At the beginning of December I said looking at the schedule there could be some bumps on the road before Christmas, and over the last week there have been potholes on the road to the playoffs. After losing 3 of 4 on a road trip, things don't get any easier tonight as they return home to face the Los Angeles Kings.
The Kings are running away with the struggling Pacific Division, already owning a 10 point cushion on the second place Coyotes & Canucks. By contrast 12 points is the gap between first and 6th in both the Atlantic and Metropolitan Divisions, and 11 points separates the top 5 teams in the Central, so the Kings are in great shape as of now.
Los Angeles is starting the second half of a 6 game road trip in which they have played extra time in each of the first three. They won the first two in Pittsburgh and Columbus, but fell to the Sabres 2-1 in overtime on Saturday night.
The Senators are coming off one of their most disappointing performances of the season, or at least one of the worst periods of the season in the first 20 minutes against Montreal on Saturday night.
There has been a lot of finger-pointing arising out of that game - towards Dave Cameron, the club leadership and even GM Bryan Murray. While there is plenty of blame to go around as they have stumbled on the past 4 games, really this was to be expected.
The Senators were putting together a much higher than average shooting percentage and that couldn't last. Constantly being out-shot and out-chanced was bound to catch up with them at some point and that is exactly what has happened.
The fate of the team and its ability to win or lose on any given night is not based on a defenseman playing 4th line forward, or having a forward sitting in the press box while said defenseman gets those minutes. Do I agree with the strategy? Not particularly, and I also think that Zack Smith isn't an ideal 2nd line option and that Curtis Lazar isn't going to develop anything skating between Borowiecki and Chris Neil. But Cameron's hands are tied a bit with the injuries to Clarke MacArthur and Milan Michalek as well as the Curtis Lazar situation. That is an organizational issue, and not necessarily a Cameron issue.
The team has ridden its top horses, for better or for worse, all season long. As Karlsson, Hoffman, Ryan, Turris, Stone and Anderson go, so do the Senators. If those players, or at least a majority of them, are not the team's best players on any given night, the Senators will struggle. Such has been the case, at both end of the ice lately.
While it might be unfair to point the finger at Karlsson, his defensive deficiencies look even worse when he hasn't scored a point in 4 games. He is the straw that stirs the Senators drink, and when he struggles, so will the Senators because he brings a skill set that nobody else on the team is capable of. That is why he is who he is and the rest are who they are. Sure, it would be nice for someone else to step up when Karlsson does struggle, but its a fact that if someone does try to compensate, they are leaving their comfort zone and it will expose other deficiencies.
In the last 4 games, the top end "group of 6" (the 5 skaters listed above plus second line centre Mika Zibanejad), have combined for just 2 goals and 7 assists for 9 points. They have just 3 points at even strength combined in 4 games. Slumps happen and offense can come and go, but they are also a combined -22 in that stretch.
The rest of the team has 9 points and is a combined -4 on the road trip, with the only players being a + were the much maligned Jared Cowen and Shane Prince, who played just 1 game. I know +/- isn't a be-all, end-all stat, and Cowen has certainly had his struggles with the puck, it hasn't resulted in as many goals against as most of the others.
Every team needs its star players to carry the load, and for the Senators in the past week the supporting cast has done their job adequately, if not spectacularly. It is a case of needed the top end guys to do theirs in the same manner if the Senators are going to turn this ship around. That is what they get paid the big bucks for.
So while I probably wouldn't keep playing Borowiecki up front and would play Prince on the second line, that deployment hasn't been the problem. Having two of your top 3 left wingers on the shelf hasn't helped matters, since it was a patchwork lineup to begin with. Cameron has played a hunch, and Borowiecki has done what was asked of him as well as could be expected. The message has been sent to Prince, whatever that message is and it is time to see if it has been received and get him back into the lineup to provide a spark of sorts.
Those moves don't fix the problem though. If at least one of the top two lines and Karlsson isn't going, the Senators aren't going to win, whether they have 3 forwards or 3 defensemen playing on the fourth line.
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Thomas Chabot survived the first round of cuts for Canada's National Junior team and is among the last 9 defensemen who will continue training camp in Europe. The team will carry 7 blueliners, and with Jakub Chycrun, who many thought would make the team as a draft-eligible player being released and the pre-camp injury to Jake Walman the chances for Chabot to snag a roster spot look a little bit better after he was an underdog of sorts to make it according to some "experts".