What If: Matt Duchene Never Came to Ottawa?

What If? is an occasional summer feature here at Silver Seven, where we examine a decision made by the Ottawa Senators in the past and wonder what could have been if they'd chosen a different path.

The fall of 2017 was the beginning of multiple years of never-ending drama and controversy for the Ottawa Senators. The team completely fell apart just one season after going to the Conference Finals. A brief recap of some of the issues: rumours surfaced about Mike Hoffman's fiancée cyberbullying the Karlsson family, Assistant GM Randy Lee pleaded guilty to harassment and was rightfully let go, players got caught badmouthing the coaching staff in an Uber, Erik Karlsson was traded, and Eugene Melnyk's presence continued to be a source of havoc, culminating in the #MelnykOut campaign and billboards. Those are just the big stories off the top of my head.

However, it's easy to forget how different things felt not long before that. The Senators were painfully close to making the Finals in 2017 during a Cinderella run, and although people weren't expecting them to win the next year, there was a general consensus that they'd be a playoff team. When Ottawa began 8-3-5, there was hope that they'd be able to at least be a wildcard team as they had the 3rd best points percentage in the conference at the time. Things were looking up, and then GM Pierre Dorion made a big splash by acquiring Matt Duchene from the Colorado Avalanche after years of rumours that the skilled forward he wanted out of Denver.

It was a 3-team blockbuster with the Nashville Predators that saw each team acquire and trade:

Nashville acquires: Kyle Turris

Nashville trades: Sam Girard, Vladislav Kamenev, 2nd round pick (Filip Hallander)

Colorado acquires: Sam Girard, 1st round pick (Bowen Byram), Vladislav Kamenev, Shane Bowers, Andrew Hammond, 2nd (Filip Hallander), 3rd round pick (Matthew Stienburg)

Colorado trades: Matt Duchene

Ottawa acquires: Matt Duchene

Ottawa trades: Kyle Turris, 1st round pick (Bowen Byram), Shane Bowers, Andrew Hammond, 3rd round pick (Matthew Stienburg)

Even at the time, it seemed pretty steep of a price to pay, as Turris was coming off a 55-point season, Bowers was a 1st rounder from the year prior, and there was a whole extra 1st rounder thrown in on top. However, Turris was a pending free agent and it didn't seem like Ottawa was going to re-sign him, Bowers had a mediocre freshman season at Boston University, and there was hope that adding Duchene would cement them as a playoff team to keep the draft pick in the second half of round one. Ha.

Personally, while I was worried about trading the pick, I loved getting Duchene, and it did seem like they were a better team on paper after that trade. We all know how that went though, because although they won their first two games in Sweden against Duchene's former team, they would then proceed to lose seven straight, beginning a complete nosedive that the organization realistically hasn't fully recovered from since. After the Sweden trip, Ottawa went on a horrific 7-21-4 stretch and the season was already out of hand before Christmas. Their final record that season was 28-43-11, which was only ahead of the Buffalo Sabres in the entire league. What's crazy is their record after getting Duchene was 22-40-6, a 60-point pace.

Now, was Duchene the one to unravel things? Not at all.

There were underlying issues all along, mostly because the 2016-17 team under Guy Boucher was a fine team that outperformed expectations and had some good luck on their side, but they weren't the group to go all-in with. Their shot metrics were never very good, and they were only going to go as far as Erik Karlsson, Mark Stone, and Craig Anderson were going to take them. Once Anderson fell off in 2017-18, they had no shot. It was easy to look at their record from 2016-17 and the first few weeks of 2017-18 and think it was repeatable, but the reality is that Dorion needed to wait to see how the team played a few months into the season. Giving up a 1st round pick in a season when you finish second last is inexcusable, hence why I am doing this exercise today.

So let's go back to November 2017 and pretend that Dorion ends up being more patient and doesn't trade for Duchene. Duchene was a bit better than Turris at that point, so I would assume that the Senators still would have lost a very similar amount of games over the next few months with Turris instead. Once it came time to the trade deadline, Turris would have been sold off to a contender—probably Nashville and Dorion would have still traded Dion Phaneuf and Derick Brassard.

What's great about this hypothetical is that because the real trade was a 3-way deal, we already have a template as to what the Predators would have given Ottawa. They dealt Sam Girard, Vladislav Kamenev, and a 2nd round pick (Filip Hallander) in the real deal, so Ottawa could have gotten that instead of Colorado. Not only would they have gotten those three assets, but they would have also gotten pieces back that they didn't trade– the 2019 1st round pick, Bowers, Hammond, and the 3rd round pick.

There would have been no controversy around keeping the 2018 pick instead of the 2019 one in order to select Brady Tkachuk because they would have had both of those picks anyway. Duchene was excellent in 2018-19 for Ottawa as he had 58 points in 50 games, but the Senators were literally dead last in the league that year, so without him, they just would have been...worse, but still last. Let's assume they lose the draft lottery like the Avalanche did and have to pick 4th and miss out on Jack Hughes. I can see them still taking Bowen Byram 4th overall considering their need for defense at that point, and he was projected to go around that spot anyway.

The 2nd and 3rd round picks are impossible to project, so I'll say they still took Hallander and Stienburg with those selections. We can't forget about the second Duchene trade, which involved him going to the Columbus Blue Jackets. In an attempt to recoup some value for him, Ottawa dealt him to the Blue Jackets for a 2019 1st round pick (Lassi Thomson), Vitaly Abramov, and Jonathan Davidsson. Again, at the time it seemed like a fair return, especially considering Abramov was a highly-touted QMJHL prospect. In our fake world, that trade wouldn't have happened, meaning Ottawa would not have those three players.

All in all, here is the hypothetical list of players they could have had versus what they ended up with:

Ottawa gets/keeps in hypothetical: Sam Girard, 1st round pick (Bowen Byram), 2nd round pick (Filip Hallander), 3rd round pick (Matthew Stienburg), Shane Bowers, Andrew Hammond, Vladislav Kamenev

Ottawa gets in reality: Matt Duchene for 1+ seasons, Lassi Thomson, Vitaly Abramov, Jonathan Davidsson

So how differently would the last few years have gone with these players instead?

Well, the most important names here are Girard and Byram. Girard has been a solid second-pairing defenseman for seven seasons now and is still only 26 years old while making $5M for three more seasons. He's not the biggest at 5'10, so perhaps the Senators would have gone a different route with the Mark Stone for Erik Brännström trade. A left side featuring Thomas Chabot, Jake Sanderson, and Sam Girard would be pretty incredible.

Obviously there are a lot of dominos there because they wouldn't be able to afford certain contracts with Girard on the books. They would have also had Byram for the past four seasons, and it's hard to tell what his impact would have been. He's played just 164 games over those past four seasons due to injury troubles, and he's been a mixed bag of results. He's also a left-hand shot, so there's no way they would have been able to keep Byram alongside Chabot, Sanderson and Girard, but we just saw Byram get traded for second-line centre Casey Mittelstadt, so he would have given the Senators strong value no matter what. When he's been healthy Bryam has shown some real flashes.

Beyond those two defensemen, there isn't much to talk about, but it's quite jarring looking at the two paths essentially becoming either Thomson or Girard and Byram. I know what option I would take. Of course, that's what makes these articles so fascinating, is because we could do these "what ifs?" with anything, and it's way easier to look back on things as if they were obvious at the time.

I could do an incredibly detailed analysis of the effects of Girard and Byram on the roster over the past several seasons, but that would involve so many hypotheticals that involve them taking different players in the draft and signing different players that it just goes down the rabbit hole too far. Girard and Byram aren't star players who make this Duchene acquisition unbearable, but it's painful to see regardless.

I thank the heavens that the Avalanche did not win the lottery in 2019 though, which would have meant the Senators lost out on Jack Hughes. At least you're not reading about that "what if?"