OTTAWA — The Senators selected Drake Batherson in the fourth round. One hundred and twenty teams made different choices before Ottawa called the name of a winger from Fort Wayne, Indiana, whom scouting consensus described as undersized, a project, and unlikely to develop into a player worth following closely. That was in 2017. The same front office that made that selection is now trying to pay him more than $10 million per year, and the window closes Monday.
After September 15, the maximum term Ottawa can offer Batherson will fall from eight years to seven. The collective bargaining agreement extension window that allowed teams to secure the longer term expires with the current CBA. Steve Staios, the Senators’ general manager and president of hockey operations, has spent the summer trying to complete a deal with the player who became the team’s top offensive producer during its playoff run last spring. He has not yet done so.
Batherson posted 33 goals and 71 points in 79 games during the 2025-26 season, career highs in both categories despite missing the first three games with a training camp injury. He plays right wing, kills penalties when the situation calls for it, and finished the regular season with six goals and four assists across his last eleven games. He scored 33 goals the same season Alex Tuch signed an eight-year deal at $10.5 million annually with Washington, as Bleacher Report detailed when the deal was confirmed. Those parallel numbers have become the reference point for every conversation about what Batherson should cost.
The gap, as best as it can be assembled from the reporting that has surfaced in Ottawa this week, is about price rather than term. Both sides want eight years. What is not settled is where the annual value lands, because Staios is managing a roster that already carries Brady Tkachuk and Tim Stützle at the top of the payroll, and what Batherson is asking for in the $10.5 million range does not leave much margin for the depth that made Ottawa competitive last spring.
Elliotte Friedman said this week there is “a path to a deal” between Batherson and the Senators. That formulation is careful because the careful formulation is accurate: a path exists, the deal does not. Batherson said publicly that he wants something resolved before training camp. Ottawa has not contradicted him and has not announced an agreement. In hockey negotiations, particularly in markets where the team’s every contract decision is scrutinized at a level that few NHL cities match, that silence carries its own weight.
The fourth-round dimension matters here in ways it does not for the other unsigned players in this window. The Bedard situation in Chicago and the Wright situation in Seattle begin from a draft-position premise that established the player’s market value before he skated his first professional game. Batherson did not have that premise. He had a $4.975 million cap hit on a six-year deal signed before anyone outside Ottawa was certain he was a legitimate NHL regular. The contract he is now negotiating is the formal reckoning of a career nobody predicted at 121st overall, and the number that comes out of it will stand as the evidence of how Ottawa values what it built.
What Staios cannot calculate cleanly is what Batherson’s production looks like on a team that is not built around it. The 71 points did not come on sheltered ice against soft competition. They came on a line the Senators built to produce, against the defensive matchups that come with being Ottawa’s best offensive player, in a season that ended in six playoff games. Replacing that production through free agency or trade would cost more in assets or cap space than signing him costs on Monday. The math of keeping him is simpler than the math of losing him. What is complicated is the cap structure around him.
The 2025-26 Senators proved they can compete with what they have. Batherson is the forward who made the most visible argument for why. Ottawa has five days to say so in the only language the negotiation understands.
