The Daily Faceoff Show: What’s next for the Ottawa Senators after the passing of Eugene Melnyk

On Tuesday’s edition of The Daily Faceoff Show, Mike McKenna, who played for the Ottawa Senators twice during his career, spoke about the passing of owner Eugene Melnyk and how the organization can move forward.

McKenna: Where might the Senators be headed now in the future? To me, the big question is: who actually owns the Ottawa Senators right now?

Bruce Garrioch of The Ottawa Sun said that Eugene Melnyk told him at one point that the Senators have been set up to be in his family for generations. Assuming that’s the case, it’ll remain in the family. If it does go up for sale in the future, you can be safely assured that the team will remain in Ottawa. I can’t imagine the NHL will let this franchise go anywhere else.

On the ice, you’ve got Jake Sanderson who’s just come out of the University of North Dakota, fifth-overall pick in 2020. They need defense and they need it badly. He’s a puck-mover and he was over a point-per-game in college.

You look at the young talent that Ottawa has amassed through the rebuild that general manager Pierre Dorion and owner Eugene Melnyk put in place early in 2018. You’ve got players like Brady Tkachuk, Drake Batherson, Thomas Chabot, Josh Norris, Tim Stutzle.

There are so many good young players in the Ottawa Senators franchise, but, if you ask me, if they want to be competitive and get this team where it needs to be, they’ve got to spend money. They need to get quality veterans in, quality defensemen.

Maybe even a pending free agent like Claude Giroux, who (lives in) the Ottawa area. This is just a spaghetti-on-the-wall instance, but imagine if they could land Giroux and make free agents around the NHL believe it’s a good decision to go to Ottawa, to buy into that franchise again.

They have great pieces, but they need some more.

You can watch the full episode here…