The Senators will likely improve again this season but, in the rough waters of the Atlantic, will they sink or swim next spring?
The long-suffering Ottawa Senators fanbase has endured 5 straight seasons of being in the bottom 10 of the NHL. The Sens haven’t made the playoffs since 2017.
But last year, there were signs of a new era in Ottawa. Now, with a new owner in Michael Andlauer, there's incredible excitement in the air.
To review, the Senators missed the playoffs by only 6 points last spring. In just his third season, their dynamic centre, Tim Stutzle, had 90 points. Brady Tkachuk, the team’s rough-and-tumble captain, was a point-per-game player. And the Sens added the talents of Jakob Chychrun at the trade deadline.
However, they lost Josh Norris for most of the season. And the team lacked stable goaltending – plagued with injuries and lacklustre performances, they played seven different goalies over the season.
The reason for hope this year is simple: the Sens’ young core is only now entering its prime. Stutzle, Tkachuk and emerging star Jake Sanderson are all under 25 and should be as good if not better this year. With Norris now healthy, the club will have its number two centre back, allowing Shane Pinto to slide to the third line once he is signed.
The Sens lost Alex DeBrincat in the off-season, but replaced him with Vladimir Tarasenko via free agency, and picked up Dominik Kubalik, who adds to their top-nine forward depth. Rookies Ridley Greig and Egor Sokolov are at the precipice of cracking the NHL roster.
The Sens will now have a full year of Chychrun on defence. The Sens might have their best D-corps in a decade with a 3-headed monster of Sanderson, Chychrun and Thomas Chabot. With Artyom Zub, Erik Brannstrom and Travis Hamonic filling out the defence, the Sens should have one of the better blue lines in the NHL.
And perhaps most importantly, goaltending has been addressed by adding Jonas Korpisalo in free agency. Korpisalo was great in Columbus and Los Angeles last year, posting a .915 save percentage. Korpisalo will be paired with Anton Forsberg, a tandem with proven chemistry, winning a Calder Cup together with the AHL's Lake Erie Monsters in 2016.
All told, this is the best Sens team coming into training camp since 2017.
The flip side of making the playoffs is the competition, of course. And looking at the rest of the Eastern Conference and the Atlantic Division, it's hard to see which teams got dramatically better.
Previous top-performers like Boston, Tampa, Florida and Toronto have not significantly added to their teams. Boston lost key players like Patrice Bergeron, David Krejci and Taylor Hall. Tampa lost Ross Colton and Alex Killorn. The top of the Atlantic is strong, but not as strong as past years.
Most of the Sens core has grown together, and the team took a big step to get 86 points last year, with an incredible amount of adversity. The core is now older, and they've now played in “meaningful games,” as Sens GM Pierre Dorion would say, late in the season.
The Senators are ready to break through in a division and a conference that's more wide open than it's been in a while. The playoff race should be ultra-competitive and the Senators will be right in it.
