You heard the reasons for optimism yesterday, and now here is the opposite--- five reasons to be pessimistic heading into the 2018-19 season:
Trio of UFAs could be gone
This is a pretty obvious one. Erik Karlsson, Mark Stone, and Matt Duchene are clearly the three best players on the team, and all three of them are pending unrestricted free agents in the summer of 2019. It sounds like they will talk amongst themselves throughout the season to see if any of them are interested in staying, and if one of them wants out, the other two may very well follow suit.
Now that training camp is almost here, it seems unlikely that any of them will be traded for at least a few more months. So the Senators will probably at least have these three to begin the year, but when the calendar turns to 2019 who knows? The roster isn’t impressive as is, and if just one of these three (or more) are traded, Ottawa has the potential to be one of the worst teams in the league. It’s safe to say that any good season relies on all three of Karlsson, Stone, and Duchene staying the whole way.
No guarantee that goaltending bounces back
Although yesterday I talked about how we shouldn’t necessarily right off Craig Anderson, it’s also hard to expect him to revert to his old form. Even if you don’t look at the numbers, he just looked incredibly old and slow in the games last season. I don’t think he’s going to be an .898 SV% goalie because it’s hard to be that bad two years in a row, but he has a long way to go to get back to where he was in years past.
For a goaltender who is 37 years old, absolutely nothing is guaranteed even if you are the best of all time.
Mike Condon also shouldn’t be trusted as a sure thing either because even in his “great… first season in Ottawa, he had a league average .914 SV%. Through 127 career games, the 28-year-old has a measly .907 SV%, so it’s not like his track record is very encouraging. It’s definitely possible that Anderson bounces back, but he needs to be a lot better rather than just a bit better. Ottawa is in trouble unless they get above average goaltending.
Tons of holes
The 2017-18 lineup had holes and they were still horrendous. Since then they have gotten rid of Derick Brassard and Mike Hoffman too, so there are even more spots to fill. Jean-Gabriel Pageau and Ryan Dzingel are both one spot too high on the depth chart, as it’s pretty obvious that they need one first line left-winger and second line centre. Beyond that, Cody Ceci is still anchoring the second pairing and has never had anything but disastrous results, so I’ll go out on a limb and say that nothing changes for him in 2018-19. There are definitely prospects that can fill some of these depth spots, but there is potential for Guy Boucher to mess that up. For example, the forward lines could theoretically look like this:
Dzingel-Duchene-Stone Boedker-Pageau-Ryan Pyatt-Smith-Paajarvi McCormick-Carey-White
Or like this:
Dzingel-Duchene-Stone Tkachuk-Brown-Ryan Boedker-Pageau-White Chlapik-Smith-Paajarvi
I know which one looks more exciting and has more potential, but I still don’t fully believe that Boucher is ready to give young players more ice time in the beginning. Plus even if that second lineup ends up becoming reality, they need all four of those prospects to work out for those holes to be plugged. Then on defense, I like Christian Wolanin but he’s their only legitimate option on the left side of the second pairing, which is a tall order for a rookie.
There are simply too many spots that need to be addressed that were not over the summer.
Shot metrics haven’t been pretty
If the Senators had finished last year with solid possession numbers and performed worse than those numbers would have suggested, then I would have come into this season saying that they were due for some better luck. I know I said yesterday that they are due for some positive regression to the mean in a general sense, and they are. However, specifically in terms of shot metrics they aren’t.
In 2016-17, they finished 22nd in the league with a 48.54 CF%, and in 2017-18 they were 30th at 47.12%. Those are the two seasons that Boucher has been behind the bench, and I don’t think those numbers will magically get better with him still here. It seems as if his coaching philosophy doesn’t lead to much possession with the puck, and the Senators haven’t improved their roster so I don’t see how things will change in that regard.
Horrendous special teams
It’s amazing how bad the Senators special teams have been in the past several years. Since 2012-13, here are their power play ranks in chronological order: 20, 14, 22, 26, 23, 27. And there ranks in penalty kill are: 1, 22, 11, 29, 22, 26. The power play has had one barely above average season, and the penalty kill has had two above average. There was that strange 2012-13 season where they ranked 1st, but that was more due to an insane 92.49 SV% (!!!) on the PK than anything.
The Senators have had some pretty bad defense corps so I understand the struggling penalty kill, but they’ve always had talented forwards so I don’t get why the power play hasn’t been able to produce. I think a lot of that is on the coaching staff for not putting players in positions to succeed, and I just can’t expect them to improve unless they bring in better players or new coaches.
Special teams are a huge part of the game that can sink a team or elevate them, and Ottawa hasn’t been nearly good enough in either department.
With all of that said, I’ll still be following along this season because even in bad seasons there are interesting developments to watch.