Ottawa Cannot Afford to Get This Decision Wrong
The history of bad long-term contracts in this league is littered with one particular mistake: a team in transition, desperate to signal stability, locks up a good-but-not-great player at great-player money and great-player term — and spends the next half-decade paying for the confusion. The Senators are standing at that exact crossroads right now with Drake Batherson, and the CBA deadline is forcing their hand before they've had nearly enough time to figure out what kind of team they're actually building.
Let me be direct about what Batherson is. He finished last season as Ottawa's second-leading scorer, 44 points in 44 games, a pace that would make him a genuine number-two threat on a contending roster. That's real production. But he also finished at -2, played on a team that won just 43% of its one-goal games, and did it alongside Tim Stutzle, who was carrying a point-per-game load that no second option should be leaning on as heavily as this roster did. The question isn't whether Batherson is a useful NHL player. He clearly is. The question is whether he's an eight-year commitment on a franchise that just traded its captain, doesn't know when its best defenseman will be healthy, and is asking a prospect in William Eklund to fill a hole that Brady Tkachuk left behind.
Eight years is the length of a franchise's identity. Look at what eight-year deals have done elsewhere in this league — the ones that aged well were signed by teams that already knew who they were, that had a core locked in around the long commitment, that were extending a piece of something already proven. The ones that became anchors were signed by teams in exactly Ottawa's position: mid-rebuild, anxious, unwilling to let a productive player walk while the front office was still figuring out the foundation. My read is that the Senators are closer to the second category than the first.
The structural problem is this: Batherson's value is real but context-dependent. He produced at a strong rate last season, but Dylan Cozens finished at -14 on the same roster, Sanderson is injured heading into training camp, and the close-game execution that cost Ottawa the playoffs hasn't been fixed — it's been reshuffled. Giroux's one-year deal at $5 million makes sense for a veteran bridge. Jordan Spence's four-year commitment on the blue line makes sense as a depth anchor. An eight-year extension for a right wing in his mid-twenties, on a team that cannot yet articulate what its ceiling looks like, is a categorically different kind of bet.
The precedent that concerns me most isn't even an Ottawa precedent — it's the pattern of teams that signed secondary scorers to max-term deals before their window was open, then found those deals immovable when the window finally cracked. The Senators have been building toward something for years. They went 47-41 in 2025, then missed the playoffs again in 2026 despite finishing 20-10 over their last 30 games. The talent is there in flashes. But flashes are not a foundation, and a foundation is what an eight-year contract requires. Ottawa should sign Batherson. I don't think they should give him eight years — not yet, not on this roster, not with this many open questions still unanswered heading into 2026-27.