In a one-on-one interview, general manager Pierre Dorion discussed with Sportsnet’s Wayne Scanlan his off-season moves, his notoriously low roster payroll and why he is so bullish on the upcoming season with new coach D.J. Smith behind the bench.

Sportsnet: Pierre, how would you characterize this off-season as far as the Ottawa Senators are concerned?

Pierre Dorion: It’s been a very productive off-season. I think we’ve made a lot of changes. Right from the end of the year until now, the first and biggest thing was the hiring of (head coach) D.J. Smith. We hired someone we feel is going to grow with these players. And someone who’s going to set the culture where we need it to be for us to have a lot of success going forward.

I think the other thing we’ve done, while we’ve created opportunity for young players, at the same time we’ve brought in veterans, guys we feel are going to help these young players grow and develop. And we made some trades that will help us short term but also in the long term — the trade we made with Toronto in getting Nikita Zaitsev and Connor Brown (for Cody Ceci and Ben Harpur), as well as the trade for Artem Anisimov, who we feel will play really well in our system.

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