As first reported by Frank Seravalli, the Los Angeles Kings have traded winger Warren Foegele to the Ottawa Senators, along with a conditional third-round pick, for a second-round pick and a conditional third-round pick. Foegele had back-to-back seasons with at least 20 goals and 40 points, first in Edmonton and then in Los Angeles, but has had a big downturn in 2025-26 with 7 goals and 9 points in 47 games.

According to Puckpedia, Foegele has one more year left on his contract with a cap hit of $3.5-million.

Let's break it down.

What Ottawa Gets

With the downturn and subsequent injury from David Perron and unreliable play from Fabian Zetterlund, the Senators had a spot somewhere on their second or third line available to be filled. It had been Nick Cousins of late, with Ridly Greig moving to the Dylan Cozens line, so this enables the Senators to move one of Cousins or Greig back to the fourth line and slide Foegele somewhere among their top-3 lines.

Foegele has not had a good season but the same could be said of almost any Los Angeles Kings forward: Adrian Kempe has 22 goals, the next-closest is Kevin Fiala with 18 but he's done for the year, and next after him is Alex Laferriere. In other words, the Kings may only have one 20-goal scorer this season after having five last season. Foegele hasn't been up to his usual level, but given the struggles across the team, it seems more likely to be the roster than just Foegele.

At 14:45 per game, Foegele's ice time had seen a big decline from last year (16:10). That might go up a bit in Ottawa just because of power-play usage – Foegele skated just 22 seconds a game this season with the man advantage, per Frozen Tools. Over Ottawa's last 15 games, the second PP unit has been skating about 1:30 per game, give or take a dozen seconds. If Foegele gets middle-6 minutes with the team, it seems very possible he passes the 15-minute plateau. Add a bit of time short-handed, and he could push 16 minutes, and close to where he was last year.

Ottawa has also been a very good scoring team at 5-on-5, ranking fifth by goals per 60 minutes. That is 0.85 goals/60 higher than Los Angeles, who are ranked 31^st. Foegele goes to a better environment with defencemen who can move the puck, and that should boost his scoring. The Senators have 21 games remaining after Thursday night, so Foegele might only score 4-6 goals the rest of the season, but considering he scored 7 to this point, that's not bad.

A trade like this works well for Ottawa because they are making a playoff push now, but even if they don’t make it, they have Foegele for another season at a reasonable cap hit.

This is bad news for the secondary wingers in Ottawa like Cousins, Zetterlund, and Perron. It gives the Senators a legitimate middle-6 forward to rely on in all three phases (in a secondary role), and that will chew into their minutes and opportunity.

Who This Helps

Warren Foegele

Trevor Moore

Corey Perry

Who This Hurts

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Fabian Zetterlund

Nick Cousins

David Perron

Stephen Halliday