Ninth-overall pick a high price for Senators to acquire William Eklund
Ottawa Senators general manager Steve Staios has acted quickly to fill the void in his team’s top six left by the trade of Brady Tkachuk to the Florida Panthers.
On Tuesday, Staios added a top-six winger by dealing the No. 9 overall pick in Friday night’s first round of the NHL Draft, which he got as part of the haul for Tkachuk, to the San Jose Sharks for William Eklund along with a pair of prospects.
Eklund, who went 7th overall in 2021, has 163 points in 252 career regular season games with promising underlying numbers, and he is coming off of a 53-point effort in 78 appearances with the Sharks last season.
On Wednesday’s episode of Daily Faceoff LIVE, host Tyler Yaremchuk and co-host and former NHL goaltender Carter Hutton discussed why the No. 9 overall pick may have been a steep price to bring Eklund into the fold for a desperate Ottawa team.
Tyler Yaremchuk: Te Ottawa Senators gave up pick No. 9 for William Eklund from the San Jose Sharks. Again, I really like the player. He is a strong two-way piece. He’s young. He’s only 23 years old. Ottawa’s trying to replace a big hole in their lineup left by Brady Tkachuk. But I’m sitting here and looking at a guy who through three seasons in the NHL has never scored 20 goals and has never really been close to being a point-per-game player. And I know he was on a San Jose team that wasn’t that good. Like, I get why the Sens want to buy on a guy like Eklund, who’s also signed to a fantastic contract. So you have him under control for three more years. I just still sit there and go, I’m not used to a guy like William Eklund being worth the ninth overall pick in the draft, Hutts.
Carter Hutton: Yeah, I think that’s the biggest shock value here is like, I love the idea of Eklund growing and being a fit as Ottawa starts to get better post Brady Tkachuk move out… but the ninth overall pick is no joke, and that’s where you start to worry about what that return is. And now you look at the Ottawa Senators, what else can they do as they start to try to better their team in this trade? When you look at some of the holes in this roster, right, I think there’s some question marks on what you bring back because of the factor of how big he is and how powerful he is, now you have a factor in Ottawa in the Atlantic Division of what really are you? Are you a legitimate contender when everybody else is loading up? And we talked about that with St. Louis kind of waiting in the weeds. I don’t think Ottawa is necessarily in that win now scenario with the way the Atlantic is, and I just don’t know. Pushing that ninth overall pick away is very scary, in my opinion.
You can watch the full segment and the rest of the episode here…