Welcome back my Salary Cap-friendlies! I hope everyone is enjoying this very young NHL season thus far and is well on your fantasy club(s). Week one can be a tough overaction because of the short week, but if there's one piece of advice, I can give is that if you like your team, roll with it. See where things go throughout the very long NHL regular season. Maybe a little more on the fence about some of the moves you made in the draft? There's time to tinker but I always felt like the fantasy season is like a graph that goes up. At the bottom (beginning), it's easier to find free agents and at the top (near the end), those players that can really contribute to a fantasy roster become scarce. If there's a player on your watchlist maybe early is the time to make the move, because that same player may just be on someone else's watch list as well.

This week for Capped I wanted to shed some light here on the Senators and this ongoing contract dispute between Shane Pinto and the organization. I listen and watch different NHL programs for better part of my day (You guessed it, I work from home), and some have made mention of the going's on in Ottawa, but I almost feel like it's not being talked about as much outside of Sensland and maybe this situation needs to be brought to the forefront as we're already in week two of the NHL season. There's also a roadmap here to where this deal gets done in the very near future.

I wrote about Shane Pinto in a previous Capped article and mentioned that hand-up, I thought he had signed with the Senators over the summer, and why not? I thought this was a club that would really benefit from a strong third line center and over the past two seasons showed decent promise for this Ottawa club. So, what's going on here? My first thought was that there had to be overpaid forwards that are locking up the cap but the top two forwards for the Senators are Tim Stutzle who in my opinion is on his way to being a real superstar in this league at $8.3M, and right behind him is another player with superstar potential in Brady Tkachuk at $8.2M (just need to keep the PIMS down, Brady). Those numbers really aren't daunting when you put them up on a white board, and if anything, they'll look good for this Sens club moving forward if both of those players keep progressing in a way that I think we all assume that they will. I tried to look for a club with their two highest paid forwards making at or around what Stutzle and Tkachuk's cap hit is and that lead me to St.Louis where we see Robert Thomas and Jordan Kyrou each making $8.1M per season. Nothing at all against those two players but given the choice I think you'd pick Ottawa's pair ten times out of ten, so it can't be an overpay at the top.

So what about the defensemen? The top paid D for Ottawa is Thomas Chabot who sure, is a workhorse as far as TOI who has a $8M cap hit but that's followed by Jake Sanderson who makes $925…this season until his $8M extension until the end of the 2031 begins this offseason. I like both of these defensemen and sure, I know Chabot battled some injuries last season, but these are good pieces to have. I can see the argument that maybe Atrem Zub at $4.6M the next four years with a full M-NTC might be an overpay but I don't think it's to the point where we say Vancouver a season or so ago really trying to move off of money on their blueline. I still think even with these higher salaries in mind, there has to be room for Pinto somewhere on this payroll.

That brings us to the offseason and where things get a little murky for me. Top of the list is Joonas Korpisalo making $4M against the cap this season and everyone up until 2027-28, and I'll go ahead and defend this one. Needed someone in net, that's not a bad AAV, and if I'm the Senators I am looking to avoid the goaltending carousel I went through last season. This brings us to Vladimir Tarasenko, at 1yr $5 against the cap. In everything I've read, it really looks and seems like the Senators had interest early, but Tarasenko could have gone to a handful of clubs but remained a UFA. This is where I think Ottawa bid against themselves. Add that with taking on the Dominik Kubalik cap hit of $2.5M in the Alex DeBrincat trade and you not only have a line that will be very sub-par defensively, but the order of which things got done this offseason was sort of backwards in my mind. I know it doesn't sound like a big signing on this last player, but Ottawa also went out and spent money on Travis Hamonic at $1.1M. Not a lot in the grand scheme of things, right? Well, yes but to me that's a player that could be sent down or something along those lines to bring a player like Pinto into the lineup…which the Senators can't do as they gave Hamonic a NMC when he signed, so that idea is also out of the question.

I'm not saying time is of the essence here for Ottawa, especially for player like Pinto who may only demand $2M, but keep in mind the longer this goes on and the further we get into the season, anything that the Senators would offer him would be pro-rated (think back to the William Nylander signing). I've read obvious answers here of trading a player like Mathieu Joseph which is fair given his cap hit ($2.9M) but there's no chance that another club would give the Sens that luxury without Ottawa throwing in a draft pick, and I can't see Ottawa departing with their own first round pick or the possible conditional pick that they have from Detroit (that may be rolled to 2025). This leads to me to think that maybe Ottawa has waited for Josh Norris to come back to the lineup to be able to make the roster moves needed to sign Pinto, which is perfect because right before I began writing this the Senators announced #9 would be making his return to the lineup. Sometimes, timing is perfect. I think a way to get a deal done now is in place, Ottawa will have one centre coming back which means that they can move players down and in my mind that is probably going to be Ridly Greig ($863K) and either Mark Kastelic ($835K) or Zack MacEwen ($775K). Selfishly I didn't mention Parker Kelly here because I'm just kind of high on him and think he's great on the PK for this team. That would not only give Ottawa the available roster spot to sing Pinto but the available funds to offer him. I think Ottawa as a whole is going to be an intriguing team as far as the cap is concerned but if they can compete this season, which I think they can and will, then they'd move into a spot this offseason with no more dead cap money and very little buyout money. 

*For continued fantasy news and notes, follow me on Twitter @ndySanz.

*Data from CapFriendly