As the calendar turns to September and players begin trickling into the Ottawa area for training camp, media sessions, and golf tournaments, hockey is back on the radar for Senators fans. It’s funny what making the playoffs — and very reasonable expectations for success for the first time in nearly a decade — will do for a team’s outlook.
An off-season like the Senators had this year would look like admitting defeat if they had another bottom-10 finish. For a team clearly on the upswing, it showed patience, trust in the process, and optimism in what’s to come. When Ottawa lost to Toronto in six games, it was nearly all positivity related to the Sens.
When the Leafs lost in the following round, the relationship between the team, players, fans, and media all turned toxic, culminating in the loss of a superstar player, the blame game, and ticket price increases that were met with the enthusiasm of a colonoscopy. The volatile situation down the 401 has made the Senators look like the absolute picture of stability by comparison — a rare scenario indeed for the team that lost to the team that has spent their entire off-season in damage-control mode. This might not even have been the case if the Senators hadn’t managed to make a tight and competitive series that opened with a 3-0 advantage for the Leafs.
Most off-seasons and training camps for this team in recent memory have been peppered with a lot of big-picture questions and high-stakes additions. Questions like:
- Will Player X re-sign here, or will Player X be traded before their contract expires?
- Should the Senators have traded a high draft pick for a player who only has one or two years left on their contract?
- Will the sale of the team finally, mercifully, be completed?
- Is there enough fan support, or is there a risk of the team relocating?
- Can the team finally make the playoffs in the gauntlet that is the Atlantic Division?
- Can the team overcome a major flaw in the roster or systems play?
- Is this the year the goalie graveyard shows signs of life?
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Now that Michael Andlauer and Steve Staios’ steady hands at the rudder have answered most — if not all — of these questions in the positive, the noise swirling around this team has really quieted down, replaced instead by reasonable questions born of confidence:
- Now that the Senators have made the playoffs, what will they do for an encore?
- Will trade-deadline acquisitions Dylan Cozens and Fabian Zetterlund thrive with a full off-season of training, familiarity with the team, and the head start of being here at the beginning of training camp?
- Will the team use the nearly $4 million in cap space for a smart addition later in the season?
- “What will Shane Pinto sign for?” instead of “Will Shane Pinto sign here?”
There are no questions about what to do about the team’s coaching, goaltending, defensive depth, etc. No hand-wringing about imminent player departures or risky acquisitions. The plan is laid bare, and the process simply continues. Not bad for a team that currently doesn’t have a first-round pick for the next draft.
Compared to off-seasons past that were all about big swings or crushing rebuilds, here’s the most notable off-season news for the team this year:
- The land at LeBreton Flats has been purchased by the team, and the Senators might actually have a downtown home before the heat death of the sun.
- Claude Giroux re-signed a sweetheart, hometown-discount deal to stay in Ottawa, and the team signed trade-deadline acquisition Fabian Zetterlund to a medium-risk deal.
- Smart, low-key additions and subtractions such as right-handed D Jordan Spence, veteran centre Lars Eller, and replacing goalie Anton Forsberg with hotshot rookie Leevi Meriläinen, who bashed the door down to be the team’s clear number two. Travis Hamonic’s departure should be addition by subtraction — especially since he signed with a close divisional rival for the coming season.
- Keith Tkachuk came out and said how much Brady Tkachuk loves his team and city, and that he’ll likely stay, helping squash incessant rumors about the imminent departure of the team’s beloved captain.
- Jake Sanderson and Shane Pinto joined Brady at U.S. Olympic orientation camp.
- The team has a new third jersey.
This is a public-library level of noise versus a Metallica concert by comparison. This is what being on the other side of an eight-year abyss looks like: small moves, tweaking, and staying the course while retaining realistic optimism. A far cry from Ubergates, incomplete team sales, being fined first-round picks, trading important assets for ill-fitting big names, and watching beloved players walk out the door.
It’s much easier to stay the course when you have some evidence that the course being charted is the right one. There’s less worrying about what their divisional rivals are doing, and more focus on what the Senators themselves will do. They’re not depending on any other team’s decisions and situations to maybe sneak in if this, that, and the other thing fall their way. They’re designed to compete with anyone. The team is controlling the controllables — and doing it effectively.
The unspoken contract between a sports franchise and its fanbase is the selling of hope. That’s all it is, and the Senators have done as good a job as any at convincing fans the best is yet to come. And they did so with a smart but boring off-season by intelligent hockey and marketing minds. This team has built excitement and optimism the long way — and this market is buying it.
By Andrew Sztein
This article was first published at The Hockey News-Ottawa
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