Pulling the Trigger: How Long Before the Offers Pour In for Craig Anderson?

Unlike their previous incarnations that managed to take advantage of the performance of their goaltenders, this season’s Senators team has struggled to string together enough wins to put them in the playoff mix.

Through 35 games, the Sens are already seven points back of the Eastern Conference’s second wild card seed and eight back of the first. Only two teams — the Boston Bruins and Florida Panthers — separate Ottawa from the two wild card teams, but with the surging Columbus Blue Jackets, the list of teams will continue grow.

Thanks to the performances of Craig Anderson and Robin Lehner, the Senators should be closer to the bottom of the NHL’s standings more than they already are, but despite the best efforts of those two individuals, they’re still not close to competing for a playoff spot.

The situation begs the question, if teams show substantial interest in acquiring Craig Anderson, do the Senators consider moving the 33-year goaltender?

Obviously the answer to that question is predicated on what kind of return the Senators could land, but given that Anderson turns 34 this May and is posting some of the best peripherals of his career, there’s a reasonable argument to be made that if Anderson’s play will decline with age, he may never have this kind of trade value again. The time to sell high may be now.

Proponents of this idea will also point out that no one should realistically expect the Senators to contend in the reasonable future. Looking at Anderson’s body of work over the past few seasons, it’s fair to say his play and performances have masked a lot of this team’s shortcomings and roster construction. Hell, Anderson’s the reason why Paul MacLean won the 2012-13 Jack Adams Award.

Similarly, the Senators have also had Robin Lehner waiting patiently for an opportunity to assume the mantle of the team’s number one goaltender. At some point, the organization has to make a decision on his future and whether he’ll be the number one goalie of the future.

That being said, there are also some sizable risks to a prospective deal. No one wants to see the Senators pull a repeat of the 2013 NHL trade deadline wherein the organization move a piece from their one position of strength without receiving anything of consequence in return. Apologies to the Conacher family and the unlikely odds that Tobias Lindberg salvages that deal. (Please salvage this deal, Tobi. I beg of you, salvage this deal!!1!)

Should the organization flirt with the idea of moving Anderson, there’s no guarantee that moving him to take a step back or address holes wouldn’t open up another hole on the roster that the Senators would have trouble filling. Likewise, it’s entirely possible that Lehner may never fulfill the lofty projections that prognosticators put on him following his impressive Calder Cup run in 2011.

There’s also an argument to be made that flipping Anderson now may not guarantee the kind of systemic losing that fans are yearning for with generational draft picks like Connor McDavid and Jack Eichel being up for the taking. So with that in mind, it seems fitting to include a table listing the lottery draft pick odds since this Anderson trade discussion is principally focused on taking some lumps in the short-term.

Any decision to move Anderson would obviously be diametrically opposed to management’s recent decisions to put short-term success ahead of long-term interests, but with a middling team and one of the league’s lowest payrolls, I have a hard time believing that the Senators will be able to build a Stanley Cup contender without drafting elite talent.

That’s not to say that there isn’t any risk associated with the draft. Not every early pick pans out and there’s also an element of risk involved in getting early picks in an exceptional draft class, but with the team floundering and aspiring to simply be a playoff bubble team, at what point do those within this fan base begin to demand a little more from their favourite team?