Zack Smith traded for Artem Anisimov

Zack Smith’s time with the Ottawa Senators has come to an end.

With the team since 2008-09, Smith played 612 games for Ottawa, putting up 94 goals and 193 points. He was also part of the 2011 Calder Cup win in Binghamton, with eight goals and 20 points in 23 playoff games that year.

Between the New York Rangers, Columbus Blue Jackets and Chicago Blackhawks, Artem Anisimov has 703 NHL games under his belt with career totals of 163 goals and 347 points. Anisimov tallied 15 goals and 37 points for Chicago last season to Smith’s nine goals and 28 points, though scored 20+ goals in each of his three previous seasons in Chicago.

For on-ice numbers, Anisimov’s numbers are better pretty much across the board both last season and over the past three seasons, but on a team with better numbers pretty much across the board than Ottawa. Relative to Chicago’s performance with him on the bench, Anisimov’s numbers are largely worse than Smith’s relative to Ottawa’s performance without him on the ice.

There is some financial benefit to this move. Anisimov makes $7m in real money in the last two years of his deal, but $2m of that is signing bonus that should have been paid on July 1st bringing that down to $5m. Smith was slated to earn a straight $6.5m in base salary for his remaining two years. Anisimov’s cap hit is $1.3m higher than Smith’s.

With this trade, the title of longest serving Senator falls to Mark Borowiecki, the title of Honeybadger falls to Jean-Gabriel Pageau (unless Brady wins it in a floss-off), and the Senators also get younger (by a whopping 49 days).

You can read the official news release here.