Ottawa Senators Move on From Dispute With Cody Ceci

The Ottawa Senators took a long time to get a new contract done with Cody Ceci, but the goal was eventually accomplished.

Ceci didn’t get the long term deal he was seeking. Instead, he agreed to a 2 year contract worth $5.8 million.

I was originally caught off guard that he conceded his demands with so much time to go before training camp was set to begin.

Ceci appeared at the Senators Hometown Tour along with Mike Blunden in Pembroke, and seemed relieved to get the dispute over and done with.

“It’s nice to get it done finally so I can focus on the season,” said Ceci, referring to his new contract. “We have a lot of new faces so it’ll be an exciting year.

The most prominent of those new faces will be Derick Brassard, who was acquired from the New York Rangers for Mika Zibanejad back in July.

Chris Kelly is also returning to the Senators after having been traded to the Boston Bruins back in 2011.

Kelly played on the Senators from 2004-2011. During his tenure with the Bruins, he won a Stanley Cup in 2011.

Ceci’s comments are interesting, because they affirm his commitment to getting back on the ice and not missing any valuable training.

It sounds like he was going to make sure that the stalemate didn’t creep into any training camp territory, let alone the regular season.

Once it became clear that the front office wasn’t going to budge from their insistence on a bridge deal, the alternative was to really risk missing time with the team, and it doesn’t sound like Ceci wanted it to come to that.

Ceci is now betting on himself with the acceptance of this bridge deal. If he continues to improve by the time the contract is up, he’ll be due for an even larger figure than he was originally trying to get this offseason.