The Ottawa Senators went from 10 points out of a playoff spot to five in a week. With games in hand, the next five games are crucial for trade deadline plans.
Red lightsabers sparkled throughout the stands as the Ottawa Senators and their sellout crowd celebrated the club’s Star Wars game on Sunday.
For the past five seasons, the Senators have embraced the dark side of the force – and their red lightsabers – in the latter stages of each campaign, playing spoiler as they sat well outside the playoff race year after year. They don’t look resigned to embracing that role this time around, though, as they approach what will be a suspenseful stretch to the trade deadline, where Ottawa will decide whether to buy, sell or stand pat.
“It’s not something we control – what we control is what we do on the ice and go out there and win games,” Thomas Chabot told reporters on Sunday.
With Sunday’s 7-2 win over the St. Louis Blues, the Sens moved to within five points of the first and second wild-card spots in the Eastern Conference, held by the Pittsburgh Penguins and New York Islanders, respectively. And Ottawa has runway to work with, holding four games in hand on the wild-card contending Isles and Florida Panthers, plus three games in hand on Washington.
With the Detroit Red Wings and Buffalo Sabres also in front of Ottawa in the wild-card race, the Sens have the best points percentage of the seven-team bunch since Jan. 1 at .605, going 11-7-1.
Tim Stutzle’s also tied for the fourth-most points in the NHL since 2023 began, with 28 points in 19 games. The 21-year-old is currently working on a four-game point streak after adding two goals and an assist against St. Louis. One tally came off a feed by Claude Giroux as Stutzle drove into the low slot and made a backhand deke to beat Blues goalie Thomas Greiss. The other came on a break where he strode past a diving Justin Faulk to score five-hole.
“His confidence is very high right now,” said Chabot. “The way he skates, the way he sees the game, his poise with the puck, he’s got so many good things going for him. He’s been carrying our team, he’s been pushing our team, and that makes us win games.”
Stutzle credits his improved performance to playing his game, getting better at practice and to the team as a whole.
“As a team, we’re playing way better than we did, and we’re holding onto pucks, making plays, and it’s just a lot of fun playing right now,” Stutzle told reporters post-game.
The win puts the Senators at a win and an overtime loss – 4-3 to 30th-placed Chicago – since GM Pierre Dorion told reporters the team will wait to see where the next seven games will take them before they confirm their deadline approach.
“We could be a buyer at certain positions and a seller at certain positions,” Dorion said at the time.
Dorion made his first move of the deadline season right before Sunday’s matinee match. Ottawa traded forward Tyler Motte to the New York Rangers for right winger Julien Gauthier and a conditional seventh-round pick.
There will be a couple of familiar faces awaiting Gauthier when he arrives in the Sens dressing room. The 6-foot-4 25-year-old played with Chabot and right winger Mathieu Joseph for the 2016-17 QMJHL champion Saint John Sea Dogs.
Whether more moves come remains to be seen. The top two goalies in the depth chart – Anton Forsberg and Cam Talbot – are out with injuries, and while Talbot is likely to return soon, coach D.J. Smith ruled him out for Monday’s game against the first-place Boston Bruins. The next two netminders in line, 22-year-olds Mads Sogaard (2-0-1, .911 SP, 2.94 GAA) and Kevin Mandolese (1-0-0, .958 SP, 1.85 GAA), did admirable jobs last week.
But winning seven of their past 10 games has only brought the Senators up to a 14.1-percent chance of making the playoffs, according to moneypuck.com. One more slump can quickly seal Ottawa’s fate. THN.com's Adam Proteau even wrote last week the club’s better off focusing on next season.
While the Sens weren’t expected to be a playoff-or-bust team this year, their goal was to have meaningful games late in the season instead of being 26 points out of a wild-card spot like they were after 55 matches into 2021-22.
“We want to be in it by the trade deadline,” Dorion told reporters at the beginning of training camp.
Fans bought into this expectation during the off-season by purchasing an increase in ticket packages, which partially contributed to Ottawa’s rise in sellouts.
“A sold-out building is always great for us, and I think we showed a good hockey team,” Stutzle said on Sunday.
It’s felt like the team’s had to play meaningful games for most of the season to make up for a seven-game losing streak in late October and early November, as well as on and off play that followed. It looked as recent as a week ago that any scent of playoff contention was fading as the team fell to 10 points out of a wild card. Monday's 1 p.m. ET matchup against the Bruins will be an important test despite winning the two previous meetings this season.
But perhaps the force awakened for the Senators to find a new hope after a 7-2 Star Wars Sunday matinee win.