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Steve Staios Unhappy About Tkachuk Rumors

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Before the New York Rangers traded defenseman Jacob Trouba to the Anaheim Ducks, rumors began to swirl around the team’s reported interest in Ottawa Senators captain Brady Tkachuk. These rumors were quickly squashed when Bruce Garrioch of the Ottawa Citizen immediately reported the Senators had no interest in moving on from their leader.

General manager Steve Staios was more than displeased to see Tkachuk’s name in the rumor mill. Garrioch hinted that any working relationship between the Senators and Rangers organization may have been tarnished. In his article regarding the speculation, Garrioch wrote, “Rangers GM Chris Drury may have some explaining to do to the Senators organization due to this talk. Staios won’t be the least bit pleased to hear Tkachuk’s name floating around out there. It’s believed Staios planned to have a conversation with Tkachuk to reiterate there is absolutely nothing to this“.

This update from Garrioch should quiet any future rumors regarding Ottawa and their captain. Tkachuk is in the fourth year of a seven-year contract signed with the Senators in 2021 and there’s been no indication from the player or the team that Tkachuk is close to leaving.

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Nikolas Matinpalo Dealing With Illness After Call-Up

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David Perron Not Expected Back Soon

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  • According to broadcaster Daniella Bruce, the Detroit Red Wings won’t have netminder Cam Talbot available during their two-game road trip against the Boston Bruins and Ottawa Senators. This means rookie netminder Sebastian Cossa will likely be with the team for the remainder of the week under emergency conditions unless Alex Lyon is activated from the injured reserve. Head coach Derek Lalonde has already confirmed Cossa won’t get the start this evening against the Bruins but could make his NHL debut later this week should Ville Husso continue struggling.
  • It’s been a difficult introductory season for David Perron with the Ottawa Senators. He’s only suited up in nine games this season and it doesn’t appear he’ll be adding to that total soon (X Link). He missed significant time earlier in the season due to a health scare with his newborn daughter but has missed due to an upper-body injury more recently.

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Senators Recall Nikolas Matinpalo

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The Senators announced they’ve recalled right-shot defenseman Nikolas Matinpalo from AHL Belleville. He’ll serve as Ottawa’s extra defender for the time being while lefty Donovan Sebrango, whom they summoned last week before scratching him for three straight games, returned to the minors in a corresponding move.

Matinpalo has four career NHL games, all coming in an Ottawa uniform last season. The Sens signed the 26-year-old Finn as an undrafted free agent from Liiga’s Ässät in 2023, playing him mostly with Belleville since.

A defensive-minded blue liner with good size at 6’3″ and 212 lbs, Matinpalo averaged just seven minutes per game across last year’s early-season call-up. He recorded a +1 rating, two shots, two blocks, and four hits while controlling 53.6% of shot attempts at even strength, but he’s still looking for his first NHL point.

In 84 games for the B-Sens since the beginning of last season, Matinpalo has six goals and 14 assists for 20 points with a +13 rating. He signed a one-year, two-way extension in June, shortly before his one-year entry-level agreement was set to expire.

Meanwhile, Sebrango’s first NHL recall ends without incident. The 22-year-old, whom Ottawa acquired from the Red Wings in 2023’s Alex DeBrincat trade, is on pace for the best season of his five-year professional career with six points in 14 games for Belleville this year.

Sebrango, a third-round pick of Detroit in 2020, is set to be a restricted free agent next summer. The 6’1″, 220-lb lefty will likely stay out of NHL action until an injury affects one of the Sens’ other lefties – with their injury-related absence being righty Artem Zub, it made sense to swap Sebrango for Matinpalo on the active roster. Matinpalo will require waivers to return to Belleville if he remains on Ottawa’s roster for over 30 days or plays 10 or more games.

Senators Hoping To Have First-Round Pick Forfeiture Reduced

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Last November, the NHL ruled that the Senators must forfeit one of their first-round selections in either the 2024, 2025, or 2026 drafts due to their failure to disclose Evgenii Dadonov’s no-trade clause when they traded him to Vegas in 2021.  The issue came to light less than a year later when the Golden Knights tried to flip him to Anaheim at the 2022 trade deadline, a team that was on that no-trade list.  (He eventually was moved to Montreal later that summer.)  Management in Vegas was understandably displeased about the matter and asked the league to investigate, eventually leading to the penalty to Ottawa.

The last time the NHL took this step was with New Jersey and their initial 17-year contract to Ilya Kovalchuk, a deal that was later reworked to a 15-year agreement.  The Devils were fined $3MM and stripped of a first-round pick between 2011 and 2014.  They elected not to forfeit in the first three years and in 2014, after Kovalchuk left the team, New Jersey successfully lobbied the league for a lesser penalty; half the funds were returned and instead of losing the first-rounder outright, it was moved to the back of the first round.

It appears that Senators owner Michael Andlauer is hoping that history will repeat itself with his franchise.  In an appearance on Amazon’s Monday Night Hockey earlier this week (video link), he lobbied for similar relief when it comes to Ottawa’s penalty:

It is what is it, we move forward, it was before my time. I accept a lot of deliberation went through. I just hope that being good citizens we can get the same type of relief New Jersey did some years ago with a similar situation.

The team elected not to forfeit the pick in this year’s draft, instead selecting defenseman Carter Yakemchuk seventh overall in June.  The Sens currently sit 25th in the overall standings and if they wind up finishing the season somewhere around there, it stands to reason that they’ll keep their 2025 selection, push the penalty to 2026, and hope for relief from the league at that time.

However, NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman told reporters including Postmedia’s Bruce Garrioch earlier this month that he has no inclination to lessen the penalty on the Senators.  Of course, things can change between now and then but it certainly doesn’t appear to be trending in that direction for now.

It’s worth noting that the pick that Ottawa has to forfeit must be their own selection and not one acquired from another team.  That means that if they trade one of their 2025 or 2026 picks, it would lock in them forfeiting the other one as things stand.  That will likely play an impact in trade talks as they look to acquire help on their back end as those selections are trade chips that are probably off the table in discussions.

Noah Gregor A Game-Time Decision

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  • Depth forward Noah Gregor will be a game-time decision for the Ottawa Senators tonight (X Link). Gregor has missed five straight games for the Senators after scoring two goals and three points in his first 16 contests.

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Senators Place Artem Zub On LTIR, Recall Donovan Sebrango

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The Ottawa Senators have placed defenseman Artem Zub on long-term injured reserve as expected. In a corresponding roster move, the organization announced the LTIR placement and the recall of defenseman Donovan Sebrango from their AHL affiliate, the Belleville Senators.

It’s an unfortunate but necessary transaction for the Senators after reports from this weekend indicated that Zub would be out ’for a while’ with a broken foot. Ottawa is likely still looking to add a defenseman via the trade market but will use Sebrango for now.

It’s becoming somewhat of a lost season for Zub. He’s already missed time in mid-to-late October with a concussion and could miss as many as two months due to the broken foot. As arguably the team’s best right-handed shooting defenseman, Sebrango will have big shoes to fill.

He’s in the second year of a four-year, $18.4MM extension originally signed in 2022. He’s tallied two assists over 11 games with the Senators this year and posted a respectable +0.5 E +/- according to Hockey Reference.

The only silver lining to the injury is that Sebrango has a clear path toward making his NHL debut. He was originally drafted with the 63rd overall pick of the 2020 NHL Draft by the Detroit Red Wings, making his way to the Senators organization in the trade sending Alex DeBrincat to Detroit over a year ago.

Sebrango, 22, is in his fourth professional season collecting seven goals and 31 points in 184 games between the Grand Rapids Griffins and Belleville. There may be some initial discipline issues (149 PIMs in the AHL) but he allows Ottawa to win more puck battles in the defensive zone.

The Senators don’t play until tomorrow night against the San Jose Sharks which would be an ideal matchup for Sebrango’s first game. They’ll likely play him next to Thomas Chabot or Jake Sanderson to lessen his initial responsibility if he does make his debut tomorrow.

Morning Notes: Daugavins, Norris, Crosby

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The IIHF reports that former NHL forward Kaspars Daugavins has retired. The 36-year-old’s announcement caught many by surprise as he has been very productive in recent seasons including this year in Slovakia’s top league Tipos Extraliga, where he has posted six goals and 14 assists in 19 games.

Daugavins was a third-round pick of the Ottawa Senators in 2006 (91st overall) and played seven seasons in the organization, including parts of three seasons in the NHL. Daugavins played 85 games with the Senators before he was plucked off waivers by the Boston Bruins in March of 2013. He played just six games with the Bruins before making his way to Europe the next season. During his brief NHL career, Daugavins registered six goals and nine assists while averaging just over 11 minutes of ice-time per game.

In other morning notes:

  • Frank Seravalli of Daily Faceoff mentioned on Daily Faceoff Live that Ottawa Senators forward Josh Norris has had his name come up in conversations that the Senators have been having, presumably with other teams. Ottawa has struggled out of the gate this season and has failed to live up to expectations once again. Their core is signed to significant long-term deals, and Norris is one player who hasn’t lived up to his paycheck. That being said, moving Norris would be very difficult given his cap hit and injury history. The 25-year-old has been decent offensively this year, posting eight goals and six assists in 21 games while starting 56% of his even-strength shifts in the defensive zone.
  • Sidney Crosby’s off-season extension with the Pittsburgh Penguins appears to have done nothing to cool the trade rumors that continue to be pushed out about him. On yesterday’s edition of TSN Overdrive, Bryan Hayes floated out what a potential Crosby trade to the Toronto Maple Leafs would look like. A deal involving the two sides is highly unlikely, given Kyle Dubas’ history with the Maple Leafs and Crosby’s desire to finish his career in Pittsburgh. However, thanks to the Penguins’ massive struggles as of late, a Crosby trade out of Pittsburgh doesn’t look as impossible as it did a month ago. Pittsburgh figures to be busy in the coming months if they don’t turn things around. However, the chances that Crosby is moved remain relatively close to zero.

Upper-Body Injury For Perron

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  • Senators winger David Perron was a late scratch for tonight’s game against Calgary due to an upper-body injury, relays TSN’s Claire Hanna (Twitter link). The veteran returned to Ottawa’s lineup a little over a week ago after taking time away when his newborn daughter needed to undergo surgery.  It has been a rough go on the ice for Perron’s first season with the Sens as he has been held without a point for his first nine games of the season.

Senators Looking To Acquire A Defenseman

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In congruence with today’s news that defenseman Artem Zub will miss time with a fractured foot, it’s no surprise that the Ottawa Senators are looking to trade for a defenseman. TSN’s Bruce Garrioch reports that general manager Steve Staios is aggressively pursuing the trade market for more defensive depth.

Garrioch didn’t mention in his report what handedness the Senators are hoping for but it’ll likely be a right-handed shot. Ottawa already has a solid 1-2 punch on the left side of the defensive core, as shown by Jake Sanderson and Thomas Chabot. It stands to reason the Senators may have already been looking for an upgrade on the right side with Zub and Nick Jensen being the only serviceable top-four options on the right side.

Ottawa has had difficulty keeping the puck out of their net this season but the entire blame can’t be put on the defense. They’ve only allowed 539 shots against in 20 games this season which is good for sixth in the league but 24th in goals against per game with a 3.25 mark. Former Vezina Trophy-winning goaltender Linus Ullmark has only managed a .881 save percentage over 12 starts which is a far cry away from his .918 SV% career average before the move to Canada.

Still, the team could certainly use an upgrade on defense if they hope to compete for a spot in the 2025 Stanley Cup playoffs in a sturdy Atlantic Division. The Senators own an 8-11-1 record on the year and have 62 games left to build momentum.

Ottawa may have a trade partner in the Columbus Blue Jackets whom Aaron Portzline of The Athletic reported yesterday were listening to offers on right-handed shot defenseman, David Jiříček. The Blue Jackets are reasonably looking for another recent first-round pick on their entry-level contract making the Senators a compatible trade partner.

Ottawa may be unwilling to part with a first-round pick for Jiříček but could build a package around forward Ridly Greig. He’s in the last year of his entry-level contract and was drafted two years before Jiříček with the 28th overall pick of the 2020 NHL Draft. He scored a career-high in points last year with 13 goals and 26 points in 72 games and could provide more for Columbus if he’s bumped into the top six.

Other options for Ottawa include Cody Ceci from the San Jose Sharks, Jacob Trouba from the New York Rangers, or David Savard from the Montreal Canadiens outside of Jiříček. It appears the Senators will land a right-handed shot defenseman sooner rather than later with how aggressive Staios has been in the market since the beginning of the season.

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