Can the Senators ‘win the summer’ again? And why NHL awards should account for the playoffs

Ever since the NHL powers-that-be decided that playing a winter sport in the fourth week of June is OK with them, one fact of life never changes: The hockey offseason rushes at you with breakneck speed.

Think back to last year, when the Vegas Golden Knights were celebrating with the Stanley Cup one day and then less than a fortnight later, traded an original member of their franchise, and a key piece of the championship puzzle — Reilly Smith — to Pittsburgh, because business is business, and thanks to the ridiculously drawn out postseason, the business of hockey can’t wait.

It’s why teams no longer feel bound to delay any announcement — for trades or signings they may complete — until the games are over. That used to be the norm. Now? If the Ottawa Senators and Boston Bruins engineer a significant trade minutes before puck drop of Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final, they’re letting us know right away.

Good for them. It’s the way it should be. There have been half a dozen trades already throughout the spring, many of them significant, and then a handful more this week, as the NHL prepares for Friday’s draft.

The Senators, who landed goaltender Linus Ullmark in that trade with the Bruins, are an especially interesting team to watch. It used to be, when a new GM took over, it would take a long time before they were confident enough to get their feet wet in the trading game.

Daniel Briere, when he took over in Philadelphia just over a year ago, signaled an end to that trend. Craig Conroy, after he grabbed the reins in Calgary, has moved seven pieces off his roster in the 13 months he’s been on the job, including goaltender Jacob Markstrom, who landed as expected with the New Jersey Devils — and then Andrew Mangiapane, who went to Washington for a second-rounder in 2025. It’s officially a major housecleaning. Mike Grier continues to tweak his San Jose Sharks roster in anticipation of the start of the Macklin Celebrini era. And in Ottawa, Steve Staios got a tidy piece of business done by acquiring Ullmark for a goalie he wanted to move for cap reasons (Joonas Korpisalo), a late first-rounder — plus a bottom-of-the-lineup center (Mark Kastelic) that gives Boston another depth center, but doesn’t address the need for someone to play down the middle in its top six.

Someone made a great point this week about the sheer number of teams deep into painstaking rebuilds that are taking forever to come to fruition. He noted that “the teardown is easy. The rebuild is easy. It’s trying to get competitive again — that’s when it gets hard.” It’s an observation that should resonate with fans of the Senators and Detroit Red Wings, the Devils and the Buffalo Sabres, the Flyers and the Anaheim Ducks, and of course, the Blackhawks and Sharks, both of whom are hoping that the worst is now over.

There’s starting to be an urgency in places like Ottawa, where Staios seems to understand that to get competitive again, he needs to stabilize the team’s young core. There are any number of ways that might be done, but maybe the best way to make that happen is if he can trade for Brandon Tanev from Seattle and then use Brandon’s presence on the Senators’ roster to lure Chris Tanev there via free agency.

Is it possible?

Well, I’m reminded of something Brian Burke said when he lured Scott Niedermayer to Anaheim from New Jersey as a free agent years ago: That while lots of teams were interested in adding Scott Niedermayer, Anaheim was the only team that offered him the chance to play with his brother Rob. Then the Niedermayers went on to win the Stanley Cup together and had a memorable Stanley Cup celebration afterward.

Brandon Tanev is entering the final year of that six-year $21 million contract he signed in 2019 when he was with the Pittsburgh Penguins. The deal was widely criticized at the time because Tanev had only been a full-time NHLer for two years at that point, after signing with the Winnipeg Jets as a free agent out of Providence College. But it has aged well.

Tanev was eventually claimed by Seattle in the expansion draft and he’s a useful high-energy player for them, probably not someone they’d want to get rid of.

On the other hand, there’s a price for everything in today’s NHL; and neither of the Tanev brothers, for all they’ve contributed with the heart-and-soul style of hockey they play, has exactly struck it rich at the bargaining table, the way some other — far less deserving players — have.

In Chris’ case, that’s about to change. There’s significant interest in him in half a dozen NHL precincts, beginning with Dallas, where he finished the season and proved to be a valuable contributor during the Stars’ three playoff rounds. The Stars cleared off some cap space Thursday by buying out Ryan Suter, which not only creates more money to negotiate with Tanev on a possible extension but means there’s an extra hole to fill on the blue line if they cannot come to terms. The winner of the Chris Tanev sweepstakes will ultimately be the team that offers him the longest term. Chris is 34, and turns 35 in December.

In a perfect world, because of his age, most teams would have liked to do just two years, but understand that after the year Tanev had, he probably wouldn’t sign anywhere for less than three. Given the competition for his services, it’ll almost certainly now take a four-year commitment to get it done — and if a team really wants him badly, might have to go to five. I know. Seems crazy. But this is NHL free agency we’re talking about, so I’m not prepared to rule out anything.

Ottawa’s cap situation isn’t great, but it could get a lot better if it finds a landing spot for Jakob Chychrun — doable for sure. It’d be even better if the Senators found a taker for Josh Norris, who is a complicated player to evaluate at this stage of his career. Norris is only 25 but carries a $7.95 million contract for six years – which wouldn’t be so onerous if there weren’t lingering concerns over his health and history of shoulder issues. Taking on that dollar commitment would require an enormous leap of faith by any team looking for help down the middle.

Philosophically, it’s easy to like the direction Ottawa’s heading in now. Two years ago, the Senators made a very sexy trade, acquiring Alex DeBrincat for the No. 7 pick in the 2022 draft, after DeBrincat scored 41 goals in 82 games for Chicago. But DeBrincat’s acquisition didn’t really address their core needs — for stability and guidance to their young roster. Stability in goal helps there. Brandon Tanev — or a Brandon Tanev type — up front would help. Chris Tanev — or a Chris Tanev type — on the blue line would really help. Those are the types of pieces that can flesh out a talented roster that still needs to figure out how to win.

Of course, having a good plan is one thing. Executing it is something else again. We’ll see where this goes.

But a couple of summers ago, the perception was that Ottawa, with Pierre Dorion in charge, and Calgary, with Brad Treliving at the helm, “won the summer” — because of the trades they made. Treliving had, by all accounts, salvaged a bad situation, whereby Matthew Tkachuk wanted out, by trading him to Florida.

The Flames got MacKenzie Weegar, a first, a prospect and Jonathan Huberdeau, who’d been No. 2 in NHL scoring the previous year in the deal.

Unhappily, fall, winter and spring didn’t go nearly as well as summer did. Ottawa is finally trending up. Calgary is taking deliberate steps backward to refill the prospect pipeline. But both remain interesting players as the offseason business of hockey shifts into high gear.

Nathan MacKinnon won the Hart Trophy and Ted Linsday Award on Thursday night. (Bruce Bennett / Getty Images)

Awards watch

The NHL announced its final award winners Thursday night in Vegas, and it felt a little anticlimactic. Nathan MacKinnon took home the Hart Trophy and the Ted Lindsay Award. Quinn Hughes the Norris. Connor Hellebuyck the Vezina. Connor Bedard the Calder. Conspicuous by his absence from the podium was the Edmonton Oilers’ Connor McDavid who only three days earlier, won the Conn Smythe Trophy as playoff MVP, even though his Oilers lost in the deciding game of the Stanley Cup Final to the Panthers.

McDavid has made it clear for years now that while he considers individual awards a nice thing, it was the Stanley Cup he was after. It means the nine-year quest for the player chosen No. 1 in the 2015 draft is still on. That he didn’t return to the ice to accept the Conn Smythe from NHL commissioner Gary Bettman was completely understandable. It’s a consolation prize. Maybe in time, he’ll appreciate it more. In the moment? It meant little.

But watching the effort McDavid put in and the energy he expended just to get the Oilers that far made me think again about the NHL award system — and would it be improved if it covered all the hockey played from the start of the season to the end?

The Hart was supposed to be a four-horse race, but the reality is, MacKinnon won in a landslide. He had 137 first-place votes. Nikita Kucherov had 50. McDavid had one and Auston Matthews got two. All four had great regular-season seasons. All made the playoffs with their teams. Two were out in the first round: Kucherov and Matthews.

MacKinnon was out in the second round. McDavid made it to the final — and the 42 points he scored in this year’s playoffs were the fourth-highest total of all time. Only Wayne Gretzky (twice) and Mario Lemieux (once) ever did better. McDavid’s 34 assists broke the playoff record of 31 established by Gretzky back in 1988.

If the Hart vote covered every game from early October until Monday night, would the results have been different?

How could it not?

The rationale behind the current system is to establish an equal playing field. If the awards covered the additional two months of the playoffs, then 50 percent of the league — the players on teams that didn’t qualify for the postseason — wouldn’t be able to enhance their credentials. And then another 25 would see their campaigns come to a screeching halt when they were eliminated in the first round. It means, only a very small percentage of NHL players would then be able to burnish their credentials by adding a strong playoff to a great regular season.

On the other hand, North American professional sports puts such a premium on playoff performance that why shouldn’t postseason performance count? That’s the most confounding part of the system that’s currently in place.

Players draw their salaries from the first to the last day of the regular season. Compensation in the playoffs is determined by a bonus pool that’s a fraction of the money the top earners make. It means you have this curious anomaly — that when the games matter the most, when the revenues flow in, players are earning, comparatively speaking, nickels and dimes in compensation for their efforts.

And they do it anyway — the good ones do, the ones that matter, the ones you want on your team because, if you’re a fan, you don’t want someone half-heartedly loafing to the finish line, so that they can get summer vacation started.

McDavid won his first Lindsay in 2017, the same year he won his first Hart, and at the time, in his acceptance speech, he said it mattered because it was a peer award. The fact that this year — despite the 132 points, the 100 regular-season assists, the 1.74 points per game average — McDavid wasn’t even a finalist for the Lindsay, had to sting a little.

Cumulatively, McDavid had 174 points in 101 games, when adding his regular-season numbers to those 42 playoff points. MacKinnon had 14 points in 11 playoff games, Kucherov seven in five playoff games and Matthews four in five playoff games.

If you made it a full-season award, McDavid would surely have won both the Hart and the Lindsay.

The other result that might have materially changed was the Vezina, where Sergei Bobrovsky was a finalist. But if you added his 16 playoff wins and then compared them to Hellebuyck’s dismal playoff numbers, the GMs who vote for this award could easily have gone in a different direction. They, more than anyone probably, know the value of raising the level of your play in the postseason.

The Calder probably would have turned out the same. The Norris? The Oilers’ Evan Bouchard enhanced his case with a great playoff, but probably didn’t do enough to dislodge the top three who finished ahead of him.

If playoffs matter so much — and it’s clear they do — then there should be a way of acknowledging that in the trophy voting.

As it stands now, it almost felt as if the NHL was rushing to get past awards night, so it could get back to business, making trades and drafting the next generation of players — hopefully the ones that would rather be circling with the Stanley Cup, the way Florida did Monday night, rather the ones that stood stiffly behind commissioner Gary Bettman, trying to muster enthusiasm for the hardware they carried home in a losing cause.

(Photo of Ottawa Senators GM Steve Staios: Marc DesRosiers / USA Today)