PREPARE FOR POST-KARLSSON ERA
It seems certain that the Sens superstar defenceman won’t be part of team’s future
Is there any turning back on Ottawa Senators captain Erik Karlsson now?
There’s been no shortage of intrigue on the Karlsson trade front in the past few days — including the potential for Bobby Ryan and his colossal contract being involved in a deal — but it sure seems like the Senators have paved the road for his departure.
We best be fully prepared for the post-Karlsson era, whether it starts today, tomorrow or in July.
At this point, it’s a circus, fast becoming a crisis situation for passionate Senators fans, who appear to have reached their breaking point with owner Eugene Melnyk. As the weekend arrived, they were wondering if they had already seen their captain play his final game for the team.
It was a frantic Friday for Senators general manager Pierre Dorion and the number crunchers around him, trying to figure out some fancy financial footwork to get deals done.
The on-again, off-again swap that sent Derick Brassard to the Pittsburgh Penguins for goaltender Filip Gustavsson and Ian Cole was mired in money complications, although a resolution was eventually found.
While that mess was going on, Dorion was also busy with the bigger salary cap mathematical problem: trying to find a three- way (four-way?) match between teams that might somehow allow him to unload the US$33 million left on Ryan’s contract as part of a Karlsson trade.
Securing equivalent value for the most talented defenceman in hockey and then selling that to your beleaguered fan base is an almost impossible task.
Add in the difficulty of also trying to dump the team’s worst remaining contract and it’s a nowin situation.
The owner may as well tie the general manager’s arms behind his back and tell him to solve the Rubik’s Cube.
For now, the following questions are hanging overhead like a dark cloud:
Will Karlsson be in the lineup Saturday afternoon against the Philadelphia Flyers?
Will the speculation extend into a manic Monday, leading all the way up to the trade deadline?
Even if a deal doesn’t happen during the next few days, are we headed for a repeat of the saga that ended Jason Spezza’s career with the Senators following the 2013-14 season?
Just in case you forgot, let’s remind you of the story that might sound eerily familiar.
Spezza enjoyed more than a decade of great success in Ottawa, but there was an air of inevitability about the end of his time here.
Spezza never publicly demanded a trade — à la linemate Dany Heatley a few years earlier — but behind the scenes, he let management know that he wouldn’t be re-signing with the organization as an unrestricted free agent a year down the road. He wanted out because he didn’t like the direction of the franchise and he couldn’t see an organizational commitment towards building a championship calibre club under Melnyk.
That forced general manager Bryan Murray’s hand. Spezza balked at a deal that would have sent him to the Nashville Predators and landed with the Dallas Stars instead. The Alexes — Chiasson and Guptill — that the Senators received in the trade are long gone from the Senators organization. Minor leaguers Nick Paul and Gabriel Gagne are the names that remain.
If Karlsson isn’t traded before the deadline, the Senators might be in a position to involve more teams in trade talks in the summer, organizations that could have financial room to take on a franchise player. At the same time, it would also mean that Dorion would be playing poker, holding out in the wait for a winning hand that never arrives.
We don’t know if Karlsson went to management, expressing the same sentiments that Spezza did. Publicly, Karlsson has been quiet this week, keeping his thoughts to himself following Wednesday’s game against the Blackhawks in Chicago and after Thursday’s game against Tampa Bay at Canadian Tire Centre.
The other possibility here is that Melnyk simply isn’t prepared to pay the price for the NHL’s most talented defenceman, putting Dorion in the position of getting the most he can — whenever he can — by trading him away.
Throughout the season, Karlsson has said over and over again that he loves Ottawa.
But in November, he also said that there would be no hometown discount, that he would receive his due as an unrestricted free agent — whether that happened in Ottawa or with one of the NHL’s other 30 teams.
Several times earlier this year, Dorion has said that the club’s priority is to re-sign Karlsson.
It sure sounds like something changed during the week, whether it came from Karlsson’s camp or from Melnyk, who is also now acting as the club’s chief executive officer and president.
Whatever happens from here to the end of the season, it’s going to be a long six weeks for Senators fans to end of the season.
If Karlsson is traded before Monday, many fans are promising to revolt by abandoning the building in droves and ignoring their renewal notices.
If Karlsson isn’t traded by Monday, how engaged will he be in playing out the string of the season, and in what has all the signs of being the final chapter of his decade with the organization?
Either way, it’s going to get worse before it gets better.