Have the Ottawa Senators turned the tide by signing Thomas Chabot?

The Ottawa Senators gave a larger than expected contract to pending restricted free agent Thomas Chabot. Is this a good sign of things to come?

Last season, the Ottawa Senators were the poster child for NHL futility. The hockey club was losing and off the ice, dealing with a plethora of problems such as released Uber tapes and dealing away a lottery-bound draft pick.

Oh, and if you haven’t realized, Senators fans don’t necessarily have a lovey-dovey relationship with their owner. There were only a few silver linings for Senators fans last season. One was the emergence of young defenseman Thomas Chabot. The other was the hope that the worst days for the franchise were over and things would begin to get better.

The Senators took care of that first thing by inking Chabot to a new deal on Thursday. In addition to their official announcement, the team revealed the signing in a rather interesting way through their Twitter account.

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A closer inspection of the deal reveals a salary structure most Senators might not be used to. Chabot is making a reasonable, maybe a bit overpriced, $7 million per year for the first two years. After that, his salary drops to $4 million. Then his pay gets increased on the back-end to $10 million a year. Unlike some restricted free agents this past offseason, this isn’t a bridge deal – it’s a full-blown eight-year commitment by the team.

To show why that may seem drastic, let’s compare it to former Senator Erik Karlsson’s last contract in Ottawa. Karlsson and Chabot are both poised to be franchise defenseman for the team.

Karlsson signed a seven-year contract in 2012-2013, with an average annual value of $6.5 million, with his salary remaining consistent over that time. While the length of those contracts might be similar, Chabot is receiving a considerable increase over his de-facto predecessor.

Maybe a $10 million contract would turn so many heads if it wasn’t coming from the Senators. The Senators owner Eugene Melnyk is famously stingy with player salaries and operating costs. Seeing him commit to such a large dollar sum over a long period of time may not only be surprising, but it might also prove he’s committed to making some long-overdue commitments to the franchise’s future.

Earlier in the year, Melynk was quoted as saying that the team would spend close to the cap floor in the 2021-2025 seasons in an effort to ice a competitive team and bring a Stanley Cup to Ottawa. That was the closest thing to a time-table given to the Senators rebuild.

Although Melnyk says he would spend close to the cap, his spending history with the team paints an entirely different picture. If Chabot’s contract is any example, he might get a head start on that spending to cap thing.

Melnyk must learn to spend with caution as to avoid overpaying for players and wasting funds, but not being as much as a cautious spender as he’s been in the past. If Melynk finally is serious about opening up the checkbook, high-end players might begin to look at Ottawa as an attractive destination. Once they do that, the rebuild can take another step forward.