Ottawa Rebuilt Its Depth Chart Quietly While the Tkachuk Trade Made Headlines

The Brady Tkachuk trade to Florida was always going to dominate the coverage of Ottawa’s summer. It should. Losing a captain in his prime is the kind of move that reshapes how a franchise is discussed for years. But it has also crowded out three smaller additions that quietly did more to change Ottawa’s roster on a night-to-night basis than any single headline transaction: Andre Burakovsky, Samuel Ersson, and Sammy Blais.

None of those three names will lead a broadcast. All three fill a specific hole Ottawa had before it had finished processing the Tkachuk return, which is the more useful way to read this offseason than as one big trade and everything else as background noise.

Burakovsky adds a veteran scoring option Ottawa didn’t have

Ottawa acquired Andre Burakovsky from Chicago for a 2027 sixth-round pick, a minimal cost for a forward with a track record of secondary scoring on playoff teams. That price tag matters as much as the player. Ottawa did not have to give up anything close to a premium asset to add a veteran who has proven he can produce in a middle-six role, which is exactly the kind of low-risk depth move a team makes when its cap sheet is stretched by a bigger reshuffling elsewhere.

With the Tkachuk trade removing a significant chunk of the forward group’s offensive identity, Ottawa needed bodies who could absorb some of that scoring burden without commanding term or dollars the roster could not support. Burakovsky is that player, acquired at a price that reflects exactly how replaceable that role is supposed to be, and exactly how useful it still is.

Ersson solves a goaltending question that had no easy answer

The goaltending move is the more consequential of the two. Ottawa traded a 2027 fifth-round pick to Toronto for Samuel Ersson, adding a legitimate backup option behind Linus Ullmark rather than hoping an unproven netminder could handle NHL minutes if Ullmark needed rest or got hurt.

That is not a marquee trade. It is the kind of move that determines whether a season goes sideways in November because the No. 2 goaltender cannot hold a lead. Pairing Ersson with Ullmark gives Ottawa a tandem that does not have a steep drop-off between its starter and its backup, which is a more valuable form of cap efficiency than it looks on paper.

Blais is the depth signing nobody will notice until he’s needed

Sammy Blais signed with Ottawa as a depth forward, the kind of transaction that rarely gets its own headline and usually shouldn’t. His value shows up in games 60 through 82, when injuries have thinned a lineup and a team needs a fourth-liner who brings physicality without being a liability defensively.

Taken individually, none of these three moves changes how Ottawa is projected to finish. Taken together, alongside the return from Florida for Tkachuk, they describe a front office that treated the offseason as more than one trade. Ottawa restocked its middle six and its crease at the same time it was negotiating the biggest transaction in franchise history, and that sequencing is the part of the summer that will actually show up in the standings.

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