You can follow me on Twitter @ShackTS With the 2018-19 season just around the corner, I wanted to look at the Ottawa Senators from two different angles: positively and negatively. First I’ll start off with the optimistic view, and I wanted to go over five reasons why fans should or could be optimistic about this team. Tomorrow I’ll have five reasons to be pessimistic, but for now, enjoy some positive vibes:
The kids are alright
The Senators rookies sure have calmed the nerves of the fanbase, as their wins against the Canadiens and Maple Leafs over the weekend were quite compelling. Sure, they aren’t playing against NHL competition, but it’s hard not to get excited on goals like these:
Batherson to Formenton in OT and the #SensRooks take the 2018 rookie tournament with a 6-5 win over the Leafs. pic.twitter.com/zcx9HzKhgr
— Ottawa Senators (@Senators) September 8, 2018
Boom. @BradyTkachuk71 pots a beauty in close and the #SensRooks jump out to a 2-0 lead in Laval. pic.twitter.com/yDCjvu77DC
— Ottawa Senators (@Senators) September 8, 2018
I was unable to watch either of these games, but from what people are saying, it looks like quite a few of the top prospects were impressive over these two games. There definitely isn’t enough room to fit a lot of these prospects in the Senators lineup, but I think it’s fair to be enthusiastic about the possibility of some rookies making a real impact as soon as this season. They might not all hit the ground running, but I wouldn’t rule it out either.
Christian Wolanin should be a lock for the team and might be on the second pairing, Brady Tkachuk already has his number picked so I think he’ll end up making it, Logan Brown certainly looks ready, and Colin White and Filip Chlapik are also ready but might be squeezed for a bit due to a numbers game. Then there's Drake Batherson who might impress enough at the AHL level to warrant a call-up, and Alex Formenton might make the leap from the OHL to NHL right away as well. The point is that there are a plethora of options and even though we know that not all of them will have success in the NHL this year (or even play a game there), the team will be fine if only a few are contributing.
I can’t say for certain that these rookies will make Ottawa that much better in 2018-19, but there’s a plausible scenario where they do.
Karlsson is still here
No, he might not be here beyond 2018-19. There are lots of factors at play that will determine whether he stays in Ottawa for the long haul, but as of now he hasn’t been traded yet and that means that the Senators baseline is automatically much higher. Along with Craig Anderson in net, you can say that Karlsson was the one skater that single-handedly took the Senators to within one goal of the Stanley Cup Finals, and it’s hard to overstate how much of an impact he can have on a team.
He underwent some brutal puck luck while on the ice last year, as the goalies behind him could not stop a beach ball. He’s fully recovered from his surgery last summer, and I expect him to be his regular fantastic self once again. Even if the team is bad, he is a treat to watch night in and night out so let’s cherish him.
Thomas Chabot taking the next step Chabot didn’t have a Calder-worthy season last year, but he definitely showed glimpses of a future first pairing defenseman. He still needs some work in the defensive zone, but scoring 25 points in 63 games isn’t bad at all. At the age of 21, I expect him to be an even bigger contributor on the Senators blueline, and I’d love to see him be the second most leaned upon defenseman after Karlsson. After all, he might become the only star defenseman soon.
He’s just a great skater who does so many things well, and I have a hard time picturing a future where he isn’t a top pairing player. I can’t wait to see what kind of season he has in store.
Craig Anderson bouncing back
I’m not going to say that I fully believe in Anderson as a starting goaltender given that he is 37 years old and coming off his worst season of all time, but I also think that we can’t completely write him off just yet. He had an .898 SV% last year, and it’s just extremely rare for a goaltender of his caliber to repeat such a horrendous season like that. Over the course of his eight seasons in Ottawa, Anderson’s SV% is an above-average .917%, so he’s obviously capable of being very good.
In the sports world we like to talk in absolutes and call old players “washed up… once they have a bad season, but in reality a lot of times athletes can bounce back at least once more. Don’t forget, like I mentioned before, Anderson was the second biggest reason why they took the Pittsburgh Penguins to Game 7 of the ECF in 2017, so he has been a phenomenal goaltender in the not-so-distant past. Heading into the first year of his two-year extension, Anderson knows that he has to prove that he is worth that money, and I really don’t think he will be as bad as he was.
If he gets back to his peak where he was posting save percentages above .920%, then Ottawa might even be able to challenge for a playoff spot just because we know how much goaltending can carry a team. But even if he simply gets up to a below average .910%, it might bring the Senators out of the cellar and not in danger of “losing/winning the lottery.… People might laugh at the notion that he can bounce back, but he’s done it before. Whenever Anderson is going, so are the Senators.
Regression to the mean
Everything that could go wrong last season went wrong. Okay maybe not exactly everything, but it was an unmitigated disaster. It’s extremely rare and probably unprecedented for a team to have that kind of bad luck in back-to-back seasons. Hell, the Colorado Avalanche had one of the worst seasons of all-time in 2016-17, and then the following season they made the playoffs. I’m not saying that the Senators necessarily deserved to be a playoff team last year, but it’s crazy how much a swing from bad luck to good luck can do for a team.
Ottawa was definitely due for a downfall after their successful 16-17 season just because of their poor shot metrics, but I don’t think anyone thought they were going to be that bad. This past season they finished dead last in 5v5 SV% at 90.84% and 17th in SH% at 7.69%, which resulted in a PDO of 98.53% which was fourth last. For comparison, in 16-17 they finished 19th in PDO at 99.6%, so even a rise back to that number would result in some better results.
If Karlsson, Stone, and/or Duchene get traded then that might cancel out any positive regression that is coming, but with the team they have right now, ask yourself: are they really going to have a season as horrific as 17-18? It seems unlikely, even if they end up being a not very good non-playoff team. Team luck fluctuates from year to year, and boy do the Senators ever know that. Whenever they have high expectations coming into the year, they seem to miss the playoffs, and vice versa.
So who knows? Essentially every Senators playoff team since 2010 wasn’t expected to make it in for one reason or another.