Senators Bridge Ceci

On Tuesday, the Ottawa Senators finally came to terms with defenseman Cody Ceci, as the two sides signed off on a 2-year bridge deal, reportedly worth $5.6 million in total.

According to some reports out there, Ceci's side was looking for an immediate long-term deal, somewhere in the 6-year range, but one could argue that his numbers have been decent, but not where the team would him to be to secure him for the long haul.  When this 2-year deal is complete, he will remain a restricted free agent and he will have arbitration rights, where he could really get a nice payday.

About his numbers, his 2016 season was good, but wasn't awesome.  In 75 games, the 22-year old finished with 10 goals and 26 points, which was still good enough to be 59th overall in defenseman scoring, but wasn't going to earn him that long-term deal.

His potential still has some road to be reached and I think there is an upside to his game that the Senators haven't seen and this deal will help motivate him to get there.  The current projection on him in my numbers is 30 points, a number that still has some play to it, for sure.  Those projected 30 points would have him in the 11th or 12th round in my last mock draft and getting him there could be a real bargain.

Forwards	Cap	Defense	Cap	Goalies	Cap
Bobby Ryan	7.250	Dion Phaneuf	7.000	Craig Anderson	4.200
Mike Hoffman	5.188	Erik Karlsson	6.500
Derick Brassard	5.000	Cody Ceci	2.800
Mark Stone	3.500
Kyle Turris	3.500
Zack Smith	1.888
Jean-Gabriel Pageau	0.900
Clarke MacArthur	4.650	Marc Methot	4.900	Andrew Hammond	1.350
Chris Neil	1.500
Curtis Lazar	0.925
Chris Kelly	0.900
Tom Pyatt	0.800	Mark Borowiecki	1.100
Mike Blunden	0.738	Thomas Chabot	0.894
Nick Paul	0.670	Chris Wideman	0.800
Logan Brown	0.925	Patrick Sieloff	0.894	Matthew O'Connor	0.925
Matt Puempel	0.900	Mikael Wikstrand	0.813	Chris Driedger	0.755
Casey Bailey	0.874	Michael Kostka	0.800
Buddy Robinson	0.750	Andreas Englund	0.776
Francis Perron	0.703	Fredrik Claesson	0.700
Phil Varone	0.700	Macoy Erkamps	0.655
Ryan Dzingel	0.700	Ben Harpur	0.653
Max McCormick	0.650	Cody Donaghey	0.617
Ryan Rupert	0.632
Vincent Dunn	0.611
Zach Stortini	0.600
Chad Nehring	0.600

Pool worthy, non-pool roster players, assumed roster fill-ins,  injured/retired cap hits, in the system

The cap hit on Ceci's deal is very reasonable, especially given the upside that this kid has offensively.  The Senators will be prepared to pay him appropriately, but his $2.8 million right now is a much better reflection of what he has done, more than what he will be worth, but he'll get that in the Summer of 2018.

The 23-man roster, in colour above, is now coming in with $6 million and change before they hit the salary cap ceiling, which will leave them lots of room to make some moves, if necessary, closer to the deadline or even before.  The Senators have some young players that could easily slip into those blue spots and really make this roster interesting.