Senators GM interviewed

Reporter Lory Cavalette meets with the Sens GM and discussed the offseason

Recently GM of the Ottawa Senators, Steve Downs sat down with reporter Lory Cavalette to go over the Senators off-season.

Lory: Hi Steve, thanks for doing this.  I appreciate you giving up some time to meet with me.

Steve: Always happy to talk hockey with such an esteemed member of the media.

Lory: So UFA seemed to be about bringing players back as opposed to bringing new players in. You re-signed Alex Killorn and Marco Scandella, Craig Anderson returns for his third stint in Ottawa. The only new player to the team was Girgensons.

Steve: Yeah, we really value loyalty in our organization. We were worried that Alex was going to sign with someone else. It is hard to replace a 20-25 goal scorer. Signing him to a four-year deal at under 7 million per year made a lot of sense for us. Marco joined us last year at the deadline and fit right in. He is a solid defensive D-man. We’ll need him to kill penalties and help keep the pressure off our goaltenders. 3 years at 2.1 million is a pretty low risk signing that will help stabilize our back end as our young guys develop.

Lory: Why bring Craig Anderson back? His age has to be some sort of concern for you.

Steve: Actually, his age was big reason we signed him. Tristan struggled early on last year. We felt the stress of being a number 1 was overwhelming for him at times. Bringing a professional like Craig in will help. We want him to show Tristan how the day to day of being a DCHL number 1 goalie is. We really liked how Dustin Tokarski played last year but we just thought Craig brought that added dimension that our team needed.

Lory: Your last Free Agent signing was Zemgus Girgensons. He looks to be your 4^th line Centre at a really nice 1-year contract for $1 million. Why sign him and not give some of your youth a chance at a spot in the lineup?

Steve: We needed someone who could play centre and help our penalty kill. None of our young guys can do those things yet so we needed to look outside the organization to find someone who could. We want to give Jakob Pelletier, Cole Perfetti and JJ Peterka a chance to play this season and each of them will be given an opportunity. What they do with that chance is up to them. Keep in mind that we want to make the playoffs this season and we think Zemgus gives us a better chance to do that.

Lory: Enough with UFA, let’s talk about the draft. You didn’t have a first round pick this year. You traded back with your second-round pick to add a third. With that second you drafted Caden Price, A D from Kelowna in the WHL. With that extra third you drafted Jesse Kiiskinen, a Finnish winger. Some felt the pick of Price was a bit of a reach at 56. Comments?

Steve: We had Price on our draft board with first round potential. We really like his mobility and his 2-way game. He is one of the youngest players in this draft class so we saw a lot of room to develop. Because we thought he would be lower on most teams’ draft boards we thought it was a good opportunity to trade back and still get the player we wanted and this worked out for us.

Lory: In the fourth round you drafted highly touted goalie prospect Patrik Hamrla. Why draft him there and not later in the draft?

Steve: Simply, we couldn’t risk him not being there later. We needed to improve our goaltending future and Patrik has a lot of potential. Now it is up to us to develop that potential.

Lory: Finally on the draft, Cam Atkinson? Really?

Steve: (laughing) Next year we are potentially losing 4 forwards. If things go well for Cam, maybe we can get him in our lineup. We’d rather not need to overpay for a player in Free Agency if we can avoid it.

Lory: Thanks again for doing this interview. I just want to wrap things up with one final question.  What do you see for the Sens this season? Are you a playoff team? Can you win a championship? Or are you guys still rebuilding?

Steve: At this point our team is what it is. I believe we are capable of making the playoffs. Our goaltending needs to be better than it was last year. Our offence should be at least as good as it was last season and our team defense should be improved. If our goaltending is better then we might be able to make some noise in the Atlantic. I don’t see us making many moves to tinker with this lineup. If a move makes sense, we might consider it but we are not actively looking to move picks or players.

Lory: Ok, again thanks for doing this and good luck this season.