KARLSSON RETURN FIGURES TO BE BITTERSWEET
Rare full house expected at CTC to welcome back former Senators’ captain
Erik Karlsson’s return with the San Jose Sharks on Saturday afternoon will usher in an outpouring of conflicting emotions from the Ottawa Senators faithful.
It’s a chance for fans to briefly say hello again after the heartbreaking goodbye in September.
Tied into all of the above will be an unmistakable irony.
The contest will likely represent one of the biggest crowds of the season for the Senators, perhaps the first sellout. It’s an intriguing twist given that thousands of fans will be there solely to see the former Senators captain and not the current squad that is undergoing the growing pains of a rebuilding effort.
We’ll get to Karlsson’s so-so start in San Jose in a moment — he enters Saturday’s game with two goals and 13 assists in 26 games, tied for 15th in scoring among NHL defencemen, and looks like a shadow of his former self — but his departure represented the end of an era and a change of direction in Ottawa.
The two-time Norris Trophy winner scored 126 goals and 392 assists in 627 regular-season games with Ottawa and was phenomenal in carrying the team through their extended run to the seventh game of the Eastern Conference final in 2017.
Karlsson, who is scheduled to become an unrestricted free agent next summer, was offered a contract extension by the Senators, but there was little chance he was going to return.
For months leading up to the trade, his relationship with ownership was as frosty as the current streets outside the Canadian Tire Centre.
“I haven’t spoken to any of them really since November (2017), when they asked for my no-trade list,” Karlsson told Postmedia’s Michael Traikos after landing in San Jose. “That’s the way it is, I guess. That’s the only situation I know that’s been like this. It was what it was. I was there to play hockey and I did that to the best of my ability with what we had. That’s all that I worried about. Everything else around it is above my pay grade. That’s not my question to ask.”
In the lead-up to Saturday’s game, Karlsson has been tightlipped in discussing his return to Ottawa. Following the Sharks’ 5-3 loss to Toronto on Wednesday, he abruptly walked away when a reporter asked for his thoughts about playing his former team for the first time.
He is saving up his sentiments for a post-practice news conference here Friday afternoon.
Many former Senators stars have returned to Ottawa in the past, of course, but with the possible exception of Daniel Alfredsson’s first game in Ottawa as a member of the Detroit Red Wings, no game in the history of the franchise will be loaded with so much bittersweetness.
As coincidence would have it, Karlsson’s first game against the Senators comes exactly five years after Alfredsson played his first game with the Red Wings at the CTC.
Just in case you forgot the details of the Karlsson trade amid the noisy end of his departure, here’s a reminder of what was included:
Senators general manager Pierre Dorion sent Karlsson and 22-year-old prospect Francis Perron to the Sharks for a package that included Chris Tierney, Dylan DeMelo, 21-year-old prospect Rudolfs Balcers, 19-year-old prospect Josh Norris, a 2019 second-round draft choice and a 2020 first-round pick.
Should the Sharks sign Karlsson to a contract extension, the Senators will also receive San Jose’s second-round selection in 2021. In the event the Sharks advance to the Stanley Cup final this season, the pick becomes a first-rounder.
Alternatively, if the Sharks miss the playoffs this season, the 2020 first-round choice would become a 2019 first-round selection. That, of course, would be a lottery selection, a dream development for the Senators, who previously traded away their 2019 first pick to Colorado in the 2017 deal for Matt Duchene.
At this point, it’s not a given the Sharks will make the playoffs. With a record of 12-9-5, they sit second in the Pacific Division, but are only two points up on being out of a playoff spot altogether.
The Senators also saved considerable money in the trade. While Karlsson’s $7.5-million salary went to the Sharks, the Senators inherited only $3.8 million this year in the combined salaries of Tierney and DeMelo — a savings of $3.7 million. That’s enough to cover the combined salaries of current Senators defencemen Thomas Chabot, Mark Borowiecki, Max Lajoie and Christian Jaros.
It will take several years for Senators fans to get a proper read on the return that includes Norris and the draft picks, but what we do know is that Karlsson has not yet made the spectacular splash in San Jose that many expected.
The grass isn’t necessarily greener in teal. Karlsson had only seven assists in his first 18 games and it took him 21 contests to score his first goal with the Sharks. If he was typically “the” player with the Senators, he has simply become a player among a roster of stars with the Sharks. If there were few rules governing when and where he tried to take charge in Ottawa, he appears a tad hesitant in San Jose.
In Wednesday’s loss to Toronto, he wasn’t on the ice for a Sharks goal, but he was on the ice for three goals against, two of them with the Maple Leafs on the power play. He’s not necessarily a first-unit power play presence, often yielding that spot to fellow Norris Trophy winner Brent Burns. He’s playing an average of 24:53 per game, down from his 26:44 average with the Senators last season.
“I’ve seen a couple of games and felt he made very little impact,” said TSN analyst Ray Ferraro. “I’m surprised actually. I thought he would thrive there, but he hasn’t looked the same to me since his return from (left) ankle surgery.”
Following the Senators’ 2017 playoff run, Karlsson had major surgery to repair two hairline fractures in his foot.
He missed the first five games of the 2017-18 season and wasn’t nearly as dominant — offensively and defensively — as he had been in the previous season.
“My guess,” Ferraro said, “is that he will start to play well with a little more familiarity in these next 20 games, but it hasn’t been anywhere near as good as I thought it would be.”
In Karlsson’s absence, Chabot has skated into the forefront to become the Senators’ offensive catalyst on defence. Before Thursday’s games, he led NHL defencemen in scoring, with seven goals and 22 assists.
DeMelo, a largely unknown player in San Jose, has been a pleasant surprise as Chabot’s partner on the makeshift defence, playing more than 18 minutes per game. Tierney had a strong start offensively and has settled in as a capable third-line centre and a penalty-killing presence.
That said, the Senators went into Thursday’s game against the New York Rangers 24th overall, having allowed a whopping 107 goals against.
As for an initial snapshot of the future, Norris is enjoying a superb start to his NCAA season with Michigan and should be a factor for the United States at the upcoming world junior championships.
Saturday, though, will be all about Karlsson, the former face of the franchise.