NHL Rumors: Ottawa Senators Jakob Chychrun in the rumor mill again

Daily Faceoff Youbube: Frank Seravalli and Tyler Yaremchuk on Ottawa Senators and the Jakob Chychrun trade speculation.

** NHLRumors.com transcription

Yaremchuk: “I want to start out in Ottawa. Jacob Chychrun. This guy, I mean, he might lead the league in time spent on the trade targets board since you’ve started doing it. What’s the situation there? Why is Ottawa looking to move him and what’s the market gonna be like?”

Seravalli: “Poor guy right?”

Yaremchuk: “I know.”

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Seravalli: “Just constantly in the the swirl of the trade target board.”

Yaremchuk: “You’d imagine he’s numb to it by now.”

Seravalli: “I guarantee you he is. Like someone please call me when I’m actually on the move. And look, I think that’s still very likely to be the case in Ottawa.

Consider the spot that they’re in. They’ve got (Thomas) Chabot, $8 million, (Jake) Sanderson, $8 million. Those two guys at $16 million on the left side of your defense.

You now need to pay Jakob Chychrun, who by the way, has played better hockey in Ottawa than he was in Arizona. So he’s probably going to jump up to the $7.5 million dollar range from $4.6 (million). How do you pay $24 million to one side of your blue line and have nothing on the other? That’s not proper team balance.

And from a pure asset perspective, really what, because of the way Chychrun defends and plays, really what the Sens should explore is trying to move Chabot. But you’re dealing with Chabot at a distressed asset right now, because of his contract. No one’s taking on that deal with that term.

What are you going to do? The only thing you can do is say well, we can’t really devote this money to Chychrun to re-signing him, so we need to move him now. We need to get assets back and return that can help our team for now. This team has to turn the corner. They’re no different than the Buffalo Sabres.”

Yaremchuk: “And this isn’t a situation where they’re looking at dump Chychrun for picks, or if they are or if that’s the deal, they’re flipping that stuff, right? Like this is, it’s go time. It’s not let’s get a first and maybe we can work someone out.”

Seravalli: “100%. And that’s the spot that they find themselves in. It’s an uncomfortable one, but it’s reality. And Steve Staios has now had basically a year to wrap his head around everything that’s going on in Ottawa. We’ve really yet to see him step up to the plate to do much.

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He’s changed, made himself the GM, firing Pierre Dorian. He’s changed coaches. Travis Green comes in. Now’s the time to see some aggression from your team-building perspective because we really haven’t seen much.”