The Tarasenkshow Goes On: Ottawa Senators Sign Vladimir Tarasenko To 1-Year Deal
I'll tell you what--I wish we saw more 1-year deals in the NHL. It feels like every summer you get a decent crop of free agents and then within a few hours on July 1st, they all get locked up to 7-year deals. You might get the occasional bridge deal for a young player who is still looking to make a name for himself, but almost every star is signing a long ass deal.
And while Vladimir Tarasenko may not necessarily still be the star he was a few seasons ago, I honestly didn't think we'd be seeing him signing a 1-year ticket this summer. This is a guy who was a 30+ goal scorer for 5 seasons in a row. Guys like that don't come around very often. The only currently active players who have had at least 5 consecutive seasons of 30+ goals right now are Ovechkin, Auston Matthews, Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl, and Nikita Kucherov. Obviously some injuries have slowed Tarasenko down a little bit since then, but this is still one of the most consistent goal scorers in the league.
Now you add him to an offensive lineup with other weapons like Tim Stutzle, Claude Giroux, Josh Norris and Drake Batherson? That's a deep top 6 in Ottawa. It would be a great pickup for them regardless. But the fact that it's only 1-year at $5M cap hit? That's thievery right there.
The one issue here is that Ottawa is capped out right now and they still need to re-sign Shane Pinto. But that's why teams pay GMs a shit ton of money to figure out how to finagle the cap in whatever way they need. We've seen it time and time again in the NHL. The salary cap is fake as hell and there's always a way to work around it. So for an organization that has new ownership looking to make a splash? Figuring out a way to cheat the salary cap is a small price to pay to bring in a guy like the Tarasenkshow. Especially considering he could have been in Ottawa since the jump.
Anyway, this is now a few offseasons in a row where Ottawa has made some big splashes. Now it's time to see some actual payoff here and get their sorry asses back into the playoffs. I'm getting sick and tired of getting my hopes up about this team.