After recently reporting that the Ottawa Senators were open to all options with all-star forward, Alex DeBrincat, Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet reports that the Senators are now fully examining the trade market for the young forward.
A restricted free agent this offseason, DeBrincat is due a $9M qualifying offer, a number that few teams are going to be able to absorb.
On the first day of last year’s draft, the Senators acquired DeBrincat from the Chicago Blackhawks for a package including the seventh overall pick, the 39th overall pick, and the Senators’ third-round pick in the 2024 NHL Draft.
Just after earning a 40-goal season with Chicago, Ottawa was hoping that DeBrincat would be the jolt of offense the team needed to get back to the playoffs.
Although starting off slow in Canada’s capital, DeBrincat finished the 2022-23 season with respectable numbers for his standards. In 82 games played, DeBrincat scored 27 goals and 39 assists, also providing the Senators with 109 hits, showing off a lot of physicality.
Ottawa has shown quite a bit of interest in signing DeBrincat to a long-term extension, but he has shown little to no inclination to sign a deal to remain with the Senators, as the team is now going through a change in ownership.
Understandably, with the ownership of the team still in doubt, DeBrincat is wary of sticking around long-term in that situation.
For teams that have the cap space available, and should be in a position to be a consistent playoff contender in the near future, look towards two Atlantic-division rivals for the Senators, the Buffalo Sabres and Detroit Red Wings.
This season, Buffalo was much closer to the playoffs than the Red Wings, and still has a long-term extension to work out with stud defenseman, Rasmus Dahlin.
Nevertheless, DeBrincat would surely make the Sabres’ offense almost impossible to defend against, and with the cap space reportedly growing after next season, they would be able to fit DeBrincat into the long-term outlook.
For Detroit, DeBrincat makes perfect sense as the big-name acquisition that fans have been waiting on for years. Growing up in Farmington Hills, MI, DeBrincat gives the team a right-handed shooting forward that carries high-octane offense, something that the team has been missing for quite some time.
As the Red Wings’ depth of prospects make the jump to the NHL over the next several seasons, Detroit has the cap space available to them to make DeBrincat a big part of their future.
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