The Senators' 2025-26 season ended Saturday with a four game sweep at the hands of Carolina.
The Ottawa Senators’ Stanley Cup playoff run has ended just one week after it started.
A 4–2 loss to the Carolina Hurricanes on Saturday afternoon at Canadian Tire Centre completed a four-game sweep, ending Ottawa’s season in decisive fashion. There wasn’t a single second in the series where Carolina trailed.
While Game 3 was an outlier, Game 4 followed a familiar script to Games 1 and 2. The Senators were competitive and generated chances, but once again, they couldn’t finish, and the Hurricanes made them pay.
The turning point came midway through the third period on the Carolina power play. A 'Canes point shot missed the net on one side, but bounced out perfectly to Logan Stankoven on the other, and he deposited it into an open net for the winning goal.
It was his fourth goal of the series, and at that point, it tied him with the entire Ottawa team.
Sebastian Aho added an empty-net goal late, though the Senators briefly made things interesting. Dylan Cozens pulled Ottawa back to within one, but any momentum was quickly erased as Aho added a second empty-netter to close out both the game and the series.
It was a far better effort than Game 3, though how could it not be?
While Thursday’s 2–1 loss felt lifeless and disconnected, the Senators brought energy and urgency back to their game on Saturday. Like much of the series, though, they simply couldn’t score.
Lars Eller hit the crossbar early in the first period, Tim Stützle and Thomas Chabot both came up empty on breakaways, and with half the net open, Drake Batherson knocked a bouncing puck just wide.
Batherson did provide a breakthrough on the power play, deflecting home a shot from the half wall to tie the game at one, but Ottawa couldn’t build on it.
The game also carried a heavy emotional edge following Taylor Hall’s hit on Jake Sanderson in Game 3, which left the Senators’ top defenceman out of the lineup with a concussion.
Ottawa responded Saturday with a physical push of its own.
Tyler Kleven delivered a crushing hit that left Carolina’s Alexander Nikishin dazed and sparked a series of scrums that carried through much of the afternoon, and Ridly Greig was at the center of most of them, giving and receiving.
The temperature of the game threatened to boil over before settling down to decide things in the third period on the scoreboard instead of the ring.
Lost in the result was a strong performance from Ullmark, who did everything he could to keep Ottawa within striking distance in this series. After an up-and-down regular season and a midseason break to reset mentally, he looked sharp and composed throughout the series.
Both teams play the same brand of disciplined team defence, but in the end, Carolina was the better, healthier, more experienced, and more opportunistic team and looks very capable of making a deep run.
For the Senators, they'll gather in the next day or two to clean out their lockers, have one last chat with the local media, and then the offseason begins.
It’s a difficult team to evaluate in some ways because they have some good explanations for their exit. They were missing key pieces and had to overplay their stars just to get here. Then they faced a difficult opponent, a legitimate contender, and were still highly competitive in three of the four games.
At the same time, a first-round sweep, no matter what the reason is, definitely suggests a problem or two and leaves plenty of room for improvement and potential changes.
Carolina now moves on to the second round, where they’ll face the winner of the Philadelphia-Pittsburgh series. As of Saturday afternoon, the Flyers hold a commanding 3-0 series lead.
Steve Warne
The Hockey News