2025 Ottawa Senators Report Cards: Adam Gaudette

Staff Grade: A-, Reader Grade: B+

Here's the list of players who scored more than Adam Gaudette's 19 goals on a league-minimum contract of $775,000 this season:

In fact, among players making $1M or under and aren't on their entry-level deals, only NYI's Simon Holmstrom ($850K) scored more goals with 20, and only eight players produced more points than Gaudette's 26.

You can spin the tale of Gaudette's season in a couple of ways.

Gaudette scored 12 of his 19 goals through October and November, a shaky time for a team with a long history of poor starts and a stretch of games where the team's paltry 5-on-5 scoring hurt them the most. Even if his season had ended there, only seven other skaters making under $1M would've scored more goals than him over the full year. His production was especially remarkable given that his line mates, Nick Cousins and Zack MacEwen, aren't known for driving play, so I imagine that Steve Staios and Travis Green felt vindicated for their decision to have Gaudette make the team as Ottawa's fourth-line centre at training camp over prospects Jan Jenik and Zack Ostapchuk. Gaudette playing 81 games for the Sens this season was not a guaranteed outcome when he was signed.

Gaudette's hot start earned him a ~20-30 game promotion to Ottawa's top-line with Tim Stützle and Claude Giroux, and while they started hot, Gaudette's point production faded. In the calendar year of 2025, he recorded just nine points – seven of them goals, including two in the final game of the regular season. For the last 30 games of the regular season, he primarily lined up with journeyman Matthew Highmore and averaged around 10 minutes of ice-time per game.

It'll help him and his agent that he stepped up in the playoffs. Gaudette recorded key assists in Ottawa's two victories in Game 3 and 4, and scored this beautiful goal to send Game 2 to overtime:

Listening to his end of year media availability, Gaudette spoke about this feeling like the first season he established himself as an everyday NHL player. The 28-year-old came into this year with three seasons of 50+ games, including a 12-goal, 33-point season in 2019-20 with Travis Green's Canucks, but didn't feel like he played his style of hockey until this season. Remember, this is a player who was named the NCAA's top player in 2017-18 after a 30-goal, 60-point season over 38 games at Northeastern University – not a top-tier collegiate program by any means – and entered this season off a 44-goal, 71-point AHL season with Springfield.

There's plenty of room on NHL teams for players like Gaudette: a bottom-six forward with positional flexibility (50.3% faceoff percentage), high-end finishing ability, and a well-rounded defensive game.

Perhaps the biggest compliment that I can give him is that he didn't look out of place while playing with Ottawa's skilled players, and even if the points didn't come, Ottawa's top line and top two defence pairs fared better offensively (producing scoring chances, measured through xGF/60) and defensively (preventing scoring chances, measured through xGA/60) with Gaudette (grey box) than without him (red box). Not everyone can save non-NHLers like Matthew Highmore, and I don't think we can put that on Gaudette.

Steve Staios and co. will have to decide whether his complementary toolkit is worth re-signing, especially given that Gaudette is likely looking for term on his next deal, or if they're going to go out searching for the next Adam Gaudette on a value-for-money one-year deal. A lot will rest on whether this type of season from Gaudette is repeatable, and while I feel confident in saying that his 21.1 shooting percentage isn't, ~12-13 goals a season on a ~11-14 shooting percentage is strong value from a player slotted firmly in the 10-12 minute range.

What do you think? Did Gaudette's 2024-25 season convince you that he's worth re-signing? Or would you try to slot another player into his role instead for next season?