There was a touch of irony that the news about Shane Pinto’s suspension broke while the Ottawa Senators were getting set to play the New York Islanders at UBS Arena.
Pinto’s family home is located roughly three miles from the Islanders’ home arena. And when the Senators paid a visit there in February, I had a chance to spend time with Pinto’s family inside their home in Franklin Square.
When Pinto released his statement on Thursday, he highlighted the importance of his family.
“I want to apologize to the National Hockey League, the Ottawa Senators, my teammates, the fans and city of Ottawa and most importantly my family,” the statement from Pinto read.
With that in mind, I encourage people to re-read this feature on Pinto’s unlikely rise to the NHL. It will remind you of the human element to these stories, and that when a controversy about an athlete emerges, it will have a significant impact on the people closest to them. I am certain there is a great deal of embarrassment for Pinto right now, but most of his regret probably centers around how he let his family down.
We’ve seen athletes come back to the NHL after committing far more egregious acts than Pinto’s involvement in a gambling-related incident. So, in due time, this will blow over and I suspect most reasonable Ottawa fans will accept him back. Senators fans warmly embraced Bobby Ryan when he scored his memorable hat trick in his first game back after leaving the team to enroll in the NHL/NHLPA player assistance program. If Pinto shows an appropriate amount of contrition and sincerity, Ottawa fans have proven they can be a forgiving group.
In the here and now, the Pinto development does bring a degree of clarity to the Ottawa roster. The trade winds around the likes of Mathieu Joseph and Dominik Kubalik can ease. People can stop submitting their wild suggestions for how the Senators can engage in some salary-cap gymnastics to try and fit Pinto into their roster this month.
With his 41-game suspension already running, the earliest Pinto could suit up and play for the Senators is Game No. 42 of the regular season, which falls on Jan. 21 in Philadelphia.
That buys general manager Pierre Dorion a little bit of time.
By the time he needs to insert Pinto into his roster, the general manager should have a very good idea if this is a playoff-caliber team or not. And by that point, the candidate to jettison in a trade should become very evident to Dorion.
Dorion is a polarizing figure in Ottawa, and it isn’t surprising that his handling of the Pinto situation can be viewed through two vastly different prisms.
The first is that Dorion still deserves criticism for not locking up Pinto to a contract this summer — well before the news of his potential suspension came onto the radar. Dorion is still in the same predicament as he was before, with a roster that is at the salary-cap ceiling despite not having a young, team-controlled center under contract. Dorion prioritized signings of Vladimir Tarasenko, Joonas Korpisalo, Erik Brannstrom, Travis Hamonic and Zack MacEwen ahead of Pinto. He brought in $2.5 million of Kubalik for the 2023-24 season before he had anything with Pinto locked down.
Ottawa is still wearing salary-cap handcuffs — a situation that has nothing to do with Pinto’s gambling suspension. Dorion has been given some time, but he hasn’t created any extra salary-cap room. He shouldn’t be doing any victory laps for unexpectedly inheriting a peculiar situation that came out of left field.
Now, the flip side is that Dorion probably feels like he’s in a position of power in the contract negotiations with Pinto’s camp. Pinto has lost some leverage, since the most he can do is play half a season for Ottawa in 2023-24. And there is the school of thought that Pinto’s camp might appreciate the discretion shown by Ottawa management around this story, so maybe everybody will play a little nicer in the sandbox.
But if Dorion manages to cut down Pinto’s contract, the only reason he stumbled into that potentially advantageous situation is by sheer luck. This wasn’t the result of shrewd negotiating tactics.
The value of Pinto’s next deal will be fascinating. Strip aside this recent news cycle and Pinto is still a 22-year-old right-shot center with a 20-goal rookie season under his belt. He clearly felt his value was worth closer to $2.5 million per season on a multi-year deal — a price the Senators didn’t seem comfortable paying.
Does Pinto simply sign a one-year deal, play out this season at a discounted rate and revisit a new contract next summer? Or would he rather get a little bit of security now — even though he’s not dealing from a position of strength — and just focus on hockey? Either path probably leads to a deal worth less than $2.5 million annually, but we shouldn’t just assume Pinto and his agent, Lewis Gross, will quickly accept the base qualifying offer of $874,125. There is still an active negotiation at play here, so we should expect some back-and-forth.
Whenever Pinto comes back into the mix — whether that’s in late January or beyond — Dorion will need to create salary-cap room. As of Thursday, the Senators had just under $50,000 in salary cap space, according to CapFriendly. Thanks to an injury to Artem Zub, the Senators travelled to New York with the bare minimum 18 skaters and two goalies. They have no wiggle room.
Right now, it feels like Joseph has firmly played his way into a regular spot inside Ottawa’s top-nine forward group. Trading him seems highly unpalatable when he’s playing with this type of pace, consistency and productivity. Kubalik might be the most logical candidate to move, considering he’s been slow out of the gate, with no points in his first six games in Ottawa. There is plenty of time for Kubalik to resurrect his game in the next two months, but he becomes the most likely candidate to be moved if his game continues to flatline.
If there is one on-ice positive to the Pinto station, it’s that Ridly Greig has seemed to carve out a full-time NHL role for himself. He’s created nice chemistry with Joseph and Tarasenko, showing off an offensive side to his pesky game. Greig has shown he can play at this level and if he’s able to maintain this pace when Pinto returns, there is a legitimate logjam down the middle. Moving Greig to the wing is a viable option for the Senators, provided they can find the room to fit everybody under the cap when Pinto re-enters the picture.
Dorion received a temporary reprieve from the salary-cap gods with the Pinto suspension this week.
He’s able to kick the can down the road, at least for a couple of months. But Dorion’s next big move — in order to create some salary cap space to fit in Pinto — will also require a great deal of luck and fortune to fall his way.
(Top photo: Richard A. Whittaker / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
