Shane Pinto was holding court with the media after the Ottawa Senators victory over the Seattle Kraken at the Canadian Tire Centre when one of his teammates couldn’t resist.
“Cha-ching, cha-ching,” one of Pinto’s teammates said with a laugh.
The 24-year-old Pinto scored his sixth goal of the season in the club’s 4-3 shootout victory over the Kraken on Thursday night and, in doing so, became the first player in franchise history to score six times in the first five games of the season.
Pinto beat out the mark of five goals in five games set by former captain Daniel Alfredsson twice and former sniper Bob Kudelski, who played for the club in the early days of the franchise.
A restricted free agent making $3.75 million US in the final year of his deal, Pinto — who will have a right to file for arbitration — is going to cash in on his next contract, no question about it.
“They might want to wait until he cools down a bit before they start talking contract with him again,” a league executive told Postmedia earlier this week.
We don’t think he was joking.
Steve Staios, the club’s president of hockey operations and general manager, has stated several times early this season that he engaged in talks with Pinto’s New York-based agent, Lewis Gross, this summer and called the discussions “positive.”
They weren’t positive enough to get a deal done, but we’re positive now that the price is going up with each passing day. Gross wanted to put the talks on hold once camp got underway, likely because they weren’t going anywhere, and the expectation is the two sides will sit down again soon.
“Their side said they wanted to let the season start and not have any distractions,” Staios told TSN’s Claire Hanna and Marc Denis on Monday. “We’re open to talking with Shane. We think that we want to make him part of this core group moving forward.
“He knows that, we know that and watching him grow with the group is important for us.”
The talk in league circles is that the talks were shelved because there was a large gap between what the Senators wanted to discuss and what Pinto’s camp felt was fair market value.
One league insider believes the Senators were likely thinking of a lengthy deal in the $5-$5.5-million range. If that’s the case, the club likely felt that it wanted to lock up Pinto as the club’s third-line centre for years to come. You can never have enough depth in the middle and he has fit in nicely.
A league executive told me that Pinto probably feels his contract should be somewhere between the $7.1 million that Dylan Cozens is making on a deal he signed with the Buffalo Sabres before being traded to Ottawa and the $8.35 million that Tim Stutzle is pulling down.
Now, we’ve seen players taking what have been referred to as “hometown discounts” of late, but Pinto also needs to determine if he wants to be part of this long-term. He would solidify the middle, but perhaps he takes a term that will carry him through the 2029-30 campaign, which would coincide with the expiration of Stutzle’s and Cozens’ deals.
Captain Brady Tkachuk will be up at the end of the 2027-28 campaign, which raises the question of whether the Senators can keep this group together. The cap is going up, which means players will want more money, but it will also raise competition in the marketplace.
He has had to earn the trust of coach Travis Green, who was in his first year behind the bench last season, and Pinto’s role has expanded as a result. This season, he is seeing ice time in virtually every situation because he’s a two-way forward that doesn’t cheat for goals.
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Pinto woke up on Friday morning tied with Pavel Dorofeyev as the National Hockey League’s goal-scoring leader. Let that sink in.
“It’s a long season, so I’m not going to look too much,” Pinto said with a smile. “It’s only five games in. Hopefully, I can stay consistent for the boys.”
This start also has placed Pinto front and centre to make the roster of the United States for the Winter Olympics in Italy. He was invited to the club’s Orientation Camp in the summer, but many felt like he was a long shot — that may not be the case anymore.
Vincent Trochek of the New York Rangers is considered one of the players that Pinto is up against for a spot. Trochek, 32, was just placed on long-term injured reserve and there is no timeline for his return.
Pinto is younger and is responsible at both ends of the ice.
Right now, Pinto’s future is so bright, he has to wear shades.