Further evidence of how much the Senators love what they’ve seen from Ryan Dzingel through training camp — apparently, they could have had Nail Yakupov for a bag of pucks.
All it cost the St. Louis Blues for the 23-year old, first overall pick of the 2012 draft was an East Coast Hockey League centre and a conditional third-round pick. Yakupov’s salary couldn’t have been an issue, as he’s got one more year left at $2.5 million before becoming an RFA.
Would Yakupov have slid smoothly into the Guy Boucher system, where play away from the puck is so important, the way Dzingel has?