According to our poll, the Senators get high marks as a breakout team, but their off-ice leaders are in the hottest of hot seats.

This week, The Hockey News will unveil its annual preseason NHL predictions, based on a poll of 34 THN staff. The poll was wide-ranging and included prognostications on trophy winners, general expectations and various other predictions for the 2023-24 season.

We'll leave it to the main site to break it all down (spoiler: The Connors got some love) but we're here to address the results that involved the Ottawa Senators.

Based on the voting, it became immediately clear that our crew, which is scattered all over North America, sees the Senators as having great potential this year, but also notes the heavy job pressure on the shoulders of their leaders,

Coach to Be Fired First This Season

Ottawa's D.J. Smith finished second in voting behind Blues' head coach Craig Berube. A few months after Berube won a Stanley Cup, Smith was handed the keys to a rebuild. Both of those circumstances buy credit and extra time, but their number is up now. Their teams will need to have much better seasons to save their coaches' jobs.

With Ottawa's recent penchant for blowing up their season with a poor first month, Smith has survived being on this list before. But with new ownership coming in any day now, there's no way he'll be forgiven if the team trips out of the gate again – injuries or no injuries.

In reality, well after the voting was done, we've already had an NHL coach firing. Mike Babcock finished fourth in voting and is probably asking to borrow someone's phone to, um, commemorate the moment. The question is, and it's a poll for another day, if you don't even make it to the season, were you really the first to be fired this season?

GM on the Hot Seat:

After taking over from GM Bryan Murray in 2016, Pierre Dorion's Senators went to the Eastern Final in his very first season. Dorion's teams haven't been back to the postseason since. At six years, it's the third-longest active drought in the league, and there's no hiding behind rebuilds or injuries anymore.

So it's no shock to see Dorion in the hottest of hot seats, tied with Winnipeg’s Kevin Cheveldayoff for the most votes. Every day, we hear new rumours of executives potentially being on the radar in Ottawa – Steve Staios, Mathieu Darche and/or Peter Chiarelli. If one or all are hired, they wouldn't be here to replace Dorion now, but if the team stumbles out of the gate, that will most certainly change.

Player Due for a Breakout:

Senators fans will likely have an issue with Jake Sanderson even being on this list. And it's hard to blame them. After their rookie season, players usually don't get eight-year deals worth over $8 million for one season in the NHL if it didn't have some resemblance to a breakout year.

But the vote is definitely meant as a compliment and there's plenty of room to improve on his 4-goal, 32-point season.

Montreal’s Cole Caufield won the vote. He was flirting with a 50-goal season before suffering a season-ending shoulder surgery in January.

Alexis Lafreniere and Quinton Byfield were second and third, which also would have been a more appropriate NHL draft order for them in 2020.

Team Due For a Breakout:

Buffalo, Detroit and Ottawa are riding the NHL's three longest-active playoff droughts. Buffalo and Ottawa are not only due, they may finally have the horses to do it.

Buffalo has missed 12 straight playoffs and no team in NHL history has missed more. But they're good now, finishing ahead of the Senators last season and just one point out of the playoffs. The Senators were next in the voting, followed by Detroit.

Buyer’s Remorse:

The Senators finished second here again, with the suggestion being that Vladimir Tarasenko and Joonas Korpisalo may end up being signings the Senators will regret. That remains to be seen, but if there is any regret, it will only be amplified if the Sens ensuing cap crunch forces them to trade away Shane Pinto.

If you asked most Sens fans, most of them would have preferred to get Pinto signed than bring in Tarasenko.

Our voters feel like the biggest buyer's remorse will be in Pittsburgh, where they took on former Senator Erik Karlsson and the four years left on his big contract. 

Keep an eye out on the main site this week for the full list of NHL predictions for 2023-24.

More Sens Articles at The Hockey News - Ottawa

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Pierre Dorion Holds All the Cards in Shane Pinto Standoff

Senators Pour a Little Bailey Into Their Training Camp Mix

Shane Pinto Wants to Discuss His Market Value, Not Ottawa's Cap Issues

Jake Sanderson: "I think we're going to win within the next couple of years."