Same-day analysis: Sens play long game with Tkachuk and get it right
There will be a price to pay for their foundational player missing training, but both the Senators and Brady Tkachuk scored a 'W' with a seven-year deal
When it came to dealing with Brady Tkachuk, the Ottawa Senators could have capitulated and signed their franchise player to a bridge deal that would have kicked the can down the road a few years. It would have ensured Tkachuk was in training camp and played in the pre-season, but it also would have only served to delay another contract confrontation three years down the road and, ultimately, put them in a position where another fan favorite was greasing the skids to leave town.
The Senators have seen this movie far too many times before and were getting a little tired of it playing on a constant loop. So in that sense, the risk they took to get him to sign a seven-year deal was not a waste of time. Tkachuk will probably spend the first month after he gets on the ice struggling to keep up with his peers and this season could very well be a down one for him because losing that much time can really hamper a young player’s development, but it was important for the Senators to get this right.
Because, really, what exactly is the point of going through all this pain to put yourself in a position to get these players if they’re not going to be a part of the long-term plan? Doesn’t that kind of defeat the purpose of building your team through the draft? What would be the point of getting players such as Thomas Chabot and Drake Batherson to agree to lengthy deals and not get your best young player to sign one? If you’re going to create and perpetuate an environment where your best players feel alienated and end up walking out the door, what’s the point of anything?
A long-term deal was what the Senators wanted all along. And, yes, they likely overpaid for that luxury, at least in the short term. But to simply attach the salary to comparable offensive numbers in this case doesn’t do it justice. The Winnipeg Jets, for example, signed Kyle Connor to a seven-year deal two years ago with an average annual salary of $7.1 million, whereas Tkachuk got the same term and will be paid an average of $8.2 million. Connor has outproduced, and will likely continue to outproduce, Tkachuk when it comes to goals and assists.
But the way the Jets are built, if you take Connor off their roster, you have a rather large offensive hole, albeit it one that could be compensated for by a group that can produce offensively. You take Tkachuk off the Senators roster and you have a gaping chasm that is almost impossible to fill. A decent modicum of offense, leadership, physicality and a presence on the ice and in the dressing room are qualities Tkachuk brings that can’t always be measured, even in an analytics world where just about every facet of the game can have a revealing number attached to it.
Tkachuk becomes the highest-paid player in franchise history, but there won’t be a lot of lamenting of this deal. This gives the Senators the opportunity to keep Tkachuk in Ottawa for a minimum of 10 years. And if he elects to move on in the summer of 2028, just a couple of months before his 29th birthday, it will be a lot more palatable, even if Tkachuk still has some good years left in him. The Senators were also able to get this deal without any signing bonuses, which is a line they’ve drawn in the sand with every player who is not on a entry-level contract. So they managed to show the world that Brady Tkachuk is indeed a special player for them, but not so special that they’re willing to deviate from their principles.
So both sides come out of this with a ‘W’ attached. And what you want more than anything in a negotiation is for both sides to feel good about what they’ve accomplished. And while right now it might seem as though the Senators and Tkachuk frittered away time when he could have been in training camp, it was necessary for them to go through this process. And the Senators will get to go through it all over again next summer when Josh Norris becomes an unrestricted free agent...and the summer after that when Tim Stutzle’s contract expires.