You can follow me on Twitter @ShackTS To begin the year, the Senators had a record of 1-2-1 with Cody Ceci in the lineup. Then it was announced that he was placed on the IR and since then, Ottawa has a perfect 3-0-0 record. As with everything in October, yes it’s an incredibly small sample size. But you know what isn’t a small sample size? Ceci’s career. He’s had the most time out of any player that I can remember to prove himself in the league, and the Senators are showing that they are better off without him.
I’m curious to see how long this winning streak can go because the longer it lasts, the funnier it will become.
Fight me pic.twitter.com/yRgTjlmuQb
— Trevor Scare-ckles (@ShackTS) October 21, 2018
When he went down with an upper-body injury, there was a lot of “we’ll see how the team does without Ceci… both from fans of him and also those who dislike him. Looking back on it, it’s quite amusing to see that Ottawa hasn’t lost a step at all, in fact, they’re probably a better team. Theoretically, I think the defense could be even better too if Guy Boucher implemented something like this:
Chabot-DeMelo Lajoie-Wideman Wolanin-Jaros Borowiecki
That isn’t going to happen anytime soon because Ceci, Harpur, and Borowiecki are soon as too integral to the team, but I think those aforementioned pairings would be an incredible improvement from the pairings from the first few games that featured Ceci.
He has begun the season where he left off last year, with a 42.38 CF%, a 39.24 SCF%, and has been on for one goal for and five against at 5v5. With the amount of ice-time he gets per game (21:51), those numbers are unacceptable. I’ve harped on Ceci’s play for years now and it’s amazing that nothing has changed. I don’t want to wish harm on any player, but hopefully this injury is a good thing for the team to realize that he’s more expendable than they thought. After all, he played all 82 games last season so they never got a chance to see what the team was like without him.
He did skate on Friday morning, so there’s a chance that he’s back in the lineup as soon as Tuesday. Either way, it would fit the narrative amazingly well if the team keeps winning with him and then immediately loses when he comes back. I hope that the team figures this out on their own and correlates some of this success to Ceci’s absence because it seems like they need an air traffic controller to point them towards any sort of evidence that he is not a good defenseman.
And hey! The big news from last night is that the Senators beat the Canadiens 4-3 in overtime, which was another fun game to begin the season. They weren't at their best, but Stone and Duchene had multiple points, while Tierney and Chabot kept up their torrid pace. Ottawa will look to keep it up against a tough Boston Bruins team on Tuesday.
Sound ⬆, bar ⬇ as @MStoner61 grabs the extra point in @EASPORTSNHL OT. pic.twitter.com/1tUy0P8K35
— NHL (@NHL) October 21, 2018