Asking price for Sens’ Stone has just skyrocketed!

A lot of teams are looking at Ottawa Senators pending free agents Mark Stone and Matt Duchene as trade chatter has heated up for the past several weeks. While it seems like Stone officially hit the trade market last night when the Sens unsurprisingly pulled him out of the lineup for Thursday’s game against the New Jersey Devils, there is now a new shocking information coming out of Ottawa. 

TSN Hockey Insider Bob McKenzie reported on last night’s Insider Trading that the Sens have now set a high price tag on Stone, seeking as many as four pieces back in a trade of the star player. 

“If the Ottawa Senators do trade Mark Stone the belief is that they’d be looking for four elements to the trade. It could be as much as two first-round picks and two very good prospects,” McKenzie explained. 

The Senators seem almost unreasonable with their demands but it is because the team hasn’t completely closed the door on Stone re-signing with the team. They wanted to be safe by pulling him out of the lineup against the Devils last night and might do the same tonight as the Senators host the Columbus Blue Jackets, along with Ryan Dzingel. Matt Duchene was traded to the Columbus Blue Jackets earlier today. 

“Well, here’s what we can say: The Ottawa Senators established a deadline and the deadline was if these guys weren’t signed before the game, then they weren’t going to play and they obviously didn’t play,” McKenzie said. 

“That doesn’t mean 100 per cent absolute certainty that all three are now going to be traded, although that might be the logical conclusion. Now there was never a cataclysmic announcement from Matt Duchene saying I’m not signing in Ottawa and there was never any sort of press release put out by the Senators saying we’re trading Matt Duchene. And yet, they’ve been proactively trying to trade him and sooner rather than later for some time now.

“We would expect the same thing is likely to roll out for Stone and Dzingel, but at this moment in time, the players and the club haven’t 100 per cent closed the door but draw your own inference from it. It would most certainly seem likely it’s headed in that direction, but let’s give it another few hours if you will to see unequivocally.”

There are just a few days to go, folks… Let’s see if a team will meet Stone’s Hugh asking price before Monday.