The Ottawa Senators added Andre Burakovsky from the Chicago Blackhawks on June 26, 2026, paying only a 2027 sixth-round pick to land the veteran winger. It is a small price for a player who once looked like a top-six scorer and now gets a fresh start in Ottawa.
Frank Seravalli of Victory+ first reported the trade details at 2:23 pm, and the timing matters because the Senators were heading into the draft with less than $10MM in cap space. Burakovsky gives them another forward without forcing a larger buy, and Chicago turns a declining asset into a draft pick.
The move makes sense only if Ottawa believes there is still more in Burakovsky than the numbers in Chicago suggested. He scored 10 goals and 29 points in 41 games to open the season, then managed just one goal and four points in his next 34 games. That slide pushed him toward buyout talk in Chicago, even though he had once been productive enough to score 61 goals and 150 points in 191 games with the Avalanche and help them win the Stanley Cup championship in 2022.
That earlier stretch also explains why this trade drew attention. Burakovsky signed a five-year, $27.5MM contract with the Seattle Kraken after leaving Colorado, then was traded from Seattle to Chicago for Joe Veleno. Ottawa is betting that the version of him that flashed in Colorado and early in Chicago can still be recovered, because the cost to find out was a single sixth-round pick.
For Chicago, the return is modest but meaningful given where the player had fallen. For Ottawa, the risk is just as small, and that is the point: if Burakovsky rebounds, the Senators may have picked up a useful scorer at a bargain. If he does not, the draft pick cost will barely register. The real question now is whether the next stop changes the player, or just the label attached to him.
