Why would you want Myers and Ladd

I wouldn't mind this, except for I don't really want Ladd or Myers.

why would you trade white (an actually good middle six centre) for lazar (a guy who I loved in junior but is now just an okay 4th liner) and overpay lazar while retaining on white? and i don't want ladd at all. the only way i'd do myers for zaitsev is if vancouver retains 1.5mil. first trade is fine

Trading Zaitsev for Myers is still worse than outright buying out Zaitsev.

Also some of these contracts are really confusing. 3.5mil for Paul seems really high. I think Ottawa should absolutely try to sign him, and I like him shifting to 3C full time next year, but I don't think he's a 3rd liner long term. I think Greig will be in that slot in a couple of years, and I think a Nick Paul extension needs to recognize that he will shift to more of a 4th line role. Depending on how much he wants to be here (everything I've heard from people around the org is that he does), I could see him sacrificing money for term. Maybe like a 5 year deal in the 2.75mil range?

I liked Brass more than most Sens fans of the time, but he's got no place in Ottawa's top 6, especially when you have Pinto on the 4th line. Don't hate him as a 4C though.

Again, I love Curty Laser Beam, but he's pretty unremarkable as a player. As much as I'd love seeing him smiling and hugging with guys like Tim Stützle, he's not worth 2 mil and he's not a guy you give term. I think that contract is more along the lines of something you give Formenton, though I'm not sure he gets much in the way of money or term on his next deal. I think it'll be a 1-2 year deal at the 1-1.5mil, unless he really picks things up as the season goes on.

As it stands, there's no reason at all to bring back Anton Forsberg. He's not good, and he's not a guy you want to play 35-45 games with a young starter. Depending on how Murray plays the rest of the year, and how the goalie market looks, the Sens might be better off sticking it out one more year with Murray. If he's totally awful this year you gotta move on, but it's totally possible he can be an okay goalie this year.

They're both improvements over the cap unloads leaving Ottawa in those trades in the opinion of OP they have to evaluated relative to the alternative

With how little leverage both formenton and Lazar have it's baffling to see them get so much term and money. Why so much. Lazar basically a KHLer too.

The colin white deal is such an insult to analytics, it's really jarring, does his career 2.5 corsi rel % really mean nothing to you?

90th percentile in the league.

Lazar -4.6 career

The injury this year was absolutely brutal. He's so ready to have a turn around year, and now he won't get that chance. Given his age, he'll likely be bought out this summer, likely sign in Boston, and absolutely thrive.

I'd rather have Myers he was doing okay before he became the only NHL RD in their lineup

OTT
Curtis Lazar
Signs 2.5M/4yrs extension
BOS
White, Colin ($1,200,000 retained)
Additional Details:
2021-22 TDL

Replacing four years of White at $4.75MM for four years of Lazar at $3.7MM ($2.5MM plus the retained $1.2MM)

An AHL depth winger for a middle6 centre, to save $1MM on a team that's no where near the cap. A 4th line winger who is often a healthy scratch and has cleared waivers unclaimed twice.

FYI

Mike Fisher's first five seasons
32 4 5 9
60 7 12 19
58 15 9 24
74 18 20 38
24 4 6 10
------------------------
248 games, 48 goals, 52 assists, 100 points, 0.40 PPG

Colin White's first five seasons
2 0 0 0
21 2 4 6
71 14 27 41
61 7 16 23
45 10 8 18
0 0 0 0
------------------------
200 games, 33 goals, 55 assists, 88 points, 0.44 PPG

sensibleguy

Like the comparison with Fisher. White will never be as strong and they're not really that comparable but it shows that White could totally improve statistically. Sens don't really need him to be top-6 too, just a solid 3rd liner will be fine. Ideally a responsible 2-way 3rd line C which he is really not that far off.



Was wondering the same thing. Would much rather overpay White than pay Lazar 2.5

Also retaining 1.2 on hite makes him NOT overpaid anymore... so no point trading him. He needs to stay healthy though



You make a lot of good points but only commenting on this.Yes Gustavsson will need more than Anton Forsberg to share the load. "getting rid" of Murray would just throwing Gus into the wolves.

Both Murray and Gustavsson have a 0.924 SV% since Filip started playing in the NHL (March 17th)

The bad Murray "reputation" comes from early last season when the team defense was even worse than it is today, simpy NOT NHL level.



Which would fit with Dorion story as a GM

The defense this year has been drastically worse than last year and it's not close. The same basic roster, but outside of the big two they all got even worse

We went from a starting roster of Chabot, Zaitsev, Wolanin, Coburn, Gudbranson and Brown last year to a starting roster of Chabot, Zaitsev, Mete, Holden, Zub and Brown this year. On paper, it seems like an improvement, but in practice it has been absolutely atrocious with the huge step back from Zaitsev, and all of Holden, Brown and Mete playing very poorly.

Wish they'd done more than take other teams' 7th D-men and thinking they'd be better in an increased role. Mete looked good last year, but he was a waiver wire claim and looks the part now (although he's been producing offensively which is nice). Brown was a nobody for Florida. Holden barely played for Vegas. MDZ had a decent year with Columbus but has been in and out of the press box through recent years. Put them all together and what does that spell? The absolute tire fire we watch every night.

Holden I'm actually a fan of. He's a very solid defensive guy, he's just out of his depth trying to carry one of two useless RHD this season. He can't be the defensively responsible stay at home guy while also being the guy who needs to break the puck out, because 3 and 22 aren't able to do either. He looked excellent on the right side with Brannstrom in pre season, and I would be fairly confident with him as the mentor for Lassi Thomson, who absolutely deserves an extended look going forward.

100% agreed. I'd also argue that MDZ has been better than expected, and while he's not free of faults, I'd much rather see him than Zaitsev or Brown. I think something like:

Chabot - Zub
Holden - Thomson
Mete - MDZ

Might be the best thing we can put together right now and it doesn't fill me with anxiety to look at. Thomson's looked good and while the stats don't really attest to that, I'd rather see him get the chance above the known awful commodity in Brown/Zaitsev.

MDZ has been really bad, but far from the worst on the team. He's one of the worst on the team in terms of getting caught puck watching and getting absolutely rolled for it. Not a good sign that Lassi Thomson has already had to bail him out multiple times on plays where he gets caught up watching the puck and got absolutely turnstiled.

If I had to choose 6 from the Dmen they have right now it's probably

Chabot-Zub
Holden-Thomson
Mete-MDZ (though Heatherington is probably better than either right now)

They need to make changes though, and it has to start with Josh Brown going.

We won't agree that. I have been following and watching the NHL hardcore for 30 years and I have rarely seen team defense being as bad as the Sens were for the first 30 games last season (maybe the 95 Sharks the last time?). The amount of time and space they were constantly giving up is not something you usually see at that level.

Numbers tend to say the same

Jan 13th to Feb 1st : 4.80 GA/GP (second worst was the Sharks with 3.88 GA/GP)
Feb 2nd to March 14th : 3.64 GA/GP (second worst was the Predators with 3.60 GA/GP)
March 15th to end of season : 2.60 GA/GP (10th OA in the league)

Did you know that Artem Zub only started playing in the 9th game? Brannstrom also only integrated the lineup in the 11th game

It's after these two finally started playing that we saw improvement from the back end. The likes of Coburn, Gudbranson and Josh Brown stopped playing every game and/or played less. Mike Reilly settled in after being completely horrible. Zub and Brannstrom brought puck movement and were able to play defense unlike some of the guys named above.

I won't go deeper than that as it would take too much time but there was also a lot of changes within the forward group. Then they moved Paquette and Galchenyuk to get Dzingel, etc. Then Formenton (20 GP) and Pinto (12 GP) later on. The roster constantly improved throughout the year but was TERRIBLE at the beginning.

This below is the worst GA/GP since the 90's. Sens last season had a start that was as worse as these terrible 90's team where scoring was much higher than today. Good thing they had a very good second half because if not, they would have finished high on that list... They had 4.03 GA/GP through 30 games, which would be 9th here... lol

http://www.nhl.com/stats/teams?aggregate=0&reportType=season&seasonFrom=19911992&seasonTo=20212022&gameType=2&filter=gamesPlayed,gte,1&sort=goalsAgainstPerGame&page=0&pageSize=50


Finally, maybe you need to watch some highlights, here's last season schedule :

https://www.espn.com/nhl/team/schedule/_/name/ott/season/2021

And you can find condensed highlights in there (click on select date to go in the past) :

https://www.dtmts.com/