As if this was an election coverage, the Hockeybuzz News Desk is calling it - the Senators will not make the playoffs.
After a couple of weeks of calling games that the Senators really need to win up to pretty much must win, they club still kept hanging around and giving just a tinge of optimism. But the loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning on Thursday night was likely the knife that went directly to the playoff hearts of the Senators.
Combined with pretty much everyone else in the race that played winning on the same night (Pittsburgh, Boston, NYI, New Jersey), the gap is just too big, the number of teams to jump too many, games in hand are a factor and the math just too daunting.
The Senators just couldn't muster enough offense against the Bolts and their former teammate who has owned them in his post-Sens career. Ben Bishop was good and the Lightning extended their win streak to 8 games in pursuit of the Panthers for the top seed in the Atlantic.
Even after dodging a bullet with a successful coach's challenge in the first period that overturned what was initially ruled a goal, Tampa still got on the board first early in the second. After Cedric Paquette knocked home a rebound to open the scoring, the Bolts made it 2-0 when Mike Hoffman got tangled up with Andrew Hammond allowing Ondrej Palat to slide the puck home.
After Marc Methot got the Senators on the board in the third period, while they were gaining momentum, it felt like Tuesday all over again. Late in the frame, Jean-Gabriel Pageu (the hero of that comeback against the Blues) fanned on a pass in his defensive end and the puck went right to Nikita Kucherov who wasted no time in putting the puck past Hammond and the game out of reach. Steven Stamkos finished it off with the empty netter to make the final 4-1.
There will be plenty of time in the off-season to dissect what went wrong, but the bottom line is they give up the first goal far too often and when you combine that with giving up more 3rd period goals than any other team it is not a good combination. The stat that only the Kings have more 3rd period comebacks than the Senators is a bit misleading, because they trail so often heading into the final frame (6-22-3 in 31 opportunities) that even the sun shines on a dog's a** some days.
Bishop is an example of why teams are sometimes hesitant to deal within their own division, as he has haunted the Senators to the tune of a 9-0-3 record against his former club.
So the Senators will be pretty much playing out the string, needing to win probably 14 of their last 17 (and get some help in the form of slumps from other teams) to slide into a postseason berth.
There was no anticipated Clarke MacArthur sighting, as he failed his baseline test on Tuesday, meaning doctors want him to be symptom free for a couple more weeks. It is probably a good idea to put him beside Kyle Turris on the shelf and give him the summer to hopefully recuperate fully instead of bringing him back to play essentially meaningless games and risk a setback for nothing. He is committed to play, but that might be desire of the heart more than knowing in the head what the best course of action is.
So not all the results are yet in, but the call can be made.