I like the stuff that came from Ottawa's actual hockey operations guys, talking about how the team's plan next year was to cut the number of goals against by fifty. It's a pretty difficult hurdle to clear in one season, but they've clearly targeted the (obvious) issue with this team.
There's a few problems with this, though. Namely, how does a team go about accomplishing this goal?
An easy answer would be to get better goaltending. A problem with that: the league's average save percentage was .911 this year, and Ottawa's save percentage was .909. If you regress Ottawa's save percentages to the league average, you slice off all of 5.6 goals over the course of the season.
So, that covers, uh, 10% of it.
Not that I'm doing anything but stating the obvious, but if Ottawa has any desire to try and cut fifty goals off of their against column, they basically have one of two options: (1) create a roster that controls play decisively, enough to limit opposition zone time and, consequently, limit chances against; (2) play a lower-pace game, which would almost certainly have an adverse effect on the offense, which did play well for most of the season.
I think (1) is more realistic than (2) here, but if we are talking about an organization that, to the minute, has to tell their fan base that they aren't going to spend a lot of money and are just focused on getting lucky in the draft/development department, I don't know how you can just simply make fifty goals disappear.
I heard Ottawa's owner theorizing about how to accomplish this, maybe, on Prime Time Sports with Bob McCown and Damien Cox. There was talk about the team getting (a) a physical, 'grinding' forward; and (b) a defensive defenseman that harkens back to the days of Anton Volchenkov.
I mean, I'm not really sure either solves the issue here. You get the real sense that (a) is all about Chris Stewart, who Tim Murray was not-so-secretly talking about yesterday in a radio spot. Now, Chris Stewart is a guy who can maybe carry an above-average Sh% over a full season, but he's not really known for any discernible ability to drive play, and his defensive game has always been justly criticized. He kind of reminds me of a light version of Joffrey Lupul.
And as for (b), I'm not against bringing in a third-pairing defensive defenseman that can limit attempts and what-not, but these Anton Volchenkov style guys just don't really exist anymore, and it's because there has been so much influence and understanding that teams that play with the puck win long-term, and that teams who defend the puck lose long-term.
All this to say, I think Ottawa can -- obviously -- have a great summer, target a few guys on the trade market that can bring this team back to contender status, and purge some of the dead-weight on the roster in the process.
But everything's about the internal budget. Yesterday's media rounds were downright exhausting, because that seemed to be all Ottawa's hockey ops and pseudo-hockey ops guys wanted to talk about. Money, money, money.
Speaking of money: Ottawa's actually probably going to have an absurd amount of cap space to play with, but that's because it sounds like Jason Spezza is very much on the outs (the juxtaposition of the organization's total non-answers w.r.t his future against their swooning over a long-term extension for Bobby Ryan was classic), and if that's the case, Ales Hemsky is probably going to be, too. And, who really knows what Milan Michalek's future holds.
They'll have a ton of cap room available, and they won't use most of it -- partly because they're not trying to spend, partly because the UFAs really aren't all that desirable. However, there are plenty of trade targets available for this team to consider, especially guys who -- like Ales Hemsky this March -- can be had at a fraction of their true value.
We'll see what happens.
Thanks for reading!