We are now 10 days away from the start of the NHL regular season, and with the Anaheim Ducks locking up Trevor Zegras on Monday, that leaves three restricted free agents remaining going into the 2023-24 season.
One of those remaining RFAs is Ottawa Senators center Shane Pinto. It’s not due to a drastic gap in contract details between the two parties, but to the Senators already being over the cap and not making the appropriate moves to fit Pinto into the picture.
What will the Sens do to get Pinto signed? Brent Wallace joined Frank Seravalli and Tyler Yaremchuk to talk about that and more on "Daily Faceoff Live."
Brent Wallace: None of us have been able to figure out what the hell is going on. We knew this for months. We knew this contract was coming up. And yet if you read Ian Mendes' article in The Athletic, he tells you they prioritized Zac MacEwan, Travis Hamonic and Erik Brannstrom, and signing all of these players to contracts like Vladimir Tarasenko, they brought in Dominik Kubalik. All these guys and yet Pinto just sat there.
Pinto’s a 20-goal scorer who filled in for Josh Norris, who went out with an injury. He knows how to play second-line center minutes, he’s extremely good defensively, he’s smart, he’s young, he’s all that stuff. I don’t know how they got to this point. I can’t fathom how we’ve got here now 10 days away from the season when they should have made a deal to get him signed, they should have already traded the players away, because now in order to move those assets, you’re going to have to sweeten the deal, and people are now saying “You want to give us Mathieu Joseph for someone else? We also want a first-round pick." That’s tough to swallow.
Frank Seravalli: Yeah, Joseph has three years left at almost $3m. That’s not the easiest guy on your roster to move.
You can watch the full episode here…
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