Silver Nuggets: Making Sense of the Senators 2015 Trade Deadline

Honestly, I'm a bit disappointed. Like my fellow #TeamTank comrades, I was hoping that the Senators would be able to move some of their players (especially the declining veterans) for picks, which as we all know, did not happen yesterday. In fact, the Senators are the ONLY NHL team to have not made a trade in the last month, despite their mediocre place in the standings, which has some saying that this team is destined to be a bubble team with an "anything can happen once you get in "playoff mentality instead of a "let's do everything we can to make sure this team is in the best position to win a Stanley Cup" mentality.

The biggest factor against Murray and co. moving their players is because they have term left on their contract. Here's a look at every trade involving NHL players and the years left on their deal:

Holzer (UFA), Brewer (UFA), Wisniewski (2 years), Bourque (1 year), Talbot (1 year), C. Stewart who didn't get traded to Ottawa (UFA), Lovejoy (1 year), Despres (1 year), Mitchell (1 year), Jokinen (UFA), Leopold (UFA), Falk (UFA), Johnson (1 year), Neuvirth (UFA), Bortuzzo (UFA), Cole (UFA), Kennedy (UFA), Zidlicky (UFA), Desjardins (UFA), Smith (UFA), Z. Michalek (UFA), Flynn (UFA), Petry (UFA), Coburn (1 year), Gudas (1 year), Cole (UFA), Sheppard (UFA), Stempniak (UFA), Glencross (UFA).

Thus, other than the biggest trade of the day - the Keith Yandle blockbuster - most of the other trades involving players with term were trades for OTHER players with term. Bourque was Anaheim's salary throw-in for Wisniewski, Lovejoy was exchanged for Despres - same with Coburn and Gudas. The trades that weren't was the Jordan Caron for Max Talbot trade, where Bryan Murray could've potentially shopped the now-injured Chris Neil to because of the Ottawa connection with Chiarelli. Colin Greening or David Legwand wasn't a suitor here because they make $2-3M more next year than Talbot's $1M. Torrey Mitchell was traded to Montreal, another suitor, but again, the raw salary is easy for Montreal to swallow.

As you can see, Murray and co.'s own bad evaluation really handicapped their ability to make any trades, and perhaps we should be more angry at management for the causal factors (signing these players to these terms in the first place) rather than the symptoms (the lack of ability to trade these players).

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Sens Links

• The Senators beat the Sharks to bring their recent winning streak to FIVE games. Check out all of the recaps because they're all great (and I'm not just saying this because I wrote one ahah). [Silver Seven, Rank the Performances, Ottawa Citizen, SensChirp, Fear The Fin]
• Some roster moves: Chris Driedger has been sent back down to the ECHL because.... Andy's back! [Silver Seven]
• A back-to-back this week has the chance to give Sens fans some hope... or crush them completely. It all starts with Minnesota tonight. [Silver Seven - Week Ahead]
• Speaking of the playoffs, Trevor asks: should we really start to believe? [SenShot]
• All the Sens trade deadline links! Nichols has Bryan Murray transcripts and an opinion column on the Senators deciding to stand pat at the deadline. Eric (RBM) has a (funny? sad?) transcript of the Senators inactivity yesterday, and the WTYKY gang have a (highly recommended) roundtable discussing it. In addition, Varada reacts to a specific trade as he wishes Ottawa could've acquired young winger Brett Connolly from the Tampa Bay Lightning. Travis and Trevor have a pretty fun pre- and post-deadline column, and it's always fun to check out Chirp's updates and comment thread as well. [Senators media availability, TSN1200 interview with GMBM, 6th Sens - Transcript, 6th Sens - Opinion, Bonk's Mullet, WTYKY - Roundtable, WTYKY - Varada on Connolly, SenShot - Pre-Deadline, SenShot - Post-Deadline, SensChirp, Ottawa Citizen]
• The most interactive link of the week is from Capital Gains, who takes us through the process of making a David Legwand photoshop! As someone who is terrible at graphics stuff, I learned a lot! Hope you do as well. [Bonk's Mullet]
• Trevor looks back on Paul MacLean's decisions and asks what could have happened if MacLean was still the Senators coach. [SenShot]
• Five Thoughts was on Saturday this week! Let NKB take you through his thoughts on Andrew Hammond, zone entries, the Wiercioch - Ceci pairing (who are making a good case to stay together) and more. [Silver Seven]
• Jack also has thoughts on the Methot Effect, and what having TWO capable blueliners has done to Karlsson and the rest of the Senators blueline [SenShot]
• The BSens nightmare season continues with a winless weekend. Ian has some thoughts on players who may be called up as well. Here are your game recaps from Jeff. [Silver Seven - prospect update, SenShot - v. Hershey, SenShot - v. Lehigh, SenShot - v. Albany]
• Peter Levi also has a prospect update for us! I promise I'll cover the centre's in the organization next week to finish off our look at the prospects in the organization. [Eye On the Sens]
• Your Ups and Downs for Week 21 from NKB. [Silver Seven]
• Ending the linkset with a podcast, here's Episode 13 of the Sens Callups podcast, with talk on a major callup who's been performing out of this world, the NHL's first star of the week... ANDREW HAMMOND. [Sens Callups]/

NHL Links

• Instead of listing them all out here, the Score has a great section on their website that outlines every trade in addition to some quick reaction! [The Score]
• Some really good hockey analytics stuff from the recent Sloan Sports Conference! [NHL]
• A really great, in-depth analysis about drafting on whether Lawson Crouse should be taken with a top-10 pick. [Canucks Army]/