Ottawa Senators sign Drake Batherson to 8-year, $86 million contract extension

The Ottawa Senators have signed forward Drake Batherson to an eight-year, $86 million contract extension, the team announced Tuesday.

Batherson’s contract, which carries an average annual value of $10.75 million, is the most lucrative in Senators’ history, surpassing Tim Stützle’s eight-year, $66.8 million extension signed in September 2022. Batherson was slated to be a free agent in 2027.

The winger is coming off a career-best season in 2025-26, registering 33 goals and 71 points in 79 games with the Senators. It is the seventh consecutive season in which Batherson improved on his previous year’s totals. He also scored three goals in four playoff games.

The 28-year-old has 149 goals and 364 points in 470 career NHL games, all with Ottawa. The Senators drafted Batherson in the fourth round in 2017.

Batherson is comfortable in the Sens dressing room, having built relationships with key players and playing a prominent role as the team’s best goal-scoring winger. The question was when, not if, he’d sign an extension, and for how much.

Newly signed Washington Capitals forward Alex Tuch and Los Angeles Kings forward Adrian Kempe were seen as contract-comparable players, considering they produced at similar 30-goal, 70-point rates. They were signed to $10.5 million and $10.625 million deals, respectively. At $10.75 million per year, Batherson nudges slightly ahead without blowing the Sens’ budget.

The extension announcement comes hours before the current collective bargaining agreement expires, at 11:59 p.m. ET Tuesday. It’s the final day that NHL players can sign eight-year-long extensions or seven-year contracts as free agents. In the upcoming CBA, the maximum contract extension is seven years, and the maximum term is six years for free agents.

As player contracts rise in a new salary-cap era, Batherson was destined for a significant increase from his previous $4.95 million AAV. However, while there might be some sticker shock considering how affordable the rest of the Senators’ core looks by comparison, Batherson’s deal still appears palatable for the Sens’ balance sheets.

The extension is Ottawa’s latest offseason move; the team traded Brady Tkachuk to Florida and acquired William Eklund, André Burakovsky and Samuel Ersson this summer. The Sens also re-signed Nick Cousins ahead of the free-agent period before Claude Giroux rejoined the team in early July.