Drake Batherson became the 10th fastest Ottawa Senator to score 100 goals for the club.
Ottawa Senators winger Drake Batherson seems to have found a new level this season. With his four-point effort on Wednesday night in a 5-1 victory over the Anaheim Ducks, Batherson has reached the 100-goal mark faster than all but nine Senators in history..
Fewest games to 100 career goals in Sens history (from NHL.com):
253 GP – Alexei Yashin
286 GP – Martin Havlat
289 GP – Marian Hossa
290 GP – Jason Spezza
300 GP – Brady Tkachuk
305 GP – Tim Stutzle
313 GP – Mike Hoffman
322 GP – Mark Stone
333 GP – Daniel Alfredsson
337 GP – Drake Batherson
The league also reports that Batherson is just the third Senator in 10 years to record a natural hat trick (Brady Tkachuk and Mika Zibanejad are the others). He also registered his fourth four-point game to tie Erik Karlsson for the eighth most in franchise history.
Batherson is the Sens' fifth 10-goal scorer this season after Adam Gaudette (13), Brady Tkachuk (14), Josh Norris (12) and Tim Stützle (10). The only other NHL team with that many is the Tampa Bay Lightning (Brayden Point, Jake Guentzel, Nikita Kucherov, Brandon Hagel & Anthony Cirelli).
Stutzle (36), Batherson (32), and Tkachuk (31) are all in the team's 30-point club right now. No one else in Ottawa is even in the 20-point club.
Stutzle extended his multi-assist streak to three games, second only to Erik Karlsson who hit a four-game streak twice.
Shockingly, the Sens recent modest success has come without any offensive help from Shane Pinto, who hasn't scored a goal now since opening night and his pointless streak has reached 15 games.
You almost hate to call attention to it for fear of jinxing it, but Linus Ullmark is playing out of his mind right now. If he had gotten that shutout last night, it would have been his second of the season. And that would have tied his personal best. Two shutouts? How is that possible?
Anyway, in the past five games, Ullmark has a record of 4-0-1 with an immaculate stat line.
Frankly, the Sens don't even need Ullmark to be this good. Get a load of this stat from the Sportsnet broadcast last night. Since the start of the 2023-24 season, in all the games where the Sens goalie puts up a .900 save percentage, the Sens have only lost eight times in 51 games. They are 40-8-3 since the start of last season.
Not all save percentages are created equal since the stat doesn't account for shot quality. But even adjusting for that variable, that's still pretty wild.
A lot of good things are happening right now in Ottawa. The club is 5-2-1 in their last eight games. But it's bordering on insanity to suggest again the team might finally be turning it around. Have we learned nothing? We've seen small sample sizes of improved play like this a dozen times in the past five years.
It's probably best to just enjoy this for what it is without looking too far ahead.