SENS’ LOSING VEGAS HAND
Golden Knights take Methot
The Ottawa Senators rolled the dice by making Marc Methot available in the expansion draft and lost Wednesday.
With general manager Pierre Dorion unwilling to pay the high price to make a side deal with Vegas Golden Knights GM George McPhee to keep the club’s top four defence intact, the Senators could only stand by and watch as Methot was selected in the expansion draft on the day he was celebrating his 32nd birthday.
Dorion tried to make a deal to keep Methot in the fold but the indications are he wasn’t willing to give up the club’s No. 1 pick in the 2018 draft when push came to shove. The Senators did table an offer to McPhee but clearly he didn’t like it and felt the Knights would benefit more by taking Methot.
How long Methot will stay in Vegas isn’t known. The Knights have held talks with several teams looking for help on defence — including Dallas, Toronto, Montreal, Boston and Colorado — but Methot has a 10-team “no-trade” list and the Knights have already been informed that he’s not flexible to make changes.
While the Vegas roster wasn’t introduced until Wednesday night during the NHL Awards in Sin City, players started receiving calls in the afternoon that they’d been selected and most of the names slowly, but surely leaked out through the course of the day and Methot was in that group of players that found out early.
Still, he could be flipped to a team looking for defensive help as early as Thursday but the reality is it doesn’t really matter to the Senators because they knew the risk when they exposed him, however, they didn’t have much choice when alternate captain Dion Phaneuf refused to waive his no-move clause.
As a result, the Senators will have to look for a new defensive partner for captain Erik Karlsson because he has played with Methot for most of the five seasons he’s been with Ottawa since being acquired from the Columbus Blue Jackets in exchange for winger Nick Foligno in July 2012.
No, this isn’t the ideal scenario for the Senators, but they knew the Knights were going to get a player and Dorion wasn’t able to find common ground with McPhee to get a trade in place to keep Methot. The club was hopeful the Knights would lower their demands or opt to take a younger defenceman like Fredrik Claesson.
The Senators were painted into a corner when Phaneuf turned down the club’s request to waive his no-move clause to make himself available to the Knights. The Senators opted to protect Karlsson, Cody Ceci and under the terms of the rules they had to keep Phaneuf as of their third defenceman.
Yes, Phaneuf was well within his rights to invoke his no move and force the Senators to protect him. Trying to keep Methot from being exposed, the Senators tried to deal Phaneuf before they turned in their protected list Saturday but couldn’t find anybody willing to take on the four years, $25.5 million left on his deal.
Make no mistake, this is a tough blow for the Senators and it’s only going to hurt more if the Knights are able to trade Methot — possibly in the East — and get a strong asset in return. Unable to get Phaneuf off the books, the Senators tried to move Methot so they wouldn’t lose him for nothing, but Dorion wasn’t dealing from a position of strength.
If the Senators had their way, they would have kept Methot and his $4.9 million deal for the next two years, especially after the club advanced to the Eastern Conference final this spring. He’s well-respected in the Ottawa dressing room and is close friends with Karlsson as well.
But the Senators know the Knights paid $500 million to get into the league and, as a result, they were given a generous expansion draft, which has allowed McPhee to be pretty heavy-handed in his dealing the last three days. That doesn’t mean the Senators had to give into his huge demand to keep Methot in the fold.
In the end, Dorion and the Senators decided to do what’s best for the organization. If they had given up the pick, they still would have lost another asset — likely Claesson — in the expansion draft and if that happened then Ottawa would have given up two big pieces to try to save from losing one so that can be a vicious cycle.
The reality is Methot is now a bargaining chip for the Golden Knights’ organization because McPhee knows he’s well-respected around the league, is a strong defensive defenceman and Methot’s peers understand what he brings to the table. Still, this isn’t the birthday present Methot would have wanted and now he’s in limbo.