Senators Still Leveraging Drake Batherson In Trade Talks

The Senators are willing to part ways with winger Drake Batherson via trade as they look to acquire an upgrade for their top-six forward group, Bruce Garrioch of the Ottawa Citizen said Tuesday.

Batherson’s name popped up in trade conversation around the deadline, but he ultimately wasn’t moved. Those talks also stemmed more from teams calling on Batherson, not Ottawa actively shopping him. While saying the Sens are trying to move on from him outright is a stretch, there’s a belief “some within the organization are frustrated with his lack of consistency,” Garrioch writes, and they’ll be open to including him in a trade package for a more established scoring forward.

Senators general manager Steve Staios already made one notable change to the core of young players Ottawa had built up before his arrival, swapping out Joshua Norris for Dylan Cozens at this year’s deadline in lieu of a Batherson move. It certainly stands to reason he’d pull off a similar maneuver to help jumpstart the Sens’ offense, which only ranked 18th in the league in 2024-25, as they try to piece together a second straight postseason appearance for the first time since 2012 and 2013.

Batherson’s run in Ottawa began in 2017 as a fourth-round pick. The 6’3″, 200-lb winger nonetheless made his NHL debut less than a year and a half later, and he was a full-time piece by the time the shortened 2020-21 season rolled around.

The comment about his lack of consistency comes across as puzzling. While he may have in-season hot and cold stretches, there are very few more known commodities in the league at present than Batherson. He’s played all 82 games for three years in a row – during that span, he’s recorded 22, 28, and 26 goals and 62, 66, and 68 points, respectively. His usage has also barely varied, averaging between 18 and 19 minutes per game.

He’s now 27 years old, though. That consistency also means his ceiling, at least long-term, has been established as that consistent 25-goal, 65-point winger. Ottawa only had one player, top center Tim Stützle, top that mark this season. With no one else in the system aside from captain Brady Tkachuk slated to routinely hover around or break that plateau, it’s understandable why Staios would be on the hunt for a winger with more game-breaking potential while sacrificing Batherson’s projectable output.

Still, for a relatively cap-strapped team like Ottawa, getting rid of Batherson at his extremely reasonable price point should create some pause. His cap hit is just $4.975MM through 2026-27, after which he’ll be an unrestricted free agent.