Since their January 23rd practice in which DJ Smith consulted with Alex DeBrincat and Claude Giroux on how to generate more offence, the Senators arrived at the All-Star break riding a four-game win streak.
With a record of 24-23-3, their 51 points place the Senators in sixth place in the wild card standings — eight points back of the Pittsburgh Penguins for the second wild card seed.
It is amazing what a week can do.
The discourse should have focused on the opportunity to ride this positivity and momentum in their final 32 games after the break. Instead, a long layoff and the fallout from the Troy Mann firing have subdued some of that enthusiasm. (Note: I’ll get to some of the rumours regarding the Mann dismissal later on in the piece.)
Amazingly, if we look ahead at the Senators’ schedule leading up to the March 3rd trade deadline, it has the potential to be promising.
February 11th vs Oilers
February 13th vs Flames
February 14th at Islanders
February 17th vs Blackhawks
February 19th vs Blues
February 20th at Bruins
February 24th at Hurricanes
February 25th at Canadiens
February 27th vs Red Wings
February 28th vs Red Wings
March 2nd at Rangers
Considering that only four of these opponents are currently in a playoff position and with the Senators playing six games at home, it is about as favourable of a schedule as you can ask for. If the team hopes to go on an extended run to claw their way back into the race, this is an opportunity to do so.
Perhaps it is one of the reasons why Bruce Garrioch told Jay Onrait last week that Pierre Dorion would like to be a buyer at the deadline.
The Senators at the Break
Entering the break, the Senators have to be pleased with the output of their top forwards.
Captain Brady Tkachuk has averaged more than a point per game with 51 points in 50 games. After scoring 22 goals and 58 points in 79 games last season, Tim Stützle matched this goal total in 33 fewer games last night in Montreal. The young centre is poised to establish new career highs in goals and points.
What is impressive is that the Senators are one of six NHL teams with three 20-plus goal scorers by the All-Star break. Only the Sabres and Oilers have more with four. Barring injury, Alex DeBrincat (17), Drake Batherson (15), and Shane Pinto (12) all have a chance to surpass that threshold.
Ottawa’s top six was expected to be strong and through the first 50 games, they have carried the offensive load. Considering the Senators have been the league’s worst five-on-five shooting team per NaturalStatTrick.com’s data, the natural assumption would be that this group would have more goals if their luck was better.
Ironically, players like Tim Stützle, Brady Tkachuk, and Claude Giroux are shooting at a higher shooting percentage than their career norm. Tkachuk is shooting at 9.6 percent while his career success rate is 9.2. Claude Giroux is at a robust 16.5 percent when his career rate is 11.3. Stützle is shooting at a 17.6 percent clip when his career mark is 13.6. Of Ottawa’s top-six guys, the two who have felt the dip the most have been Batherson (13.2% career shooter, 10.3% this season) and DeBrincat (14.7% career, 9.9% this season). The latter of whom has looked particularly snake bit at times. Although he has hit four posts, the prize of Ottawa’s offseason has seemingly missed several wide-open scoring opportunities over the first half of the season. An interesting dynamic to DeBrincat’s struggles is that it could impact his contractual demands. Although his restricted free agent status gives him a ton of leverage in contract negotiations, if he likes this city and this young core, he may wind up settling for a lower average annual value than we could have predicted.
No one on the team has had worse shooting luck than Drake Batherson. According to NHL.com, Drake has hit eight posts this season, which ties him for the sixth-highest total in the league. If some of those shots went post and in, his numbers (15 goals, 43 points in 50 games) would be closer to 20-goal and point-per-game marks.
The numbers could be stronger, but these forwards have generally done what has been expected of them offensively. What accounts for some of the poor shooting percentages is that the Senators have received little production from its third and fourth lines.
During the offseason, it was easy to envision the Senators’ depth doing damage as their top two lines would face the more challenging matchups. Still, Josh Norris’ injury pushed Shane Pinto higher up the depth chart and injuries have limited the availability of Tyler Motte and Mathieu Joseph. The result has been an unproductive bottom six that you just hoped came out even on the scoresheet by the end of the night.
Preseason forecasts did not have a particularly strong outlook for the Senators and their play to this point has backed it up. Expected to be the team’s biggest weakness, the Senators have relied heavily on Thomas Chabot and Jake Sanderson to buoy this group.
In terms of his offensive contributions, Chabot has been one of the more valuable defencemen in the league this season. Using Evolving-Hockey’s ‘expected total offence’ metric (xOFF), only six defencemen (Erik Karlsson, Adam Fox, Rasmus Dahlin, Josh Morrissey, Dougie Hamilton, and Brandon Montour) in the league have had a greater expected offence metric than Chabot’s. With eight goals and 29 points in 45 games, Chabot looks poised to break the double-digit goal and 40-point thresholds for the first time since his 2018-19 season.
Jake Sanderson has had an intriguing rookie season with the club. His two goals and 20 points may not leap right off the page, but as it currently stands, no Senators rookie defenceman has ever averaged more ice time per game than Sanderson’s 21:21. Andrej Meszaros owns the franchise record for points a rookie defenceman with 39. Provided Sanderson gets hot and the Senators get more even-strength offence out of their group, maybe there is an outside chance that Sanderson can chase that number down the stretch. If the Senators continue to be a non-factor in the playoff race, this could be one of the better reasons to continue to watch the season unfold.
Erik Brannstrom is putting together what is far and away his best professional season in North America. Despite having just four lowly assists, Brannstrom’s isolated impact offensively has been positive and amazingly, his work in the defensive zone has grown remarkedly.
Using HockeyViz’s visuals, it is easier to see Brannstrom’s impact:
When he is on the ice, the Senators are generating a high volume of shots. Despite there being a higher percentage of perimeter shots, the Senators are generating higher than the league average chances in the high slot and around the goal. There is a ton of value in that, but like many of the other players on the roster, Brannstrom’s production would look more impressive if the team buried more of its chances.
The most impressive part of Brannstrom’s year has been his defensive growth. Although his size still makes him vulnerable to bigger opponents in physical battles down low and around the net, Brannstrom’s growth in defending against speed and protecting passing lanes has made him a much more complete player.
In fact, using Evolving-Hockey’s data, some of their metrics rate Brannstrom as being one of their better defenders. Brannstrom’s ‘expected total defence’ metric is the highest on the blue line. If Artyom Zub was healthy, he would probably have a higher value there, but as I joked on Twitter, I don’t know if it is a credit to Brannstrom’s growth or a greater reflection on the rest of the group’s performance that the Swede has some of the best defensive metrics on the team.
I believe that Zub and Sanderson are the best defenders on the Senators, but the former has dealt with injuries most of the year and Sanderson has had his numbers and value sunk by spending the majority of his minutes alongside an ineffective Travis Hamonic.
Along with Nikita Zaitsev, the Senators have simply not gotten anything of value from their second and third most expensive defencemen. As much as I liked Nick Holden, who I thought had a good start to the season, these three veteran defencemen have provided sub-replacement value at their position according to Evolving-Hockey’s ‘expected wins above replacement’ (xWAR) and ‘expected goals above replacement’ (xGAR) metrics.
The misevaluation of veteran depth players has been an obvious weakness of this organization. Blame poor pro scouting, placing too much value on the relationship of the coaching staff with a former player, or ignoring or not even using analytics to support or repudiate the opinions of their scouts. The Senators have failed to support their young core with quality depth and nowhere has it more obvious than on the blue line.
Going all-in on the DeBrincat trade without any guarantees of him signing an extension while failing to solidify the right side of the team’s blue line was and continues to be general manager malpractice. It was negligent.
That the Senators are on the outside of the playoff picture looking in isn’t a surprise, but just imagine where they would be without the play and development of Jake Sanderson.
Troy Mann Fallout
Once it was revealed that Troy Mann had been dismissed by the Senators, it only felt like it was a matter of time before other details leaked.
The organization may have stated that it was unhappy with the communication and lack of synergy between Belleville and Ottawa, but when the affiliate’s head coach is the brother of one of the assistant general managers of the organization, it feels reasonable to be suspicious of that assertion.
Communication had never been an issue before. There are countless examples of management and the coaching staff praising the efforts of Mann in having prospects be prepared to play games at the NHL level. Granted, Ryan Bowness is new to the organization and is responsible for Belleville, so maybe the relationship between him and Mann was not as cohesive as it was with his predecessor. On the other hand, if the expectation is that once new ownership later this year, everyone within hockey operations will be let go, what purpose does it serve to remove Mann now? If everyone within the organization is a lame duck, what’s the point in a change now?
TSN’s Claire Hanna reported that the organization grew distrustful of Mann.
The organization was taking a lot of heat for releasing a relatively well-liked head coach, so it stands to reason that someone within the organization leaked this information to curb some of the negativity.
It is a pretty damaging claim to make. Mann could have seen the writing on the wall in regard to new ownership and could have been talking to other NHL organizations about future prospective opportunities. But, to leak proprietary information to an organization's competitors would be career suicide and if he did so, he deserves to be fired. I do find it hard to believe that someone with Mann’s reputation and level of experience would be foolish enough to do this, but if Mann did pass on some information to another club, maybe it was such low-level information that it was innocuous or perceived as a common practice around the league.
Whatever the case, Mann has no choice but to come out and defend himself and his reputation. Elliotte Friedman indicated in his recent ‘32 Thoughts’ blog that Mann has already begun to do this.
In the Melnyk era, there was always this tendency to negatively throw shade at individuals who were on their way out the door. Some of the vestiges of that era are still here, so this practice may be continuing here now with Mann.
Interestingly, Brent Wallace touched upon some of the rumours that he heard on the Coming in Hot Podcast.
Mann, who was conspicuously absent these past few weeks from his regular radio hit on TSN 1200, was told by the organization to stop doing interviews according to Wallace. The rationale allegedly had to do with the organization’s discomfort with Mann’s appearances while the parent team was struggling.
What endeared Mann to the fans and media here in Ottawa was that he was exceptionally gifted and comfortable when talking about hockey. No one had to pull any teeth to get in-depth and quality responses from him because he was so comfortable doing it. Perhaps his honesty and candour could have bristled management at certain points, but if the organization indeed used his interviews as justification for his dismissal when he never embarrassed or negatively impacted the organization during his tenure, it would sadly point to the front office’s own insecurities.
Other News, Thoughts and Notes:
In that same Garrioch appearance on SportsCentre that I referred to earlier, the Postmedia scribe told Jay Onrait that if the Senators fall out of it, he would expect teams to call on Alex DeBrincat’s availability. His belief is that the Senators would not entertain that possibility until the offseason at the earliest, but the expectation is that teams will call on DeBrincat.
Another name mentioned as a trade candidate was Cam Talbot, but Garrioch indicated that no teams have expressed interest in the goaltender to date. In his most recent article for the Ottawa Sun, Garrioch indicated that the goaltender suffered a groin injury that will sideline him for three to four weeks, so his injury will likely deter teams from ponying up anything of significant value for the goaltender at the trade deadline. It is the worst possible outcome from what is already becoming a lopsided Filip Gustavsson/Cam Talbot swap. Talbot has been decent in stretches for the Senators, but despite Gus playing for a strong defensive Minnesota team, Evolving-Hockey rates him as being the 14th most valuable goaltender by WAR and GAR. And, only 14 goaltenders have higher goals saved above expected than Gustavsson’s 9.32. Throw in the years of team control and how this deal helped the Wild avoid a cap crunch, the deal simply has not worked out the way Ottawa intended.
Outside of Los Angeles, there are simply not a lot of teams looking for goaltending help. In this instance, maybe the best thing the Senators could do is get a conditional return based on Talbot’s performance or the performance of his acquiring team (ie. similar to the Erik Karlsson return in which a draft pick’s value would improve as San Jose continued to progress through the playoffs).
This afternoon the New York Rangers acquired Vladimir Tarasenko and Niko Mikkola from the St. Louis Blues for a conditional 2023 first-round pick, a conditional 2024 fourth-round pick, Sammy Blais, and prospect defenseman Hunter Skinner. It is not a terrible return for a player that the Blues were reportedly willing to attach a high draft pick to. At the time, shoulder injury notwithstanding, I was surprised that no team was willing to roll the dice on his talent. Today, many teams probably wish they did.
The Senators officially recalled goaltender Mads Sogaard and forward Ridly Greig from Belleville today.
During the All-Star weekend, Gary Bettman confirmed that more than 15 parties have expressed interest in purchasing the Ottawa Senators. On TSN’s ‘Insider Trading’ segment last night, Chris Johnston indicated that the final evaluation of the team at sale could be upwards of $800MM. Maybe it is the hype surrounding the sale or the prospective involvement of some celebrities and big-name players, but this figure feels light. I would not be shocked to see the final price tag come in closer to the $1 billion mark.
Finally, a shoutout to the excellent Micah Blake McCurdy who’s celebrating almost eight years of doing freelance hockey work. His HockeyViz site is an excellent hockey resource and when the Senators are finally sold, I hope the organization finds a way to bring the one-time Senators fan into the fold.
Fantastic read, Graeme. Some really great stuff. You've helped over the years shape my opinion on what's wrong and right with this team.
Of course the RD issue is low-hanging fruit. GM incompetence overall is also huge. And this amateur-hour handling of the Mann thing was surely Dorion's career death warrant. What owner would want a GM around who leaks defamatory sh*t that will, guaranteed, lead to legal action? Gross negligence.
My current frustration is the prospect depth. Some argue that the Sens have lots of futures and assets to trade to bring in veterans to fix current problems.
Really? The only two players I ever hear teams are interested in are Pinto and Greig, and the fanbase recoils at the notion of dealing them.
The NHL team has a great core, but trading away #1 picks and bungling 1-3 picks over the past decade has left us with a bare cupboard. Just compare our Scott Wheeler prospects ranking to the teams we're competing against -- Wings, Sabres, Jersey, etc. Insane. We're ranked with perennial playoff teams that trade picks and prospects for vets at the deadline.
As a final indictment, I predict Wallstadt and Gus will share a Vezina in a few years. That would sting.