Batherson Is Signed. Ottawa's Excuses Just Ran Out.

The deal is done. Eight years, $86 million, through the 2034-35 season. Drake Batherson is a Senator for the foreseeable future, and the organization can no longer hide behind contract uncertainty as the reason the roster isn't further along. I spent the better part of two weeks arguing this extension had to happen — that the alternative was a roster vacuum Ottawa had no plausible way to fill. The front office listened, or at least arrived at the same conclusion. Good. Now comes the harder part.

Here is the declaration: the Batherson extension does not fix Ottawa, it merely removes the excuse for not fixing Ottawa. The rebuild either works in the next three years or the back half of this contract becomes an anchor on a team that never got where it was going. History is not kind to franchises that lock in secondary pieces before the foundation is set. The Pittsburgh Penguins of the mid-2010s could afford long extensions on complementary forwards because Crosby and Malkin were already proven engines. Ottawa is asking Batherson and Tim Stutzle to serve as both the engine and the chassis simultaneously, and that is a different and more dangerous bet.

Look at what the numbers actually said last season. Stutzle posted 50 points in 50 games and carried the offense at a rate that left everyone else scrambling to keep up. Batherson contributed 44 points in 44 games — elite pace, no question — but Ottawa still finished 44-38 and missed the playoffs. A team with two forwards producing at a point-per-game rate and no postseason berth to show for it has a structural problem that a third contract year for either player will not solve. The close-game execution failure — winning barely four in ten one-goal decisions — was not a talent shortage at the top. It was a depth and system problem that ran straight through the middle of the roster.

That is what makes the Tkachuk trade and the Eklund and Spence acquisitions so consequential, and so unresolved. Eklund is an intriguing bet. Spence, on a four-year, $20 million commitment, is a reasonable depth investment alongside Jake Sanderson. But Sanderson himself is day-to-day heading into training camp, Artem Zub is similarly uncertain, and Ridly Greig is suspended. The blue line that was supposed to be the quiet foundation of this rebuild is already wobbling before a single preseason puck drops. Claude Giroux's one-year return gives the room a veteran voice, but he is a bridge, not a solution.

My read is this: the Senators have until roughly the 2028-29 season to show meaningful playoff competitiveness before the Batherson deal shifts from investment to liability. That is not a long runway. The comparable franchises that navigated this kind of mid-rebuild commitment successfully — teams that signed secondary forwards to long-term money before the core was proven — almost universally had one thing Ottawa still lacks: a reliable second-line center. Dylan Cozens was a minus-14 last season. Shane Pinto gives you energy and 27 points in 40 games, which is useful but not transformative. The center depth problem did not disappear when Batherson signed his name.

The extension is the right move. I said so in September and I am not walking it back now. But right moves can still be insufficient ones. Ottawa has locked in its top two wings through 2034. The question the front office must answer before this season begins — not in three years, now — is what exactly those two wings are supposed to be carrying the offense toward. A signed Batherson without a solved blue line and a solved center situation is a team that will spend the next eight years being interesting without being dangerous. The excuses are gone. The work is not.