The five best and worst moves of Pierre Dorion’s tenure as Senators GM
Pierre Dorion has officially been relieved of his duties as general manager of the Ottawa Senators. The announcement was made Nov. 1 by owner Michael Andlauer and president of hockey operations and interim GM Steve Staios. Dorion was originally hired by the team in 2007 as director of amateur scouting. He eventually moved up to the post of assistant general manager, working for the great Bryan Murray. On April 10th, 2016, Dorion was tapped to become the eighth general manager in franchise history after Murray stepped down just over a year before he passed away. Thus began the Dorion era.
In this article, I’m going to take a look at some of the best and worst moves of Pierre Dorion’s tenure as the Senators’ GM. Compiling a list of the five best and worst moves of his tenure was not an easy task and there will be a number of notable omissions from this list, both in the good and bad categories. For example, I did not include the Jake Sanderson contract in the “good” category because it’s too early to say whether that was a good move or not. The Alex DeBrincat trades were also omitted from the “bad” category because the original deal was widely considered a smart one at the time but it just didn’t work out later on. Similarly, the Cam Talbot/Filip Gustavsson deal looked decent at the time but didn’t turn out well for the team.
I will be listing these moves in chronological order for simplicity’s sake.
THE GOOD
Erik Karlsson trade (2018)
The Karlsson trade is the move that will cement Dorion’s legacy. At the time it looked like a bit of a middling return. Sending a generational talent to a contender for two roster players, a prospect who was projected to be a third-line center, a first-round pick everyone expected to be in the 25-31 range, and a couple of second-round picks did not immediately impress Sens fans. The trade had to be done as the relationship between Karlsson and the team was not going well and he wouldn’t have re-signed with them the following year.
Whether Dorion foresaw what eventually unfolded is debatable but the facts are incontestable. He laid down the groundwork for the team to become a contender through this move. The Karlsson trade ended up netting the Sens Tim Stutzle, Josh Norris, and Zack Ostapchuk along with a year of Dylan DeMelo and four years of Chris Tierney. Through additional trades, the team also picked up Leevi Merilainen and Mads Sogaard. The Karlsson trade is indeed the gift that keeps on giving as Ostapchuk, Merilainen, and Sogaard make up a big chunk of the Sens prospect pool right now.
Thomas Chabot contract (2019)
The Sens signed Chabot to an eight-year, $64 million contract almost exactly a year after Karlsson was dealt. At the time there was a huge amount of distrust for the team among the fanbase and not many people believed that they could ever repair that trust. While the Colin White six-year contract was finalized before Chabot signed, the latter signing long-term in Ottawa officially turned the page on an era. Until that point a majority of Sens fans did not believe the team would follow through on their promises to keep the star players in Ottawa.
The team had just finished completely dismantling the team from top to bottom and trading away fan favorites like Karlsson, Mark Stone, and others. The Chabot contract was a gamble and for parts of the deal he hasn’t lived up to the $8 million pay stub. But off the ice it had an immeasurable impact on the team’s ability to retain star players and set them up down the road for the Stutzle, Norris, Brady Tkachuk, Jake Sanderson, and Drake Batherson signings.
Brady Tkachuk contract (2021)
Similar to the Chabot contract, when Tkachuk finally signed a seven-year deal with the Sens after sitting out for 2021-22 training camp, it had a huge effect on the pulse of the team. It became quite evident that Tkachuk was going to be a franchise player after he was drafted by the team fourth overall in 2018. To be able to lock him up for seven years at a liveable cap hit, under stress, was a great move by Dorion and set off a ripple effect that led to the signings of other key players.
Since he signed the contract, Tkachuk has scored 71 goals and 158 points in 169 games as well as being the captain and heart and soul of the team. The $8.2 million cap hit is even better now with the salary cap set to rise over the next few years.
Claude Giroux contract (2022)
Giroux wanted to play the last act of his career at home in Ottawa. Not only did Dorion facilitate that, he signed him to a team-friendly contract as well. Giroux had just come off a 65-point season as one of the best veteran forwards in the NHL before signing in Ottawa, with impressive resume that will likely get him inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame.
To get him signed to a medium length deal for three years at a $6.5 million cap hit was a tidy piece of work by Dorion. Giroux almost certainly could have gotten more on the open market. So far, he has 88 points in 90 games with the Senators over the last two seasons and makes up one third of one of the best lines in hockey, consisting of Tkachuk, Stutzle, and Giroux.
Tim Stutzle contract (2022)
The Stutzle contract may be the best thing going for the Sens right now. The talented German centers has eight years remaining on his contract paying him $8.35 million annually. He has proven to be a top-15 center in the league and has the potential to crack the top 10 as early as this year. Stutzle scored 100 points in 86 games over the last two seasons and ranks 15th in the NHL in points per game over that span. Ironically, the player directly ahead of him is Erik Karlsson, whom Stutzle was (sort of) traded for.
Stutzle is already a bargain at $8.35 million and his deal will only get better as he matures into a top-tier center in the league and the salary cap keeps rising.
Honorable mentions: Jake Sanderson contract, Artem Zub signing, Drake Batherson contract, Vladimir Tarasenko signing, Jean-Gabriel Pageau trade, Jakob Chychrun trade, Anthony Duclair trade.
THE BAD
Mika Zibanejad trade (2016)
As you can see, most of Dorion’s best moves came in the last five years. The Zibanejad trade was one of the first moves Dorion made after taking over as GM. At the time, Zibanejad was a 23-year-old center coming off a 51-point season. The team had missed the playoffs that year and was looking to make changes. So Dorion traded the up-and-coming Zibanejad along with a second-round pick for veteran Derick Brassard and a seventh-rounder.
The trade didn’t look great at the time and looks downright disastrous with hindsight. Zibanejad went on to becoming the No. 1 center for the New York Rangers and one of the best players in the NHL. Brassard had a nice playoff run in 2016-17 but was shipped off at the deadline the following year when the Senators began their rebuild. This move ranks as one of the most lopsided trades in recent NHL history and it was not in Ottawa’s favor.
Both Matt Duchene trades (2017, 2019)
The original Duchene trade is up there as one of the worst moments in Senators history, along with picking Alexandre Daigle first overall in 1993 and Zdeno Chara leaving in 2006. The price for Duchene was massive; the Sens gave up a top-six center (Kyle Turris), a depth goalie (Andrew Hammond), a former late first-round pick (Shane Bowers), a future first-round pick (Bowen Byram), and a third-round pick for a guy who only had 41 points the year before.
On the ice, Duchene was electric, at least after his initial slump ended. In total, he scored 107 points in 118 games for the Senators over parts of two seasons, but the trade was the catalyst for the entire Sens house of cards falling down. They ended up selling Duchene for pennies on the dollar at the 2019 trade deadline in exchange for Vitaly Abramov (in the KHL now), Jonathan Davidsson (in Sweden now), and a first-round pick that they used to selected Lassi Thomson, who has fallen out of grace in the Senators’ organisation.
Mark Stone trade (2019)
If there was anybody who embodied what it means to be a consummate professional, it’s Stone. He has been consistently one of the best two-way forwards in the league for nearly a decade and is a great person off the ice as well. Unfortunately, the Senators couldn’t come to an agreement for him to stay on during the rebuild back in 2019 so they traded him to the Vegas Golden Knights at the deadline that year.
The return was middling at best. They gave up Stone and Tobias Lindberg and received top defense prospect (at the time) Erik Brannstrom, Oscar Lindberg, and a second-round pick in 2020 which they used to select Egor Sokolov. Lindberg had a decent stint with Sens after the deadline but never played in the NHL again after 2018-19.
Erik Brannstrom was the prize of the trade but he too hasn’t turned into anything close to what a lot of people expected him to become. More than four years after the trade, Brannstrom is still a bottom-pairing defenseman on the Senators and at this point will likely never become a top-pairing guy. Stone, meanwhile? Captain of the reigning Stanley Cup champions.
First Matt Murray trade and contract (2020)
The Senators had grand visions of competing for the playoffs in the 2020-21 season so they decided to make a splash and bring in two-time Stanley Cup winning goalie Murray. The Sens gave up forward prospect Jonathan Gruden and a second-round pick for Murray, signing him to an extension worth $6.25 million annually for four years. Murray never panned out and only ended up playing 47 games for the team, being injured most of the time.
Dorion was able to contain the damage by trading 75% of Murray’s contract to the Toronto Maple Leafs, costing the Sens a third-round pick and a seventh-rounder. This move is still costing the Sens as more than $1.5 million of Murray’s contract is still on the books this year and counting against the salary cap.
Evgenii Dadonov trade (2021)
In the same offseason that the Senators splurged on Murray, they inked Dadonov to a three-year contract with an AAV of $5 million. There were obvious red flags associated with a player who only had 47 points the year before and was mostly reliant on Aleksander Barkov to provide him with offense with the Florida Panthers. Nevertheless, Sens fans and media were generally happy to see the Senators finally making a big free agency signing.
Like Murray, Dadonov didn’t last long, being shipped off after just one season in Ottawa to Vegas for Nick Holden and a third-round pick in the 2022 draft. At the time that looked like a great move by Dorion, offloading an overpaid player to Vegas and getting two solid assets back for him. But the Senators failed to mention the teams on Dadonov’s No-Trade Clause, which ended up including a team that the Golden Knights tried trading him too later on.
This blunder ended up costing Dorion his job, as well as a first-round pick in either 2024, 2025, or 2026 that the NHL forced the Senators to forfeit.
Honorable mentions: Michael Del Zotto signing, letting Anthony Duclair walk to free agency as an RFA, drafting Tyler Boucher 10th overall, Derek Stepan trade, Alexandre Burrows contract, Dylan DeMelo trade, trading 22nd pick in 2018 for the 26th and 48th picks.
CONCLUSION
The Dorion era produced some of the highest highs and lowest lows in Senators history. He was thrust into the job after Murray’s untimely passing and made do with what he had at his disposal. For much of his tenure, he was working with a front office that was understaffed. He made a lot of fantastic moves, most of which were signings, and made a lot of bad mistakes, most of which were trades. Now that the Dorion era is over, for better or worse, the Senators’ fandom can move on and hope for better days ahead.
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