Ceci and Sens Settle on Arbitration Ruling

I was preparing to add the Cody Ceci signing as a fringe signing, but since he was 101st among all defensemen, I thought that was close enough to get his own big post and do it up right.

Ceci and the Senators did indeed go all the way through arbitration proceedings this week and on Friday afternoon, the decision came down to award the defenseman a 1-year, $4.3 million deal, which will take him to the last year of restricted free agency next summer.

The 24-year old played in all 82 games for the Senators last season, scoring 5 goals and 19 points on a team that was a little lacklustre for the better part of the year and maybe it won't necessarily get better team-wise, but his experience is certainly growing and that could be the leading factor to a much better 2019 season.

With everything that is going on in Ottawa these days, it isn't hard to fathom that the team will likely look towards a guy like Ceci to take on a leadership role with the team and his ice-time should increase, if and when Erik Karlsson is eventually dealt out of town.  Now that the signatures are on the dotted line, maybe the team can start to think more seriously about that possibility.

Forwards	Cap	Defense	Cap	Goalies	Cap
Mark Stone	7.350	Erik Karlsson	6.500	Craig Anderson	4.750
Bobby Ryan	7.250	Cody Ceci	4.300	Mike Condon	2.400
Matt Duchene	6.000	Mark Borowiecki	1.200
Marian Gaborik	4.875	Chris Wideman	1.000
Clarke MacArthur	4.650	Christian Wolanin	0.925
Mikkel Boedker	4.000	Thomas Chabot	0.863
Zack Smith	3.250	Ben Harpur	0.725
Jean-Gabriel Pageau	3.100
Ryan Dzingel	1.800
Tom Pyatt	1.100
Colin White	0.925
Magnus Paajarvi	0.900
Logan Brown	0.894
Filip Chlapik	0.728
Max McCormick	0.650

Now with Ceci and Stone in tow, the Senators are now rocking a fairly full projected roster of 24 players and they are now coming in at $6.8 million under the salary cap ceiling.  There isn't a whole lot else to do internally, in terms of free agents, so now it will be that bit of tinkering that may or may not happen before the start of the regular season.  Until that sort of things happens, I'm quite comfortable to run with this group as the projected roster for my hockey pool projections.