The Senators traded Brady Tkachuk to Florida, sending the 26-year-old winger to his brother's team for a package of draft picks.
The team made it official. Ottawa gets three first-round picks plus a second-round pick in the deal.
Look at what walked out the door. Tkachuk carried an $8.2M cap hit and posted 59 points in 60 games at plus-4 this year.
After the 4 Nations and the Olympics, the Sens felt the Tkachuk noise had become a distraction, and Steve Staios met him in New Jersey last month.
The landing spot writes itself. Matthew Tkachuk, 28 and on a $9.5M deal, is already in Florida. The brothers are teammates now.
The official word lays out exactly what Ottawa got back.
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The hardball argument the Senators ignored
Here's where it gets uncomfortable for Ottawa. That's a real haul, not a salary dump. Three firsts is a serious bet on volume.
But Tkachuk still had years of team control. You don't surrender that kind of package for a rental, so the Sens moved a player they didn't have to move.
And they weren't a tear-it-down team. Ottawa sat 9th overall under Travis Green, a group with something to play for.
So the case is simple. A distraction is a reason to have a hard conversation, not a reason to ship out a 26-year-old star scoring nearly a point a game. That's what contracts are for.
The counterpoint is fair, too. Picks are lottery tickets. Three of them in the first round can turn into stars, or into nothing, and you rarely replace a franchise winger in his prime with paper.
Here's my read: I'd have made him play it out before folding. If "noise" is enough to move a player like this, every disgruntled star in the league just got a blueprint for forcing the door open.
That's the part that should bother Ottawa fans. Not the return, the precedent.
So the bet is that a pile of futures beats a present-tense star. Whether three first-rounders ever match what Brady gives Florida, lined up next to his brother, is the question that'll follow Staios around for years.
Ottawa got paid. Whether it got better is a different thing entirely.
Should the Senators have refused to trade Brady Tkachuk?
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