If the Ottawa Senators and Filip Kuba cannot hammer out a contract extension, the defenseman says he will have no issue waiving his no-trade clause by Wednesday’s trade deadline.
“That’s how you can put it. If we can’t get anything done here and something or a trade comes up, I would waive my no-trade clause,” Kuba confirmed on Monday afternoon.
While Kuba said he’s “optimistic” that a new deal can be reached, Senators general manager Bryan Murray did not echo those sentiments. It’s looking more and more likely that Kuba will be traded to a contender who needs help on the back end.
“I spoke to Filip’s agent a number of times yesterday. I don’t know far we’ve gone – I don’t think very far,” said Murray, who admitted he is reluctant to hand out a long-term deal to Kuba at this point. The Senators general manager stated that he needs to forecast his budget for next summer as well and he would like to re-sign Anton Volchenkov, who is slated to become an unrestricted free agent on July 1, 2010.
Meantime, Murray confirmed that Todd Reynolds – the agent for Chris Neil – will fly into Ottawa Monday night for one last face-to-face meeting. The two sides remain far apart on a contract extension and Neil is in the same boat as Kuba as a pending unrestricted free agent.
Murray said that the decisions on Neil and Kuba will be his most challenging in the next 48 hours. But as for the much-rumored deals surrounding star centre Jason Spezza, Murray said those are completely false.
“Not one call about Jason. So you can put that to bed as not being a real thing,” said Murray.
“I’m not too worried. I’m pretty sure I’m going to be here after the deadline,” responded Spezza.
