Matt Duchene Getting Into Groove In Ottawa

Up until a few weeks ago Matt Duchene’s claim to fame with the Ottawa Senators this season was badmouthing the team’s coaching staff with several teammates in an Uber. What made it worse was the  the videotaped conversation was then uploaded and broadcast all over the world. Since then he’s been one of the NHL’s hottest players with 15 points in a seven-game stretch which saw him climb to fifth place in the league’s scoring race with 10 goals and 17 assists.

Duchene was acquired from the Colorado Avalanche by GM Pierre Dorion just over a year ago in a three-way blockbuster deal. Forward Kyle Turris went from the Senators to the Nashville Predators while Dorion also sent Colorado a first and third-round draft pick along with center Shane Bowers and goaltender Andrew Hammond with Colorado also receiving draft picks and prospects from Nashville. It was a huge deal at the time and it’s interesting to see how it’s worked out for Ottawa and Colorado.

The 27-year-old Duchene from Haliburton, Ontario scored 23 goals and added 26 assists in 68 games with Ottawa after last year’s deal. He’s played well in both ends of the ice in Canada’s capital and has also made those around him better players. Head coach Guy Boucher recently told the Ottawa Sun newspaper he likes the way Duchene has worked with youngsters such as Colin White, Ryan Dzinger and Drake Batherson this season. For those who have followed Duchene’s career his impact with the Senators isn’t much of a surprise though. He was drafted third overall by Colorado in 2009 and was one of the brightest stars in the league while playing there.

Duchene broke into the lineup a few months later and posted 24 goals and 31 assists to lead the league in rookie scoring and hasn’t looked back. He spent eight full seasons with the Avalanche and part of a ninth before being dealt and left town with 178 goals, 250 assists and 428 points in 586 regular-season games. Unfortunately Colorado iced some pretty weak teams during his stint there and Duchene managed to play just eight playoff contests, contributing six assists. He made the All-Rookie Team in his first year and finished 10^th in the league in even-strength goals in the shortened 48-game season in 2012/13 with 15. Duchene’s cracked the 20-goal barrier six times and has reached 30 goals once.

Dorion and Boucher have been happy with Duchene’s play and progress in Ottawa, but he’s playing out the last year of his contract. He’s set to become an unrestricted free agent next summer and is expected to be after approximately $8 to $9 million a year on a long-term deal, possibly up to eight seasons. Duchene has downplayed these reports though and said he’s just concentrating on helping his team win as many games as possible to reach the playoffs. Like all other big-name unrestricted free agents his team will want to know where he stands regarding commitment to the club or risk losing him for nothing. The other solution would be to trade Duchene before the deadline if it doesn’t look like they can come to an agreement on a new deal.

Keeping Duchene won’t be that easy though since there will be seven unrestricted free agents on the Senators’ roster next July, including Mark Stone. This means Dorion is going to have to stay up late at night with a calculator to see just who he can and can’t afford to keep. Duchene didn’t exactly leave Colorado on the greatest of terms as he asked general manager Joe Sakic to trade him. He admitted it was a difficult thing to do, but he wanted to play postseason hockey and didn’t think it would be possible in Colorado with the club in a rebuilding mode. It was understandable since we mentioned earlier he’s played just eight playoff games in his career.

Sakic wanted a lot for his star center though and wasn’t able to pull the trigger on a deal until about a year after the request. In the meantime, Duchene had no control over the situation and it appeared his heart just wasn’t into playing in Denver anymore. This was evident to most fans and even his teammates as he scored just three goals and added six assists in the Avalanche’s final 33 games of the 2016/17 season. It was a waiting game for everybody involved; the player, the team, the fans and Sakic. The situation was finally resolved when Sakic pulled Duchene aside midway through a game against the New York Islanders last season to tell him he was headed to Ottawa. At the time he had 10 points in the first 14 games of the year.

There’s no question Duchene was one of the stars with Colorado, but the club hasn’t really missed him that much since the trade. The Avalanche were ahead of Ottawa and many other teams in the standings with 26 points in 21 games at the quarter mark of the season. They boasted the top two scorers in the league in Mikko Rantanen and Nathan MacKinnon and also have a host of other excellent youngsters such as forwards Gabriel Landeskog, Alexander Kerfoot, Carl Soderberg and defenseman Tyson Barrie. In addition, Girard, who was picked up in the trade for Duchene, is a regular on the blue line. And to top it all off, Colorado will get the Senators’ first and third-round picks in next summer’s draft. So far, it looks like a good trade for both teams, but this will change drastically if the Senators lose Duchene to free agency.