Sunday afternoon the Senators traded a 2013 second round pick to the St. Louis blues for their AHL goalie Ben Bishop.

Bishop is 25 years old, was a Blues’ 3rd round pick in 2005,  and lost out on an NHL job this year to Brian Elliott.  Bishop has played in only 13 NHL games in his career, going 4-5-1 with a 2.83 GAA and an .896 save-percentage.  He’s also the tallest goalie to ever play in the NHL at 6’7″.

With the Peoria Rivermen this year Bishop has a 24-14-0 record with a 2.26 goals-against average and 0.928 save percentage through 38 games.  He also has an AHL best six shutouts this season.

The Senators and Bishop have agreed to a one way, one year extension to his current contract which means he’ll likely be Anderson’s backup next year.  The deal will be signed tomorrow.

Here’s a full breakdown of Bishop’s career stats thanks to HockeyDB.com:

Bishop’s acquisition has received generally positive reaction around the league and amongst Senators’ fans, although some are left wondering what this means for Robin Lehner.

Murray has already been quoted as saying that there will be competition for the backup position next year between Lehner and Bishop.  I think it’s safe to say that any competition that goes down will not be a fair competition given Bishop’s one way deal versus’ Lehner’s two way contract.  Lehner will have to be clearly superior to score the position because sending Bishop to the AHL would require that he clears waivers and thus potentially risks giving up the 2nd round pick for nothing.

The Lehner (@RobinLehner) vs Bishop (@Benbishop30) competition should be an interesting one to watch and it starts today at 5pm as Lehner starts against Islanders.

Update (Sun. Feb. 26th, 8:07pm):  Robin Lehner certainly didn’t concede his position as “the future” and made 28 saves in a 5-2 Sens win Sunday night.  I echo the comments of one James Gordon (@SensReporter):