$4 million per year for 6 years.
He's offensively producing because we are offensively starved. He's an average second liner, but on a contending team he'd be on the third line. We cannot do with Brown what the Oilers did with Hyman
Well, last night it's true. Pittsburgh is one of the best teams defensively, their system suffocates offense and we are missing half of our best forwards (Batherson, Norris, Pinto, White). But overall this season, the Sens have been scoring 2.72 GF/GP
Based on the injuries the Sens have had all season, I'd say that 2.72 goals for per game is pretty decent, particularly when you look at the main contributors ages (Batherson 23, Tkachuk 22, Norris 22, Stutzle 20, Formenton 22)
Last year, the NHL average scoring was 2.74 goals per game. It's a bit higher this year but to say that we are "
offensively starved" would be a false statement.
He's an average second liner, but on a contending team he'd be on the third line. We cannot do with Brown what the Oilers did with Hyman
This doesn't describe Connor Brown very well. He is not a top-6 forward but "average second liner" is also not what he is.
First, Brown has scored 100 pts (43 goals) in 156 games with Ottawa, 0.64 PPG, 53 pts per 82 games. Only 97 NHL forwards have produced more points since 2019-20. Over that period, that's a similar production to Martin Necas, William Karlsson, Pierre-Luc Dubois... So right away, this is not "average production", it's excellent 2nd line production.
But that's the thing, his role is not that of top-6 forward. He doesn't get PP time like a top-6 forward, he is not deployed in the offensive zone to provide offense. He doesn't only play with other top-6 forwards. His main linemate, Nick Paul, is clearly not one. What is confusing is that due to a lack of depth as a rebuilding team and with injuries, he had to fill holes on the wing a bit all over the lineup and since he's the coach favorite player, he is used in a lot of situations.
Another very strong indicator, 78% of his production is at Even Strength and 9% on the PK, only 13% on the PP. In comparison, an elite player like McDavid scores 40% of his production on the PP. For most top-6 forwards 20-30% of their production comes from the PP
Connor Brown also faces the other team top forwards on a consistent basis, he is the most utilized forward on the PK in the whole league. He was 2nd in takeaways last season (behind only THE king Mark Stone) and was voted 17th for the Selke.
Really, "average 2nd liner" is the last thing I'd think of to define Connor Brown. He's a high end 2-way forward and it's taking time for him to get the recognition
I don't see Connor Brown fitting into the longterm plans. This team does not have cap flexibility once Sanderson and Pinto come off their ELC and we need to plan for that. $4.5 might be workable but even then Pinto will command at least that and we don't have the long term cushion to be paying our 3rd line north of $10M, especially if we are hoping to make a UFA splash to bolster our top 6 RW.
Other contracts will come off the books, mainly Colin White, Matt Muray, Nikita Zaitsev. The cap will also resume to rise again. It depends more if there is still an INTERNAL cap. If not, Sens won't have any cap problems for a while unless Dorion continues to overpay some players and/or unless other players like Greig, Jarventie, Sokolov become stars and need to get paid (but then there won't be spots for everyone so we'll have to trade a guy or two. You can only have 5 guys on the PP!)
Sens can easily afford to keep Brown at 5 x5, Zub at 5x5 and Paul at 3x4
