Matthews, McCabe, Marner (and, to a lesser extent, Murray) all looked terrible on the Senators' OT-winner, and now their coach has a chance to call them out on it.
Carter Yakemchuk of the Ottawa Senators uniform skates by Jake McCabe and Mitch Marner of the Toronto Maple Leafs en route to scoring an overtime-winner on Sept. 22.Carter Yakemchuk is a big, strong kid who scored 30 goals and 71 points as a defenseman in the WHL last season. That's part of why the Ottawa Senators made him the seventh-overall pick in the 2024 NHL draft.
He's got a great future on the Senators blueline, and he deserves full marks for exploiting the defensive coverage of the Toronto Maple Leafs on his overtime game-winner Sunday night.
But there's no way that an 18-year-old kid playing in his first NHL pre-season game should be scoring that goal with that kind of personnel out there defending him.
Yakemchuk skated through Auston Matthews, Jake McCabe and Mitch Marner as though he was an NHL superstar before depositing the puck behind another veteran, goalie Matt Murray. The defense played by the position players on the ice was, well, putrid.
And yes, it's the pre-season. We know these are meaningless games. But if you're Craig Berube and you've come in to set a standard, create a culture and make people accountable, you were just handed your first opportunity to do so on a silver platter.
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