Grading the Alex DeBrincat trade: Red Wings finally add high-end offense, Senators’ return looks light

Finally, it’s done. The Ottawa Senators trading Alex DeBrincat to the Detroit Red Wings Sunday night felt like a foregone conclusion. It was a virtual certainty he’d get moved once he made it clear he wouldn’t sign an extension with Ottawa as a restricted free agent, and the Senators filed for arbitration as a measure to lower the cap hit from the $9 million qualifying offer he was owed. As Matthew Tkachuk and Pierre-Luc Dubois have shown over the past two summers, an RFA can influence his destination in a trade by indicating where he’d be willing to sign an extension, so the hometown Detroit Red Wings were always the front-runner to get DeBrincat.

DeBrincat didn’t exactly make out like a bandit here. He limited his potential landing spots and ended up signing a four-year extension at a $7.875 million average annual value when there was big-money potential if he played out his final season with Ottawa and became an unrestricted free agent next summer, when the NHL salary cap is slated to spike significantly for the first time in half a decade. He would’ve had a chance to pick his destination and sign a seven-year deal in the middle of his prime at 26. Instead, he’ll become a UFA at 29 when his prime is coming to a close.

But today, we’re grading the teams, not the player. How did the Red Wings and Sens fare on the trade, which sent DeBrincat to Hockeytown in exchange for Dominik Kubalik, a 2024 conditional first-round pick, a 2024 fourth-round-pick and Donovan Sebrango?

DETROIT RED WINGS

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LW/RW Alex DeBrincat, 25, $7.875 million cap hit through 2026-27 (UFA)

Time flies when you’re having…incremental increases in fun. We’re quietly four years into GM Steve Yzerman’s tenure as Detroit Red Wings GM. Since the dawn of the "Yzerplan," the Wings have slowly improved, posting points percentages of .275, .429, .451 and .488 while assembling an exciting collection of young talent, including Moritz Seider; Lucas Raymond; Simon Edvinsson; Sebastian Cosa; Marco Kasper; and, just weeks ago at the 2023 NHL Draft, Nate Danielson, Axel Sandin-Pellikka and Trey Augustine. Still, rebuilds can’t take much more than half a decade in the modern NHL. Teams need to start winning while their best young players are breaking into the league and still on their entry-level AAVs. It’s been a painfully slow burn for the Wings, whose playoff drought just reached seven years.

Last offseason, Yzerman changed his behavior to that of a GM who felt his team was ready for playoff contention. He made aggressive additions, from David Perron to Andrew Copp to Ville Husso. He continued that trend this summer, adding J.T. Compher, Shayne Gostisbehere, Daniel Sprong, Klim Kostin and Justin Holl. To inject some opinion: I think Yzerman added a lot of expensive mediocrity over the past two offseasons, veterans who were sure to elevate his team’s floor but not expand the ceiling much. Until Sunday night. In DeBrincat, the Wings finally land a high-octane talent in the middle of his prime. DeBrincat has 187 goals since debuting in 2017-18, 14^th most in the NHL. His natural sniping ability will be a massively welcome addition for a team that has finished 31^st, 30^th, 25^th and 24^th in offense over the first four season of Yzerman’s tenure.

The Red Wings haven’t even had a 35-goal scorer in 14 years. The last to do it was Marian Hossa, who had 40 in 2008-09, the year before he embarked on his long and fruitful tenure with the Chicago Blackhawks. DeBrincat instantly becomes Detroit’s top pure goal-scoring threat since Hossa. DeBrincat owns a pair of 41-goal seasons, he’s a three-time 30-goal scorer and he’s scored at least 27 goals in five of his six NHL seasons. His “down” 2022-23, in which he slipped from 41 to 27 goals after the Blackhawks traded him to Ottawa, came while playing most frequently with rookie Shane Pinto as his center. In Detroit, DeBrincat should get frequent ice time with captain and strong play driver Dylan Larkin. Because DeBrincat and Raymond also both have the ability to play either wing, coach Derek Lalonde will have the option of loading up for a super line, too.

So we have a team trying to break through as a playoff contender, desperate to improve its offense, snatching one of the league’s better goal-scorers away from the team that finished directly above it in its own division. The Wings, flexing their extreme leverage in this situation, get DeBrincat and only have to lose middle-six winger Dominik Kubalik from their current starting lineup in the process. Best of all, they get DeBrincat at a reasonable AAV that will pay him through the rest of his prime.

I almost have no notes here. Finally, Detroit adds a legitimate top-line NHL forward, and the cost was extremely reasonable.

Grade: A

OTTAWA SENATORS

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LW/RW Dominik Kubalik, 27, $2.5 million cap hit through 2023-24 (UFA)
2024 conditional fir^st-round pick (DET or BOS)
2024 fourth-round pick
D Donovan Sebrango, 21, $833,333 cap hit through 2024-25 (RFA)

Let’s start with the optimistic viewpoint. Hey, the Senators were boxed in with the DeBrincat dilemma. They had an established high-end NHL goal scorer who didn’t want to sign with them long term. Rather than sit on him all year at an arbitrator-determined cap hit, they wanted to move on, resolve the situation and ideally clear some cap space in the process to allow for additional upgrades.

They certainly save significant cap space, $5 million at minimum, with DeBrincat out and Kubalik in. Kubalik is also far from a zero as an acquisition. He scored 30 goals in 68 games while playing just 14:22 per night during his unbelievably efficient rookie year of 2019-20. He hit the 20-goal mark for the second time in four NHL seasons in 2022-23. Kubalik averages 24 goals per 82 games in his career. He’s far from a dominant player, but he profiles as a perfectly adequate middle-six winger addition for GM Pierre Dorion.

As for the first-round pick, it’s a little complicated. To expand on the conditions: The Red Wings can decide if they’re surrendering their own 2024 first-round pick or the 2024 first-rounder they got from the Boston Bruins in the Tyler Bertuzzi trade. The Bruins pick is top-10 protected, however. They have the option to pivot and transfer their 2025 first-rounder to Detroit instead, in which case the Wings again must choose between that pick and their own 2024 fourth-rounder.

So it’s Kubalik and a first for DeBrincat, with prospect blue-liner Sebrango, with the term “prospect” applied somewhat loosely here. He wasn’t considered a top-10 asset in Detroit’s system. He’s a physical blue-liner who split this past season between the AHL and ECHL. He’s not going to make an impact with Ottawa anytime soon and isn’t a guaranteed NHLer by any means.

Can Sens fans be happy with Kubalik and a first for DeBrincat? It might depend on how Dorion utilizes his newfound cap space. The Sens have about $5 million worth now. If, for instance, they use it to sign someone like Vladimir Tarasenko? The trade looks a lot better.

For now, though, we can’t incorporate a phantom addition into Ottawa’s return, which is decidedly underwhelming. Factoring what Dorion gave up for DeBrincat a year ago, the trade is basically a 2022 first (Kevin Korchinski, seventh overall), 2022 second (Paul Ludwinski, 39^th overall) and a 2024 third for Kubalik, the two picks and Sebrango. Korchinski alone makes the return feel iffy.

The Senators “had no leverage,” but they also knew the risk they were taking by acquiring DeBrincat in the first place a year out from his restricted free agency. They got burned in the end. The mess was of their making, and they lose DeBrincat without scoring any of the Wings’ higher-end prospects in the process.

Grade: C-