Will the Senators trade Brady Tkachuk in the offseason?
The Ottawa Senators turned in a strong regular season that culminated in a second consecutive appearance in the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
Unfortunately for the Sens, it also finished in a second straight defeat in the first round via a sweep at the hands of the Carolina Hurricanes.
Much has been made about captain Brady Tkachuk’s future, as the American power forward has two years remaining on his current contract. In the past two years, major stars in the second-to-last year of the deal have been dealt mid-season in Mikko Rantanen and Quinn Hughes Could Tkachuk be next?
On Thursday’s episode of Daily Faceoff LIVE, host Tyler Yaremchuk and co-host Daily Faceoff Managing Editor Matt Larkin were joined by NHL insider David Pagnotta whether or not this season was the end of the road for Tkachuk in Canada’s capital.
Matt Larkin: One more for Dave, just Brady Tkachuk. So in his exit interviews, I think his terminology was, ‘I have been committed,’ not’ I am committed.’ ‘I have been committed to Ottawa this entire time.’ We’re curious if there’s gonna be any possibility of movement there. There was supposedly a conversation that was gonna be happening with him, his camp with Steve Staios this summer just to make sure everything is on the right track, but there hasn’t been anything out there, I think, for a good month. Have you heard any whispers about Brady’s future lately?
David Pagnotta: I don’t know if there’s been a subsequent conversation after the end of the season. I think there was a full conversation there outside of exit interviews, but I don’t know if there’s been one since. But you’re right, the terminology, if we’re gonna nitpick and fine tune all of what he said, the terminology was present and past tense. It wasn’t looking forward per se. Was he misspeaking? Was it a hint? Was it this that, like, I don’t wanna go too much into that. What I do know and continue to know is that teams are very curious about Brady Tkachuk’s future in Ottawa. And that they’ll continue to poke around on him. It doesn’t mean necessarily that Steve Staios is gonna act on anything now, or this offseason, maybe they wait ’til next season, or next summer, or what have you, unless something falls into his lap. But he will be a topic of discussion because teams keep telling me they wanna have that discussion. So the interest is certainly there. It’s gonna come down to what the Sens wanna do and how genuine a lot of the commentary has been publicly. So this is kind of a wait-and-see mode type of scenario. And I think, look, from Brady’s perspective, I’d kind of put this in a similar boat to Matthews in Toronto, McDavid in Edmonton. I wanna know what the direction of this team is. And if we’re moving together in the right direction, then, alright, let’s do this. If there’s some hesitancy in the timeline or some ambiguity in the timeline, then I’m gonna raise an eyebrow or two, and I don’t know if this is where I wanna be. But this goes for, as I mentioned, this goes for those other guys, this goes for other players across the board. But I’m sure Brady’s going to want to know, with two years left on his contract, what’s our window here? And are we getting better? Are we improving? And what’s the plan to do that? But in terms of the conversation, I think they had the one after the season, after the exits. And I think there’s gonna be one at one point, but I think it’s status quo right now.
You can watch the full segment and the rest of the episode here…