The Ottawa Senators aren’t trading Brady Tkachuk but they could move some others
The Fourth Period: David Pagnotta and Dennis Bernstein talking about the Ottawa Senators. Trading Brady Tkachuk doesn’t make much sense but they do have players that might be of interest to some teams.
** NHLRumors.com transcription
Kate Pettersen: “Jumping over to the East for a second. One of the biggest, craziest rumors of the last week or so, especially with the hype coming out of New York, was that Brady Tkachuk could be on the move.
Now the Sens and Brady have come out and said, ‘No, he’s an Ottawa Senator. He’s staying here. He’s not someone we want to lose.’ And I mean, I’m sure every team would jump in on, on the opportunity there, but now that we know he’s not up for grabs, what else can Ottawa do?
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Where else might they be looking? What other trade piece might they have that could be lucrative and could pay off dividends?”
Pagnotta: “Yeah, they’re going to look at options. And I have no doubt the Rangers and pretty much 30 other teams would love to have a Brady Tkachuk on their team. And this happens all the time. ‘Hey, is he available? No, are you sure? Yeah, all right, that’s the end of it.’ So discussion, semantics, whatever, but he’s not available, as you said, and you know he wants to ride this out.
But the Senators also know that it’s time now. They got Ullmark. They made some additional moves in the offseason. They insulated this roster, and it’s still not up to snuff. So they’re going to look at making some other type of moves.
Now, one player that has generated interest and has been a discussion point for the last little while, it doesn’t seem it shouldn’t be a secret, is Josh Norris. 25 right now. He’s got term on his contract, three more years, I believe, and a decent cap hit for his capabilities.
Now there’s some talk of, you know, (Thomas) Chabot may being out there, even (Drake) Batherson, but it sounds like Norris may be the primary guy that they move in terms of their core to look at making it a big impact shake up type of move,
Calgary has expressed a lot of interest in him in the past. I wonder if that’s an avenue they explore.
But either way, you know, Ottawa wants to do something. They know it’s time to get things rolling here and get it to play off contention. So Norris could be a guy that moves out. But again, this would be a larger impact type of hockey trade.”
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Bernstein: “If you want to shift the paradigm, Kate, look, I get it. I get the rumors. If you watch the Rangers play, the guy they absolutely need would be Brady Tkachuk. They’re not going to get him.
Now I get some of the chatter because remember, Brady’s no-movement clause, as much he says he wants it there, clicks it next year, so they could technically trade him without his approval right now.
Are they going to do that? Well, you want to set back the franchise five years. Be my guest.
And they’ve also asked Claude Giroux, who is productive player who’s unrestricted the end of the season, that could be another option. Now, a rental, you’re not going to get that much, but there are other. Shane Pinto who hasn’t played great when he came back, like could be another option.
So there are options of the market for Ottawa to change the paradigm. It’s not trading Brady Tkachuk. you’re going backwards like, really, because what value you’re going to get for that player? I like, no, it’s a different player.
But like Chris Kreider, he’s at $6.5 million this year, and next year. He’s going to score 30 goals. What are you going to replace? How would these Senators replace that player on the package coming back?
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And you know the old saying, you never want to be the team that trades the best player in the trade. And that would certainly be the case if they chose to trade Brady Tkachuk. So nice with chatter, nice for us, but the reality of it is, I think less than 1%, I’ll go to zero.”
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