There's plenty for the Ottawa Senators to learn from the last men standing in the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
The NHL is a copycat league, and has been for its entire existence. Of course, why wouldn’t you want to attempt to emulate what recent winners have done? Everyone wants to do what Vegas, Colorado, Tampa, Washington, St Louis, Pittsburgh, Chicago, and Los Angeles have accomplished in the last ten playoff seasons, and most of these teams took rather different approaches to drink from Stanley’s silver chalice.
When it comes to Ottawa, there’s enough not going right with this franchise that they need to take the multi-pronged approach to climbing out of the abyss.
Each of the final four teams remaining in these playoffs is guaranteed a 6 game series or beyond and there is no remaining favourite – just four elite teams with as good a shot to win it all as the other three. Let’s see how the Senators can fast-track their route to greener pastures by combining what these four teams have accomplished into an identity of their own.
New York Rangers: Defence corps construction
The Senators have a problem with too much of a good thing on the left side and a mess on the right side. The Rangers have figured it out. They have two high-priced right-handed studs in Adam Fox and Jacob Trouba playing on different pairings. Each is at the top of their game with smooth puck control, offensive flair, and elite physical defence. Norris winner Fox and Captain Trouba make $9.5 million and $8 million. Behind them is one $4 million defenceman in K’Andre Miller, a 32-year-old depth guy in Erik Gustavsson making under a million, and a few guys 26 and under on cheap or rookie contracts to fill out the corps.
Ottawa has a similar framework. If you squint, you can see a similar construction with Thomas Chabot ($8 million), Jake Sanderson ($8.05 million) and Artem Zub ($4.6 million) filling similar roles to Fox, Trouba and Miller. Most winning teams don’t have a defence corps with more than two highly-paid defensemen, and unfortunately, that doesn’t leave room for Jakob Chychrun to return. You can win with a top-heavy defence, smart acquisition of complementary depth pieces, and younger players, but few teams have found success by overloading their D-corps with similar pieces making loads of money like Ottawa has. It also doesn’t hurt to have an all-world goaltender in Igor Shesterkin to get through once you’ve survived Trouba’s elbows to get there. Which leads to our next team.
Edmonton Oilers: You can win with average goaltending if you have team buy-in
Both Edmonton and Ottawa devoted five years and $4-5 million on goalies who were supposed to be the answer as a starter (Jack Campbell and Joonas Korpisalo), only to watch them implode immediately. Stuart Skinner has been good when the pressure is on (Edmonton’s early season swoon notwithstanding), but can also implode on any given night. Calvin Pickard has Adin Hill vibes as the goalie who came from nowhere to save the season when called upon. None of these goalies are world beaters, and if they were Senators, most would do just as poorly as Korpisalo, Anton Forsberg, or the endless parade of Ottawa goalie graveyard candidates.
Edmonton has found success with high end offensive talent, defensive buy-in from forwards not named McDavid, Draisaitl, Hyman or Nugent-Hopkins, and play a good hybrid system. This system focuses on scoring their way out of trouble, but also tightening up to preserve leads. Doing the squinting exercise again, you could sub in Stutzle, Tkachuk, Giroux and Batherson in similar roles, but you need buy-in across the forward corps (especially in the bottom six) to make it work, especially with a more pedestrian defense corps like Edmonton has. Depth players like Warren Foegele, Connor Brown, Mattias Janmark, Corey Perry, and Adam Henrique provide timely scoring while making life miserable for opponents and supporting their defence and goaltenders.
Dallas Stars: Surround young studs with hungry veterans
This one is easy. It’s no secret that Ottawa has a lot of great young pieces with loads of talent, but the organization to date has done a poor job of bringing in solid and hungry veterans to support them and show them the way to winning.
Claude Giroux is all well and good in that role, but you can see the effect of players in the “32 and over but can still contribute” club. That includes vets like Jamie Benn, Joe Pavelski, Matt Duchene, Tyler Seguin, Evgeni Dadonov, Ryan Suter, Chris Tanev, and Jani Hakanpää. They've done an incredible job of supporting the 28 and under crew of Jason Robertson, Roope Hintz, Mason Marchment, Wyatt Johnston, Miro Heiskanen, and goalie Jake Oettinger. Only Seguin, as a 20 year old depth player in Boston, has a ring. This is winning experience that is eager to take that last step.
Dallas GM Jim Nill has created a master class in roster construction and balance across age and role. There’s just a little bit of everything on this roster, and the Senators would do well to follow suit.
Florida Panthers: Resiliency and even keeled approach and winning cures all
One of the biggest issues in Ottawa in recent years has been the mental side of the game – when they get down, they stay down for long stretches. Too many times in recent years, a two game losing streak turned into a seven gamer, and the frustration and defeatist “here we go again” body language becomes plain to see.
No franchise in the NHL has shown more of a “it ain’t over 'til it’s over” attitude than the Panthers.
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This is a team that learns from adversity and is never intimidated by a challenge. I’m not sure how Florida does this, but the point is they’ve found a way to keep pushing, even after crushing defeats and long odds.
Maybe it’s a crack team of sports psychologists and a “been there, seen it all” coaching staff led by Paul Maurice. Whatever it is, emulating this kind of “one obstacle at a time” and a “you can’t beat us on the psychological side of the game, so you’d better do it on the scoreboard” mindset has made the Panthers the envy of the league.
Side note: The Panthers’ arena is located 57.5 km from downtown Miami, more than double the distance from 26 km from Parliament Hill to the Canadian Tire Centre. Fans will show up to support a winner with a great attitude and resiliency, no matter how far the trek might be to get there.