Ottawa Senators 2024 Offseason Checklist

Martin was hired as an advisor to the coaching staff, and once Smith was fired and Martin took over the interim coaching gig, it was immediately known that he wouldn’t be the long-term head coach. He was just here to finish the season and develop relationships and habits with the players. This offseason, management will have to find the full-time bench boss. Who could it be? Well, Craig Berube, Jay Woodcroft, Jon Gruden, and many others are names that are out there, but who it should be is a conversation for a different day.

Regardless of the name, what management needs to prioritize with this hire is structure and accountability. They will do their due diligence in making sure they are hiring the right person, but those are two of the biggest characteristics they need to find.

On top of those, quality defensive structure is also important. The Senators have a lot of quality players, but they don’t necessarily know how to play a complete game. Learning the importance of defensive coverage and two-way play is crucial if this team wants to make any noise next season. Another factor is balance. Having a fast, skilled team like you can when building around a player like Tim Stutzle and having a physical, gritty team like you can have when building around Brady Tkachuk are two very different teams. They can thrive together, but there needs to be a balance in the game style, as well as the roster construction, which brings us to the next point.

Changing the Senators’ Core Group

It’s a shot in the dark guessing what president of hockey operations and general manager Steve Staios may have up his sleeve in terms of a change to the core group of players. But he has hinted at it a few times, and it has become apparent that a change could be necessary. Does that mean moving Drake Batherson? Josh Norris? Thomas Chabot? They are all options and could prove to be beneficial to the club.

They don’t have much cap flexibility, so any move they make will have to be money in/money out. Trading a big name like the ones mentioned isn’t necessarily a daunting task, but finding the right trade could be.

The new management group likely isn’t interested in a full-fledged rebuild and trading core members for picks and prospects, but rather a hockey trade. Good players getting traded for good players. Look at the Winnipeg Jets and the Pierre-Luc Dubois trade as a perfect example. Do any of those players the Senators could be moving have as much value as Dubois did when he got traded? Probably not, but they may not be far off. If the Senators could land a deal for two players like Gabriel Vilardi and Alex Iafallo for a core player, they may look at that as a successful scenario.

Filling in the Holes

There are a lot of uncertainties with the roster heading into next season. Who to trade and what to do with the core is one question, but what about the roster as it sits? The Senators will need to fill some of the holes in their lineup.

Without guessing who could get traded for or signed, this is what the Senators lineup could look like next season if they don’t trade away any of their stars.

Tkachuk – Stutzle – Giroux
______ – Norris – Batherson
Greig – Pinto – Joseph
____ – ____ – ____

Sanderson – Zub
Chabot – ____
Chychrun – ____

There are some names internally that could fill in some of those spots like Mark Kastelic, Parker Kelly, Angus Crookshank, Jacob Bernard-Docker, and Erik Brannstrom, but those are all players you would like to see upgrades on in a perfect world.

High-end wingers don’t grow on trees, and over the past two seasons, the Senators have seen some pretty good names in Alex DeBrincat and Vladimir Tarasenko fill that spot. They weren’t bad by any means, but the Senators need a long-term fit there. Nobody has had a chance to develop any sense of chemistry in the top-six group, as it has been a carousel of players.

The fourth line needs more experience and more dependable players. There are certainly some things to like about the game of the players that have been in those roles, but if you look at the top teams in the league, they have some pretty good fourth lines that Ottawa just can’t compare to. Here are some examples:

Dallas Stars: Sam Steel – Radek Faksa – Craig Smith
Tampa Bay Lightning: Tanner Jeannot – Luke Glendening – Conor Sheary
Winnipeg Jets: Morgan Barron – Vladislav Namestnikov – Alex Iafallo

These are just a couple of examples, and Ottawa is nowhere close. They need some serious upgrades on that line.

As for the goaltending, they have two goalies locked up, but their performances this season don’t instill much faith in keeping them together moving forward. It would make sense for the Senators to try and find a proven starter that can help take them over the edge.

Important Offseason for Team Direction

The first offseason for a new manager is always a huge one. Don’t expect something like Kyle Dubas in his first year with the Pittsburgh Penguins by acquiring Erik Karlsson or even his first year in Toronto when he signed John Tavares. But the smart moves that will help stabilize this team are crucial factors for the future of this organization. If things go wrong and Ottawa is a basement team again next year, there could be some serious changes to the group and potentially even the start of another rebuild.