{"id":816859,"date":"2026-07-22T16:03:16","date_gmt":"2026-07-22T16:03:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/816859\/"},"modified":"2026-07-22T16:03:16","modified_gmt":"2026-07-22T16:03:16","slug":"steve-staios-ottawa-senators-comfortable-with-current-roster-would-like-to-add-pure-sniper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/816859\/","title":{"rendered":"Steve Staios: Ottawa Senators comfortable with current roster, would like to add ‘pure sniper’"},"content":{"rendered":"

As the Ottawa Senators<\/a> go into the 2026-27 campaign looking to improve on last year\u2019s first-round playoff sweep at the hands of the eventual Stanley Cup champion Carolina Hurricanes<\/a>, general manager Steve Staios says he is comfortable with his team.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe feel good about the work that we\u2019ve done,\u201d Staios said of the off-season on TSN 1200 Wednesday morning.<\/p>\n

Outside of dealing captain Brady Tkachuk<\/a> to the Florida Panthers<\/a> and acquiring William Eklund<\/a> in a package from the San Jose Sharks<\/a>, the Senators have not made significant additions to the roster so far this off-season.<\/p>\n

They acquired veteran winger Andre Burakovsky<\/a> in a minor deal with the Chicago Blackhawks<\/a> while forwards Claude Giroux<\/a> and Nick Cousins<\/a> as well as defenceman Jordan Spence<\/a> re-signed with the team.<\/p>\n

The Senators had 11 players on last year\u2019s roster reach double digits in goals with Tkachuk (22 goals) the only major departure from that group. Staios said that he isn\u2019t against making further additions in the goal-scoring department.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were eighth in goals for in the NHL last year,\u201d said Staios. \u201cDo we have a pure sniper? … We\u2019d love to add that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ottawa currently has just over $5 million in cap space with most of their core signed long term, with the exception of forward Drake Batherson<\/a> and defenceman Artem Zub<\/a>, who are unrestricted free agents next summer. Staios said \u201cthere has been discussions\u201d with the duo on extensions.<\/p>\n

The Senators are also banking on Eklund being a big piece for the team going forward after flipping the ninth-overall pick in the draft they got from the Panthers in the Tkachuk deal to the Sharks to secure Eklund.<\/p>\n

The 23-year-old, who was the seventh-overall pick in 2021, scored 15 goals with 53 points in 78 games last season for San Jose.<\/p>\n

Staios says that Eklund is more of a playmaker and hopes he will complement the team\u2019s top shooters like Tim Stutzle (34 goals), Batherson (33) and Dylan Cozens<\/a> (28).<\/p>\n

He also believes that players like forwards Fabian Zetterlund<\/a> (17 goals and 33 points in 82 games) and Warren Foegele<\/a> (six goals and eight points in 21 games) have the capability of playing bigger roles.<\/p>\n

Zetterlund averaged 12:55 of ice time last season while Foegele was a trade-deadline addition in March.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe feel like we have internally the ability for players to move up our roster,\u201d said Staios.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As the Ottawa Senators go into the 2026-27 campaign looking to improve on last year\u2019s first-round playoff sweep…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":816860,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[16159,64,63,575,119769,85],"class_list":["post-816859","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-apple-news","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nhl","tag-ottawa-senators-sports-hockey-team-team-nhl-api-9","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/816859","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=816859"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/816859\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/816860"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=816859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=816859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=816859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}