Senators Alumni Spread Out After New Free-Agency Deals, From Ottawa’s Rebuild to Contenders and Playoff Pushes

The early wave of NHL free agency has carried a particular storyline for Ottawa: even as the Senators build toward their next identity, the organization continues to turn over players who were once central to the club’s immediate plans. A recent look at “where are they now” for Senators alumni outlined multiple new destinations, focusing on agreements that give players a clearer path to full-time NHL roles rather than waiting on a training-camp battle.

Among the most prominent changes is Nick Jensen, whose time in Ottawa concluded after he signed a two-year deal with the Anaheim Ducks at $2.2 million per season. The background matters. Ottawa acquired Jensen as a veteran right-shot defenceman with the goal of rebalancing its blue line, and the move played into the Senators’ broader effort to add structure and experience. The Yahoo report notes he provided that early stabilizing impact before injuries began to take their toll, limiting the continuity Ottawa could build around him.

For Jensen, the move also reflects how teams use free agency to solve specific roster needs quickly. One of the knocks on many rebuilds is that young groups can lack reliable decision-making at game speed. By bringing in a known commodity, a club can buy time while developing younger defencemen, and it can reduce the number of high-leverage minutes that are forced on players who are still learning a team’s tactical expectations.

Mathieu Joseph’s next step carries a different tone. The former Senators forward reportedly agreed to a one-year contract worth $1 million with the Edmonton Oilers, a landing spot that comes with a more direct view of playoff expectations. The Senators’ version of the story, as described in the report, is that Joseph arrived in a 2022 trade from the Tampa Bay Lightning that sent Nick Paul to Tampa. Joseph’s best Ottawa offensive season, according to the same account, came in 2023-24 when he recorded 35 points in 72 games, but the report says the departure of Steve Staios into the GM role did not change how Ottawa viewed the fit.

Ottawa then looked to create flexibility, and the report describes how Joseph was traded to the St. Louis Blues in the summer of 2024. The Senators were described as having to add a third-round pick to make the deal work, a detail that underscores how roster construction decisions can require value movement even when a player has shown scoring flashes. Now Joseph’s path turns back toward opportunity, with Edmonton looking for depth scoring and secondary playmaking that can be deployed through a long season and into the postseason matchups that reward depth.

Lars Eller represents the third theme emerging from the Senators alumni list: the veteran one-year contract that can bridge a team’s middle-six needs while adding leadership in the margins. The report says Eller signed a one-year deal with the Florida Panthers after one season in Ottawa. It also notes his immediate start in Ottawa, where he produced six points in his first 12 games, before later production slowed. For Florida, an offseason addition like Eller is often designed to stabilize the game-to-game consistency of a lineup, particularly in how a team manages faceoffs, penalty-kill assignments, and depth-role minutes.

Taken together, these deals illustrate a common offseason pattern in the NHL. “One-way” contracts do not guarantee a player will be an everyday starter, but they reduce the odds of being shuttled between leagues and report that the team intends to treat the player as part of the core roster picture. That matters for Ottawa’s former players because it changes how their next teams evaluate them, and it changes how those teams plan around line stability.

The practical question now is how these departures affect Ottawa’s remaining depth and its internal development runway. Even though these moves involve players who have already left, they can influence how Ottawa approaches the next wave of roster decisions, including how it values experience versus upside. For the players themselves, the next watch is simple: whether their new clubs can translate their role definitions into consistent ice time and production across the grind of the 82-game schedule.