edmonton Oilers. I would say Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl going off and having monster seasons might be enough to carry them to a playoff spot, but it is hard to imagine the duo being better than it was a year ago when they both finished in the top-four in the league in scoring … and the team missed the playoffs by 11 points.

11. Vancouver Canucks. Elias Pettersson, Brock Boeser, and some of the other young players here will make the Canucks worth watching but there is not yet enough around them to make them a playoff team.

12. Anaheim Ducks. John Gibson is great, but is he great enough to make up for the rest of the roster around him? Not sure any goalie in the NHL is quite that great.

13. Detroit Red Wings. Steve Yzerman has his work cut out for him here. Other than bringing back Valtteri Filppula and the addition of a couple of rookies this is the same team that has been lurking around the bottom of the Eastern Conference for the past few years.

14. Los Angeles Kings. Maybe Jonathan Quick and Drew Doughty are better this season (they should be), but even if they are that will not be enough to make up for the rest of the roster. Just start the rebuild already.

15. Ottawa Senators. In terms of actual salary being paid this season it is by far the cheapest roster in the NHL with almost no long-term commitments. Winning is not the priority right now, and winning is not in their immediate future.

MORE POWER RANKINGS:
• NHL teams under pressure to win this season
• Bounce-back candidates
• Top regression candidates
• Breakout candidates

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Adam Gretz is a writer for Pro Hockey Talk on NBC Sports. Drop him a line at phtblog@nbcsports.com or follow him on Twitter @AGretz.

Three questions for Senators in 2019-20

By James O'BrienAug 21, 2019, 4:38 PM EDT

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Each day in the month of August we’ll be examining a different NHL team — from looking back at last season to discussing a player under pressure to identifying X-factors to asking questions about the future. Today we look at the Ottawa Senators.

Let’s take a look at three questions surrounding the Senators that don’t revolve around mercurial owner Eugene Melnyk.

1. Can D.J. Smith start building something?

Ideally, Smith will begin with Ottawa much like David Quinn started his time with the Rangers: as a coach with very limited expectations.

Honestly, it would probably be best if the Senators “lost respectably” in 2019-20. Score some goals, excite some fans, and maybe distract from the mess surrounding the team at times.

In the grand scheme of things, Smith will be able to help Thomas Chabot and Brady Tkachuk to continue their ascent up the rankings among young NHL blue chippers, while also helping to develop the team’s more mid-range prospects. Bonus points if Smith can also put veteran players in the right situation for “pump and dumps” during the trade deadline, whether that means helping Craig Anderson maximize his value, or merely others in positions to succeed.

Basically, there are ways Smith can “succeed” even if the Senators don’t really win the battle on the scoreboard very often. They don’t seem to have the weapons necessary to light up many scoreboards, either way.

[MORE: 2018-19 Review | Under Pressure | X-factor]

2. What defines “success” for this team, in general?

And that really brings it to another question: what should Ottawa really be striving for?

Yes, there’s a chance that Smith innovates and this team overachieves, but even if that happens, what’s the ceiling for such situations?

The worst-case scenario might be that the Senators play so well that they end up in the playoff bubble, but can’t quite make it, so they also end up with a mediocre first-rounder. It would also be quite bad if a relatively competent Senators team inspired Pierre Dorion to decide against trading veterans who aren’t likely to be part of the future, from Anderson to Ron Hainsey to maybe even a more borderline case like Chris Tierney.

Yes, there’s some young talent in Ottawa, but they should be greedy and try to grab as much as they can. Especially since it’s unclear how many of their current prospects will actually move the needle. After watching the Avalanche use their fourth overall pick in 2019, the Senators could really use at least one more player in that range.

Being realistic about their chances is pretty important, and it’s part of what makes Dorion such an X-factor.

3. Can the Senators get some stops?

Despite having Mark Stone and Matt Duchene for a significant chunk of the 2018-19 season, the Senators still were outscored by 59 goals, allowing an NHL-worst 301.

Losing Stone, in particular, should make it that much tougher to keep the goal differential battle respectable, as Stone is one of those rare wingers who gets very deserved attention as a Selke candidate. On paper, there’s little reason to believe that Ottawa will be a particularly competitive team, especially with so many young players learning on the job.

Maybe D.J. Smith’s system might make life a little easier for Craig Anderson, though? Anderson suffered through some terrible play the past two seasons (.898 save percentage in 2017-18, not much better with .903 in 2018-19), yet the 38-year-old has had some great runs in the past, often when people least expected it.

Even with great goaltending, the Senators’ chances are limited, but it would probably do a lot for their collective psyche – and maybe even their young players’ development – if they could at least put up a fight most nights.

MORE:
• ProHockeyTalk’s 2019 NHL free agency tracker
• Your 2019-20 NHL on NBC TV schedule

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James O’Brien is a writer for Pro Hockey Talk on NBC Sports. Drop him a line at phtblog@nbcsports.com or follow him on Twitter @cyclelikesedins.