In the first installment of a look at the depth charts I will be looking at the center position

Centers

Jason Spezza

Kyle Turris

Zack Smith

Jesse Winchester

Jim O’Brian

Peter Regin

Mika Zibanejad

Stephane Da Costa

Corey Lock

Derek Grant

Louie Caporusso

Shane Prince

Jean-Gabriel Pageau

Darren Kramer

Ryan Dzingle

As you can see our depth at the center ice position has gotten deeper in the last year thanks especially to the trade of David Rundblad for Kyle Turris. Also an interesting proposal is the thought of trading Jason Spezza. Now I am a huge fan of Spezza and I think he has all the talent in the world but that being said his lack of physical play and attention to detail is something that really concerns me in that I don’t think he will be the type of player to lead the team to the Stanley cup witch is of course the ultimate goal.

If we did trade away Jason Spezza of course we would want high draft picks and prospects in return that could get us one of my favorite draft eligible players this year in Mikhail Grigorenko. He Is a big talented center who has drawn comparisons to of course Evgeni Malkin. I have to say I wouldn’t mind another Malkin playing on my senators.

Another aspect of this we could look into is packaging up Da Costa and Regin to possibly get another prospect on defense as it has thinned out since the Rundblad trade. I have to say a guy I really like is Tyler Cuma in Minnesota, he played his junior career here for the 67s and was always one of my favorites.

Another note I would like to add is about Jean-Gabriel Pageau the 5-9 163 pound undersized player had a very good year in the QMJHL this year and is someone who could possibly sneak into the nhl as another Martin St Louis if he put on some weight.

Seeing as Corey Lock will probably be a minor league player for his career id like to look at an interesting prospect in Shane Prince. Not the biggest guy in the world but I think could develop into a top end prospect with his amount of skill. He finished in the Top 10 in OHL scoring this year and second on his team. He worked on his shot this year and it paid off big time this year when he put up 43 goals with the Ottawa 67s. This is his stats line.

Now seeing all this depth does get me excited and I can’t wait to see how we handle all of these centers when training camp comes along!