Steve Staios Didn't Buy Out Travis Hamonic: Here's Why

During our offseason report cards, I highlighted Ottawa Senators defenseman Travis Hamonic as a likely buyout candidate. After skating in 48 games in 2023-24 and contributing 2 goals, 4 assists, 40 PIMs and a -10 rating, fans might criticize GM Steve Staios for his decision to not buyout the final year of the 34-year-old's contract, worth $1.1M this season. Or maybe they don't care, I don't know. I'm not online enough to tell.

The reason Hamonic's deal is problematic isn't the term or salary: it's the NMC (No Movement Clause) negotiated by former GM Pierre Dorion, which prevents the player from being traded or sent to the minors, effectively locking the player into an NHL roster spot. Which isn't great if said player has the above stat line.

With Hamonic's age (25 and above, to be specific), a buyout would take 2/3 of the $1.1M salary and spread it out over two years instead of one. This means Hamonic would cost the Sens roughly $370k against the cap this season as well as 2025-26. Seems like a small price for freeing up an extra space for another right-shot defenseman – effectively allowing Jacob Bernard-Docker, Maxence Guenette, Nikolas Matinpalo, and PTO Calen Addison to compete for two roster spots instead of just one.

In spite of this, Staios chose to keep Hamonic on the roster, and while I don't know exactly what he thinks of his on-ice abilities, I can see the vision in keeping him around regardless.

First, we need to consider the impact the contract will have on the Sens' roster. To put it simply, it won't affect things much at all compared to last season. To elaborate, being a mainstay on the roster is one thing, but that doesn't necessarily mean you're guaranteed to play. In Hamonic's case during 2023-24, the NMC prevented his being sent down to the AHL, but the lack of cap space was what prevented him from being scratched.

With virtually zero dollars in cap space, Ottawa's opening night roster consisted of 12 forwards, 6 defensemen including Hamonic, and 2 goalies. Should a player have been injured during the season, they wouldn't be able to recall a replacement until playing one game shorthanded, as per the CBA. The reason most GMs don't need to do this often is because they're smart enough to allocate their cap space to include an extra forward and an extra defenseman at least.

Had Dorion kept an extra ~$850k around, there would've been room for Bernard-Docker or Guenette to step in and push Hamonic to the press box. This time around, Staios has ensured a 13+7 roster with more than enough additional cap space to call up another player if necessary.

In the situation that the organization determines that a given player will bring more on-ice value than Hamonic, but is forced to send the former to the minors at the start of the season, that player can be called up upon injury to step into the lineup without being forced to rely on Hamonic.

Even with the limits of the NMC, it's hard to imagine Hamonic will be playing as much as he did last season. At the very least, head coach Travis Green will be able to scratch him if he so desires.

Second is the impact a buyout will have on Ottawa's 2025-26 roster. While $370k is a mere pittance – less than half the league minimum, that dead salary begins to snowball when you consider Joonas Korpisalo's $1M retained salary and Colin White's $875k buyout. A few hundred grand could be the difference between a quick-and-easy negotiation with pending restricted free agent Ridly Greig, and a Phillip "Blue"berg situation. Oh yeah, and there's also this guy, who we'd all love to see stick around beyond this upcoming season. Every dollar counts.

Lastly, is Hamonic's presence in the locker room. My general belief is that in a game decided by a numerical score, only a useful attribute can be tracked using numbers. You might be surprised, then, to hear me talk about the importance of those more intangible qualities, but here we are. Goals lead to wins, shots lead to goals, and strong team play leads to shots. Take a wild guess as to what work ethic, mental toughness and team morale lead to.

Even if Hamonic isn't able to do what he did years ago, there's still value in having a veteran of his experience and work ethic on the team. A large part of why it hasn't translated into on-ice success for the Senators is that they've never utilized him properly. He was a third-pairing defender forced into a second-pairing role in 2022-23, and the following season he was an aging depth defenseman that played more than twice as many games as he should have due to circumstances beyond his control. This time around, if the Sens are interested in making the playoffs for the first time since 2016-17, they should look at significantly limiting his games played to no more than 20 or so games. There are others options this time around – let's please use them.

Granted, all of this is just an argument for Staios choosing one of two possible solutions to a potential problem. If Hamonic was currently a UFA, I'd swing by with a PTO, but nothing more than that. That said, while the Hamonic NMC will forever live on amongst the fake Paul MacLean and Erik Condra's shot as an all-time meme in Ottawa Senators history, there were many other contributing factors that amplified the negative value of that deal, that aren't relevant anymore.

Regardless of your opinion of Hamonic, there's a a decent argument to made in favour of riding out his deal, and that doing so won't harm Ottawa's chances of success.