Nobokovs Mock Offseason Senators

I will ignore everything but ottawa isn’t signing Fiala to 9 mill. He can go to another team

I've never seen a team with seven buyouts on the books at once

IMO it was the best way to ice the team I wanted to ice, as weird as it may look. Just because it's uncommon doesn't make it automatically wrong!

Lot of wasted money signing free agents to fill roles where they have internal options already. None of Rooney, Vesey, Maatta, Roussel, Tierney, Benning or Subban are needed. Trading for Ellers and Johnsson also totally unnecessary with Pinto and Joseph to fill those roles.

Don't like the value on that Fiala trade to begin with, but if he's a 9mil player on his next contract you do not pick up Bill Guerin's calls this summer.

That's a reasonable line of thinking, I just went in with the idea that Pierre Dorion is going to want to really try to make a push towards playing competitive hockey deep into next season, and that seems to be the intention he's communicated in his post-season availabilities so far. Eller, for example, gives a veteran 3C option at a cheap acquisition cost who can always be supplanted if Pinto plays better.

There's the general idea here that Ottawa signs some proven veterans to ensure they can compete while also being flexible enough cost-wise to allow for Ottawa's pre-existing talent to take their spots. But it also begs the question, if all of the roles these free agents are filling could be filled internally, why weren't they last year? Why were the Senators still so bad? For a team that I believe feels pressure to begin competing earnestly, it's very difficult to pass up these largely reasonable free agent signings just to rely on internal development.