-The Sens signed Jean-Gabriel Pageau to his ELC yesterday. Tim Murray said “If he has a big summer this summer and comes to training camp in good shape and looks like he can play in the American league, we’ll give him every opportunity to do that. If it doesn’t look like he’s ready for that level yet, we’ll have to talk to him and go through our options. He’d be a star in (the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League), in my opinion, as an overager (next year). But hopefully, he’s strong enough and good enough to play in the American league for us next year.” Pageau himself talked about his opportunity, “That’s a great offer they gave me and I very much appreciate it. I think that’s a good motivation for the future and for my summer. I think I have a big training season (ahead) and I’m ready to make the sacrifice to be in the organization earlier.”
-Bryan Murray (in the above link) indicated that Shane Prince would be the last prospect signed.
–Tim Murray was on The Team 1200 yesterday and commented on free agency and Ottawa’s RFA’s. In respect to the latter he said, “The RFA guys will be after July 1st but certainly we’ve got a strategy with all of them and we’ve got our comparables, as do the agents have their comparables. So they’ll all get done in due course but there’s no cut-off date and they’ll all get done after July 1st.” Murray talked about their process with UFA’s where they use a 7-point system to assess players. More interesting to me was his comment about the glut of forwards in the organisation, “it certainly puts us in a great position to trade quantity for quality and you’re not often in that position but as you said, the drafting has gone very well over the past few years. So we’ve had a lot of signings in the last two years that gets a little worrisome with the 50-man roster, reserve list and all that but we’re in a position where if we can plug a hole or trade quantity for quality, we’re quite willing to do it but again, we need a dance partner.” To me quantity over quality screams Bobby Butler and more for a defenseman.
–Don Brennan keeps his streak of dumb ideas alive with “Chris Phillips could replace Kuba on the number one pairing, alongside Karlsson, and the Senators wouldn’t miss a beat.” That makes no sense on any level, as Kuba is a better player than Phillips (for the simplest of statistical comparisons, Kuba‘s 32 points this year is 6 more than Phillips‘ career-best in 06-07, while Kuba‘s -1 rating in four years with the Senators is much better than Phillips‘ -29 rating over the same period).
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