Senators Goaltending Trade Watch: Depth a Strength Now, Banking on Performance Later

It’s the offseason and the draft is a few weeks away, so I better get a lot of mileage out of the Senators’ goaltending trade speculation before a trade actually comes to fruition.

Affirming their belief in Andrew Hammond’s performance down the stretch, the Senators rewarded his play with a three-year contract ensuring that they will trade one of Craig Anderson or Robin Lehner at some point over the course of the next few weeks.

In Bruce Garrioch’s latest, he summarized the Senators’ situation and reiterated that it is Robin Lehner who is attracting the most interest on the trade market.

“There is more interest in Lehner than Anderson and let’s face the Senators are going to get more in return for a young player who has upside potential than they would for a veteran who has three years left on his deal.”

Besides the inherent trade value carried by a young goaltender with pedigree, what’s also helping fuel the idea that Lehner will be the one to go is that management is trying to win now.

Rather than pin their hopes to the uncertainty that Lehner can fulfill the projections and develop into an elite netminder, the Senators will likely elect to roll with a 34-year old Craig Anderson and hand the “goaltender of the future” torch off to Matt O’Connor.

On the surface, it’s the safe move. Craig Anderson represents the safe choice.

He’s been the team’s number one starter since February of 2011, so there’s a certainly a familiarity and comfort aspect to it, but his body of work since joining Ottawa is actually quite impressive.

Since his first game with the Senators on February 13, 2011, only five goaltenders who have appeared in 100 or more games since that time have a percentage that is higher than Anderson’s .920.

It’s never a bad thing to be included in a list featuring those kinds of names.

As good as Anderson has been within this same span of time, there are some red flags however. There is that unfortunate correlation that sees Anderson’s save percentage be tied to the number of games that he plays: the more he plays, the more his save percentage suffers. Is it a mere coincidence or is there something to it? If there is, is it wise to invest so heavily into a player at his age whose numbers seemingly flourish whenever he plays in smaller sample sizes?

I believe there is this sweeping tendency to immediately look at Ottawa’s depth in goal and consider it a position of strength on the strength of the numbers alone, but really, we won’t be able to find that out until we see how their performance holds up next season.

It’s really no different than the stories or narratives about how momentum or success can translate to more success the following season. Remember when the Binghamton Senators’ Calder Cup run in 2011 was supposed to portend future success because of the development of a winning culture? Well, if Erik Condra and Robin Lehner move on this summer, the only players left are Eric Gryba, Jared Cowen, Patrick Wiercioch, Zack Smith, Mike Hoffman, Mark Borowiecki and Colin Greening. Only Wiercioch and Hoffman are of any consequence and right now, the Senators should consider themselves lucky that both players are still part of the organization.

Or what about that injury-riddled Senators’ team that unexpectedly defied the odds and not only made the playoffs during the lockout shortened campaign, but knocked off the Montreal Canadiens in the first round?

Well, once everyone returned to health, they struggled and missed the postseason the following year and looked destined to do the same before their miraculous late season run.

Not every organization’s growth or development can be linear, but for the past few seasons, Ottawa has struggled to progress beyond its perennial playoff bubble status.

It’s an important offseason for the Senators and like every club, the team’s success or lack thereof will hinge on its goaltending.

For all we know, Andrew Hammond may revert into the same player that management had written off back in January when downplaying talks that the Senators could afford to trade Anderson. Despite all of the fawning over Matt O’Connor’s maturity and late bloomer status, even he recognizes that he has to play and develop at the AHL-level before joining the parent club. Will he be able to step in and serve as a competent back up in the event of an injury to one of Ottawa’s regulars?

Even if the Senators opt to keep Lehner instead, there is no guarantee that he can take his game to another level. He wouldn’t be the first young goaltender with pedigree to wilt under pressure of playing in Canadian market.

Regardless of what the Senators do, there will still be a lot of uncertainty, so I guess I could understand the reasoning behind management putting its short-term interests ahead of an uncertain future that may be more fruitful. I mean, management has been operating this way since 2011, so it shouldn’t come as a shock if they decide to continue down this path.

Dumbing down the Return?

What I will struggle to comprehend is why a team that is trying to win now would consider flipping one of its most valuable and expendable assets so that it can get out from underneath one of its bad short-term contracts.

From the same Garrioch article that I linked to earlier:

“After spending the winter looking at every player at every level, the Senators will have a better idea who might be available and what they might want to ask for in return for either of their goalies now that they’ve sat down as a group. The Senators may try to include either winger Colin Greening or veteran David Legwand in this trade.”

There’s no guarantee that happens, but it’s been something that has been hinted at by Bryan Murray. Considering how often the organization has belaboured the point that the team will spend at some undetermined point in the future when the team has a chance to be more competitive, marginalizing the trade return on a goaltender would appear to be diametrically opposed to the message that we’ve been sold as fans. If anything, it would speak volumes about how limited the organization’s financial resources actually are.