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Although the Ottawa Senators are going to be bad again next season, they have a lot of defensemen on their roster, and their long-term outlook at the position actually looks quite good. There are only six spots available plus one or two as scratches (assuming nobody else is going to pull a Guy Boucher), and there simply aren’t going to be enough spots next season if they want to fit everyone in the NHL. There is a way they could make it work, but that would be actively hurting the NHL roster. Therefore, for that reason (and others), it makes a ton of sense to trade Ben Harpur this summer.
Let’s begin by saying that Harpur is far from an integral part to the Senators defense corps. At the age of 24, he has played 103 games and has not shown any indication that he is able to play higher than the third pairing. In those 103 games since 2016-17, he ranks dead last amongst 14 Senators defensemen in expected goals for percentage at 43.05%. He has also been awful in terms of
actual goal totals, as his GF% is at 34.82%...39 goals for and 73 against. Furthermore, he ranks dead last in both WAR (-1.7) and GAR (-9.6), which is almost impressive because he has played over 100 games fewer than the next lowest defenseman (Dion Phaneuf), but WAR and GAR are cumulative stats---meaning that putting up that much negative value in such a short span of time is incredible.
It’s not as if he is an offensive defenseman either, as he has just one goal and six assists in his entire career. If he isn’t producing offense and isn’t limiting shots or goals against, then...what exactly is he doing?
I would be advocating for trading Harpur even if there wasn’t a roster crunch, but the fact that there is makes it even more of an obvious decision to make. If we assume that Cody Ceci is getting re-signed, Ottawa currently has six defenseman in the NHL plus Max Lajoie, an unsigned Christian Wolanin, and a soon-to-be-ready Erik Brannstrom. That’s nine defensemen overall, which is a lot. Now, it’s always a good problem to have too many players, and injuries will happen too so sometimes these things work themselves out. However, I just don’t see where Harpur fits in.
He’s a left-handed shot, although he can play on the right side as well. For next season, the left side will include Thomas Chabot, Christian Wolanin, Max Lajoie, Mark Borowiecki, plus Erik Brannstrom at some point. Even if we assume that it’s better for Brannstrom to stay in the minors for a chunk of time next season and that Harpur is better than Borowiecki (which I would disagree with), Harpur is still just the fourth best defenseman on the left side. On the right side, he’s certainly not better than Dylan DeMelo or Christian Jaros, and I’m not even sure that he is better than Cody Ceci in a third pairing role. I simply don’t see where there is room for him this season, and it’s even harder to see where he fits in long-term.
Chabot, Jaros, Brannstrom, and Lajoie all have two-way contracts next season and could play for Belleville, although Chabot is obviously not going to the minors, and Jaros wasn't sent down at all this year, so I doubt he would play there either. Brannstrom will probably begin the season in Belleville and I'm fine with that, but I don't want his spot in the NHL to be blocked because they feel attached to Harpur. Lajoie could also play some AHL games, but Harpur should not be the one to take his spot.
There are some people who are higher on Harpur’s potential than others but let’s remember that he’s also 24 and isn’t likely to improve very much at this age. Furthermore, there is a belief that Ottawa needs physicality on the blueline and that Harpur brings exactly that. The thing is though, Borowiecki and Jaros already provide tons of physicality. Borowiecki seems to be entrenched in the Senators organization, and there isn’t much point in having another extremely offensively limited defenseman at the bottom of the lineup. Every team in the league is going to have one defenseman who isn’t that great and doesn’t produce much offensively, but there’s no need to have both Borowiecki and Harpur as those players. Having him in the lineup would also mean one of Lajoie, Wolanin, or Brannstrom would not be playing, and that is inexcusable considering what he brings compared to the upsides of the other three.
Even if the worst case scenario happens where two or three defensemen get hurt and they need to call somebody up, it’s not as if Harpur would be able to come in and save the day. He is a third pairing defenseman (or maybe even a seventh defenseman), and Ottawa could just call up someone else from Belleville instead as a stopgap. Again, the Senators are going to be terrible next year, so “losing” whatever Harpur brings to the lineup would not even matter very much.
In terms of what they could receive in return for him, I wouldn’t expect very much. He’s played the equivalent of just over one full season over the course of his career, and he is very limited. NHL teams love their physical defensemen though and he is making just $725k, so perhaps Ottawa would be able to get a mid-to-late round pick for him. Then again, if they lost him in waivers for nothing, it wouldn’t be much of a loss.
I just see Harpur as redundant with the defensemen they currently have and I don’t want to see better players losing ice-time to him. At best, their young defensemen will develop better by getting more ice-time, and at worst, Ottawa will be forced to use some Belleville players such as Erik Burgdoerfer or Stefan Elliott while Harpur is a sixth defenseman somewhere else and not providing that much value. Ottawa needs to stop playing it safe and prioritize the defensemen who clearly have much higher ceilings.
(Stats courtesy of Natural Stat Trick and Evolving Wild).