It appears there’s a race to the basement of the NHL this season as the prize will be greater odds in this summer’s draft lottery. American prospect Jack Hughes is expected to be taken with the first overall pick and what team wouldn’t want him? Well, the Ottawa Senators have the inside track on last place overall and the Edmonton Oilers also have an outside chance at claiming the dishonour.
The Senators are falling apart at the seams and don’t currently own a first-round draft pick this year. They traded it away last season to the Colorado Avalanche in a deal that landed them star forward Matt Duchene. The transaction didn’t look too bad at the time, but Duchene was scheduled to become an unrestricted free agent this July 1st. The Senators gambled they could re-sign Duchene and also took a chance of trading away the top overall draft selection in June.
If you haven’t heard by now, the Senators definitely won’t be re-signing Duchene as he was sent to the Columbus Blue Jackets at the trade deadline for draft picks and prospects. In addition, Ottawa also dealt pending unrestricted free agent forwards Ryan Dzingel and Mark Stone. When you add in the fact the team sent Erik Karlsson and Kyle Turris packing in the last year or two we find the Senators have arguably traded away their best five players a few of the top performers in the league.
Ottawa must now rebuild from scratch, but it’s not going to be easy to keep their fans happy. The team already struggles to sell tickets to its home games in the outskirts of Kanata and fans certainly won’t be flocking to see a squad that lacks a legitimate NHL star and a team with little chance of making the playoffs. To add salt to the wounds, it doesn’t look like Ottawa will be getting a new rink in the city’s downtown core anytime soon.
The Edmonton Oilers on the other hand are arguably icing the best player in the world right now in centre Connor McDavid and it appears his talents are being wasted with the non-contender. Former general manager Peter Chiarelli was understandably fired earlier this season, but he left the club in a bit of a mess when it comers to salary cap space. In addition, Edmonton doesn’t really have many prospects to turn things around whereas the Senators now have plenty of them due to their recent trades.
Of course, prospects aren’t proven NHL players and they could turn out to be either studs or duds. But at least Ottawa has a few to fall back on. But even so, they need somebody to coach these youngsters as former bench boss Guy Boucher was recently fired. It was a bit of an odd move considering there are less than 20 games remaining in the season and the Senators have no chance at making the playoffs.
Back in Edmonton the team also has high-scoring forward Leon Draisaitl to ice along with McDavid, and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins is a fine player. However, the organization is lacking when it comes to the blue line and goaltending. Chiarelli traded high-scoring Taylor Hall to the New Jersey Devils for rearguard Adam Larsson, but that was a one-sided deal for the Devils as Hall was named the NHL’s most valuable player for 2017/18 and took home the Hart Trophy.
Chiarelli also paid $42 million over seven years million for enforcer Milan Lucic and handed netminder Mikko Koskinen a new three-year deal worth $13.5 million even though he had just 32 games of NHL experience under his belt. As far as prospects in Edmonton go, Chiarelli selected forward Jesse Puljujarvi with the fourth overall selection in the 2016 draft and he scored four goals and five assists this season before being taken out of the lineup for hip surgery. Let’s not forget Matthew Tkachuk was still available in the draft at the time.
Both teams’ sets of fans must be quite frustrated with how things have panned out lately. But on the bright side, Ottawa does have several prospects to help turn things around in the future and the Oilers still have the best player in the world in McDavid and a more than capable sidekick in Draisaitl. However, if the teams fail to make the playoffs again next season there may be more than just a few empty seats at their respective rinks.