Five observations from the past week here in Hockey Country.
Welcome to a new feature here at The Hockey News-Ottawa. It's a simple list of five things that sparked our interest over the past week. Some weeks it may be a list of statistical or historical facts or a top-five ranking of something "Senatorial." As always, we encourage you to leave feedback or maybe a suggestion for a future feature.
Here are five observations from the past week here in Sens Nation.
1. The Ever-Changing Home Opener Roster in the Brady Tkachuk Era
This past Saturday afternoon was the sixth home opener since Brady Tkachuk joined the Senators for the 2018-19 season.
As I watched the player introductions, I was left wondering how many players, exactly, have been introduced for a Sens home opener in Tkachuk's career.
The answer: 67 players!
It speaks to the revolving door filled with placeholders that was the Senator M.O. for a good four-year stretch. For example, Thomas Chabot is the only active Senator who was in the lineup for Tkachuk's first home opener in 2018, a 4-3 OT loss to Chicago (where Alex Debrincat opened the scoring).
The next two home openers saw turnovers of 11 and then 12 players; rosters sprinkled with such All-Time Senator stars as Artem Anisimov, Ron Hainsey, Scott Sabourin, Nikita Zaitsev, Braydon Coburn, Cedric Paquette, Derek Stepan, Josh Brown, Logan Shaw, Tyler Ennis, Zach Sanford and Victor Mete.
One can trace the history of the rebuild by scouring these rosters and seeing how the team truly has turned the corner. This is especially evident in the last few years with much less player turnover. Year over year, only eight new players made the opening night roster in 2022-23 and only six for this year.
The difference being, these additions are cornerstones, not placeholders. Guys like Giroux, Sanderson, Zub, Chychrun, Greig and Korpisalo.
2. Josh Norris - The Pressure Release Valve
The long awaited/much anticipated return of Josh Norris to the Senator lineup is so much bigger than some people may realize. He is literally a human pressure release valve. His insertion into the lineup has benefits throughout the roster.
For starters, a 21 year old rookie, Ridley Greig, is no longer counted on to play and produce like a number two centre. He slots nicely into the three hole playing between Vladimir Tarasenko and Mathieu Joseph. Although, the summer plan most likely had him slated for Belleville and more seasoning. Pressure is also relieved from the top line of Stützle, Tkachuk and Giroux. Suddenly, DJ Smith has a line 1 and a line 1A.
Actually, Smith mostly deployed the Greig line in a checking role against Alex Ovechkin's line on Wednesday night allowing both 1 and 1A to play against the second, third and even fourth lines of the Caps.
Norris returning to the lineup relieves pressure in two other key areas. While he did not log any PK time in his first game, he probably will in the future, thereby increasing the effectiveness of that unit. And he certainly displayed how he will help the PP.
Finally, Norris is another good faceoff option for DJ Smith for those late game D-Zone draws.
All in all, Josh Norris relieves a lot of pressure on a lot of people, not the least of which is the coaching staff.
3. The Improved Team Defence
Speaking of pressure, the main change to the Senator’s defensive play appears to be a five man commitment to pressuring the puck carrier. As simple as that sounds, it isn’t easy without all five players understanding who is pressuring, at what time and what support is available to the puck carrier.
Essentially, the Sens now employ a form of the swarm as they constantly apply pressure at the point of attack. Watch closely and you will notice how often the team now steps up on attacking players at both bluelines, how often they aggressively pinch on the walls in the neutral zone and even how much more aggressive they are when shorthanded.
None of this would be possible without the upgrades to the personnel over the last few seasons. You simply cannot be successful playing this system if your players aren’t smart and quick. The infusion of Jake Sanderson, Jacob Chychrun and even Erik Brannstrom make this possible. These are skilled players with great feet and better sticks. They understand the importance of body position (in shooting lanes) and stick position (in passing lanes) and have quick feet allowing them to attack puck carriers.
Add in quicker forwards and the element of maturity for players like Tkachuk, Stutzle and Batherson, and you have so many more players capable of executing what coach DJ Smith has been trying to implement for a few seasons now.
It also doesn’t hurt that so-called “supporting players” are a serious upgrade from years past as well. Players like Kelly, Joseph, Kastelic and even Chartier can step in and play this up-tempo, pressure game in all three zones.
The forecheck with it’s similar tenants of puck pressure and support has been excellent as well. This team now gets in the zone quickly, forechecks aggressively, seals lanes and creates turnovers much more consistently than they have in years past. Of course, it’s only a handful of games and most have been against inferior opponents, but so far so good.
4. The Not-So-Subtle Closing of the Melnyk Era Book
I can’t be the only one who picked up on this. I thoroughly enjoyed every moment of the pre game ceremony of the home opener and couldn’t help thinking there was an underlying message from new owner Michael Andlauer.
We saw full 180 degree turns from Melnyk decisions of the past all through the occasion:
- undefined
- undefined
- undefined
All three of these men, for various reasons and in different ways, left the organization during the Melnyk years. And yet, there they were, back again. As if the messaging was maybe too subtle, we had the rather obvious passing of the torch moment with former owners Bruce Firestone, Rod Bryden and Olivia and Anna Melnyk joining Andlauer for the ceremonial faceoff.
The only thing missing was an actual torch being passed down the line.
5. Is the Pinto Situation Nearing an End?
With the news yesterday of forward Zack MacEwen being placed on waivers, speculation briefly reached new heights regarding a Shane Pinto signing.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves here.
Defenceman Artem Zub is injured after taking an Alex Ovechkin shot off the ear and listed as day-to-day. If he can't go, the club will need to call up a replacement from the B-Sens and that cap space will be eaten up by whomever gets the call.
By the way, this is also another departure from the Melnyk Method as it appears the Senators are willing to pay MacEwen his $775,000 to play in Belleville.
I firmly believe another move of some sort will happen shortly and Pinto will be signed and in the lineup before the end of the month, if not the end of the weekend.