Stone shoots down a report that he wants a trade
Don Brennan of the Ottawa Citizen: Reporter Louis Jean on a radio show said that Ottawa Senators forward Mark Stone would welcome a trade.
“What I’ve been told is Mark Stone does not want to be in Ottawa anymore,” is the Google translate from French to English of what Jean said. “He does not want to play in Ottawa anymore. He is frustrated because he sees the direction the club is going. The team is not able to retain their good players.”
Stone responded yesterday by saying he doesn’t know who Jean is or where that info would come from.
“Who’s that?,” said Stone. “I have never heard of Louis Jean before, so I don’t know where he would find that information out. I love it here. This has been a great month for me. I have enjoyed my previous four years here, and I want to continue to be here, so again, don’t (know) who Louis Jean is, and never once did I ever say that.”
Jean continued on social media depending his info and said that Stone wants to win that is why he wants to leave. He continued that things can change if the Senators can stabilize things on and off the ice.
The Senators didn’t feel Karlsson wanted to re-sign
Bruce Garrioch of the Ottawa Citizen: It is believed that the Ottawa Senators had offered Erik Karlsson an eight-year deal at $88 million and the sense was he didn’t have any inclination to sign it.
“When I worked for Bryan Murray I was fortunate to do a lot of contract negotiations and since I’ve taken over as general manager I’ve done a lot of contract negotiations. When there’s so little talk, when you’re trying to negotiate with a player, you know you’re not going to get a contract done,” Dorion told TSN 1200 Monday.
“So we felt it was the right thing to do after we offered him, not a hometown discount contract, trust me. It was as legit a contract offer (as the Senators could give). Trust me. We felt it was time to move Erik to have as successful a rebuild as possible.”
Dorion said there was “none or very little discussion” with regards to a contract extension talks. notes it doesn’t sound like a counter offer was even made by Karlsson’s camp.
“We didn’t want to get nothing in return for Erik Karlsson if he was going to walk away from this team at the end of the year because our plan was always to rebuild and within that rebuild if Erik wasn’t going to sign here we knew we needed to get those assets to have successful rebuild as possible,” Dorion said on CBC.