Canada Day looms large on the NHL’s calendar each offseason as the first day that free agents can sign with a new team. For Steve Staios and the Ottawa Senators, it was important to resist the temptation to view July 1 as a deadline.
“We continue to work at it. Today is just one day. It’s been a week since I’ve made the trade on Brady, and you have the draft, and so I think it’s a little early to make an assessment on where we’re at,” said Staios to the media on Wednesday afternoon.
“We've put ourselves in a position now where we have great flexibility and draft capital, and often times, the way we see the market right now, is that there could be some opportunities to come.”
Staios did re-sign unrestricted free agent Nick Cousins to a two-year, $3.175 million contract extension that will pay the winger an average salary of $1.5875 million per season. He also signed restricted free agent goaltender Samuel Ersson to a two-year, $4.4 million contract extension with an average salary of $2.2 million.
He revealed to the media that he offered a contract extension to Claude Giroux as far back as the weeks leading up to the trade deadline, but that Giroux wanted to test the free agent market.
“I mean, for us, there's also a reason why I'm not active today, obviously that spot is reserved for him, and I'm eagerly anticipating, waiting to have a conversation with him,” said Staios, referring to the cap space that the team has.
“I mean, I wish it were different. I think we were watching opportunities that may or may not have come about if we did have an answer, but certainly we would like to have ‘G’ back.”
Staios made four trades during draft week, shipping out Tkachuk and then acquiring three first-round picks, William Eklund, Andre Burakovsky, and Ersson. He’s cognizant of the lengthy and expensive deals that get handed out annually on July 1 and believes that at least some of the answers for next season lie internally.
“As you see, I think there's a lot of term and a lot of dollars that go out on, in particular on day one,” said Staios.
“And we feel comfortable, again, when I talk about some of the players on our roster that maybe haven't gotten the opportunity to move up and really play up to their potential, we have that internally already with a couple of our players.
“We've looked at every avenue to try and get better. I think day one of free agency sometimes gets a little bit inflated. And again, I mean, this is dependent on Claude, and we want to see what direction he's going first.”
Some of the players that Staios is referring to include the recently-acquired Burakovsky, 2026 trade deadline acquisition Warren Foegele, and 2025 trade deadline acquisition Fabian Zetterlund, all whom have logged 20-goal seasons and have above-average speed according to NHL Edge.
“I like our depth up front. I think there's a great deal of variability to our lineup. Just about every one of our forwards can play in different positions, in different situations, and I think that's a benefit to Travis and the staff to be able to find the right combinations and move some players around,” said Staios.
“We’ve continued to build on our depth, and we had some depth from within as well… I felt that we had some really good players that maybe haven't worked up to the opportunity, the Foegeles and the Zetterlunds, those players who have great potential, both scored 20 goals in the league.”
