With Senators winger Alex DeBrincat making it known that he does not intend to sign a long-term deal with Ottawa, there has been an expectation of a trade for several weeks. However, the draft came and went without any move and after yesterday’s flurry of signings, there aren’t many teams left that can cover the full cost of a long-term agreement.
Speaking with reporters yesterday including Postmedia’s Bruce Garrioch, GM Pierre Dorion provided some updates on the status of trade talks. He noted that on multiple occasions, they seemed to be close on a trade but once his agent (Wasserman’s Jeff Jackson) received permission to speak to the acquiring team about working out a new contract, they weren’t able to come to terms, scuttling the swap.
On Saturday, Dorion provided Jackson with permission to speak to multiple teams about a new contract for DeBrincat but again, nothing to this point has materialized. The GM attempted to explain the reasoning:
There’s varying degrees of interest. Teams call, we get close to a deal, I give them permission, and sometimes they’re not ready to pay maybe the term that we’re ready to pay. He’s 25 years old, so he’s looking for something in particular, and I can talk about it because we own his rights, so I think the degrees (of interest) vary.
DeBrincat is coming off a quieter year by his standards but he still put up 27 goals and 39 assists last season in his first year with Ottawa. But with two 41-goal seasons under his belt from his time with Chicago, it would appear that Jackson is seeking a contract for his client that’s more commensurate with his historical production. Evidently, teams aren’t giving into that just yet.
The Senators filed for club-elected salary arbitration with DeBrincat in the first window last month, taking the $9MM qualifying offer off the table. Instead, that allows them to come in with an offer as low as $7.65MM. Arbitration hearings don’t start until late July and roll into early August so that represents the next hard pressure point, so to speak.
However, it’s still in Ottawa’s best interest to try to get a trade done before then as this situation is likely holding up some of their offseason spending plans. Until they know who they’re getting back for DeBrincat – it almost certainly won’t just be a futures-based return – they won’t know exactly how much more money they have left to work with. Right now, there are still several quality players available on the open market. By the time arbitration hearings being, that’s unlikely to be the case. But at this point, the hold-up appears to be on DeBrincat’s end in terms of his asking price on a contract, not Ottawa’s asking price in a trade.
