The Ottawa Senators’ Fabian Zetterlund gets around. In his four seasons in the NHL, the 25-year-old Swedish right winger has played for three different NHL clubs, bouncing from the New Jersey Devils to the San Jose Sharks and ending up in Bytown at the 2025 NHL Trade Deadline.
In case some Senators fans are wondering, Zetterlund isn’t being traded because he has disappointed. So, what can the Senators faithful expect to see from the pending restricted free agent (RFA) in their team’s 16 remaining regular season games and into what they hope will be a playoff run this spring? Here’s a look.
Zetterlund Shocked by Trade to Senators
Zetterlund was as surprised as anyone in Ottawa on hearing he had been traded to the Senators just seconds before the 3 p.m. deadline on March 7. He hadn’t been the subject of any trade rumours and thought that because he had marked up the scoresheet for 17 goals and 19 assists over his 64 games with the Sharks that he was part of the club’s rebuild (from Bruce Garrioch, ‘Fabian Zetterlund isn’t sweating his Ottawa Senators debut against Detroit, The Ottawa Citizen, 9/3/25).
The trade went off like a bomb for Zetterlund. He and his best friend and fellow Shark William Eklund were in the sauna just before the deadline, and on exiting, he took a call from his good friend Rasmus Sandin of the Washington Capitals who told him he’d been traded. As Sandin recounted the conversation, “I’m like, yeah, man, that sucks. He’s like, what? I’m like, you just got traded. He had no idea. Their general manager (GM), Mike Grier called him at the same time. He’s like, the GM is calling me right now. I’ll call you back.” Grier told him that he along with Tristen Robins, and a 2025 fourth-round pick were being packaged up and sent to Ottawa in exchange for Zack Ostapchuk, Noah Gregor, and a 2025 second-round pick.
Related: Eklund’s Comments on Zetterlund Trade Show Sharks Need to be Careful
The young Sharks star took the trade hard. It was clear he was happy in San Jose, exclaiming in an interview with local media that, “I love this place. I love the city. I love everything about it, so of course I want to stay here for a long time.” Even so, Grier and Senators’ president of hockey operations and GM Steve Staios had other plans for him.
What Senators See in Zetterlund
The Zetterlund trade was a difficult one for Staios to engineer. As Grier explained it, “Steve…
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