By the time the Ottawa Senators leave on their seven-game road trip, which begins this Thursday in Anaheim, there’s a good chance they may have a new defenseman along for the ride.
If Thomas Chabot is still out with his upper-body injury, the Senators will need another defenseman for the trip. Postmedia’s Bruce Garrioch reported this week that Chabot may be lost for two weeks or more. If so, that would mean the Sens veteran won’t be available to play for at least the first few games of the road trip.
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The Senators’ longest-serving player was hurt in Tuesday’s loss to the Dallas Stars. The injury appeared to occur when Colin Blackwell took him hard into the boards at the Stars’ bench. Chabot’s lower back or rib area seemed to collide with the hard edge at the top of the boards. He played one more shift after that, then couldn’t continue.
So the club will need a seventh defenseman for the trip in case someone gets injured during a game-day practice or wakes up from their pre-game nap with the flu. That could be accomplished by bringing up a defenseman from Belleville.
But Chabot’s injury, combined with losing Donovan Sebrango on waivers, has highlighted the Sens need for more depth on the left side. Right now, if you add up all the healthy, left-shot defencemen who have NHL experience, you’re left with two players – Jake Sanderson and Tyler Kleven.
The Senators could bring a right-shot defenseman, but leaving town with five righties and two lefties wouldn’t be ideal.
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Jorian Donovan, Scott Harrington and Tomas Hamara are the regular left side options in Belleville. Hamara probably wouldn’t be considered at this point. He doesn’t even have many AHL miles on him yet, much less NHL experience. Donovan is in his second AHL season, but he’s still only 21 and as a fifth-rounder, he’s probably not NHL-ready. What’s more, the Sens would prefer their young guys to keep playing, not be probable spectators for a week or two.
That brings us to Harrington, a 32-year-old with 255 NHL games under his belt, mostly with the Columbus Blue Jackets. He’s on an AHL deal and would first need to be signed to an NHL contract, which the Senators have plenty of room to do.
But if they went that direction, could Harrington be more than just an emergency option for this road trip? With his NHL experience, could he be a better fill-in option for Ottawa than their current usage of righty Nikolas Matinpalo playing on his wrong side?
This is an organization that prefers its defenseman to be on their natural side. That was apparent last month when Kleven got injured and the Sens chose the left-shot Sebrango to play. They could have gone with righty Jordan Spence, the newcomer everyone was so excited about, but instead they made him a healthy scratch.
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Knowing that, the Sens probably aren’t in love with continuing to use Matinpalo on his wrong side, especially when he only has 56 career NHL games under his belt.
Harrington’s last NHL season was 2022-23, when he got some looks as Erik Karlsson’s D partner in San Jose before being included in the blockbuster Timo Meier trade that season with the New Jersey Devils. The Devils waived Harrington the day after the trade, and Anaheim claimed him for 17 games.
In 2023, Harrington tried his hand in Switzerland. He was injured for much of that season but returned with Zurich for the 2024 playoffs and won a championship. Harrington also played for Canada at two World Junior tournaments and won back-to-back OHL titles with the London Knights, where he served as captain in 2012–13.
As for how he’s looked in Belleville this season, his game was described by a source close to the team as “steady.”
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The Sens’ decision makers obviously like Harrington’s game, or they wouldn’t have brought him in last month. To sign him shortly after the season had started would seem to suggest they fully recognized how thin they were organizationally at left D. And that was five days before they lost Sebrango to Florida.
So Harrington is a player to keep an eye on as a possible solution, but if they don’t think he’s up to the task, then there’s no getting around it. Expect Staios to go shopping to acquire a left-side NHL depth player, a role they had hoped Sebrango would fill this season.
Steve Warne
The Hockey News Ottawa
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