Your 2021-22 Ottawa Senators Preview
The Continuing Development and Reasons for Optimism
Like every year for the past few seasons, any hope hinges on the growth and development of the kids. In a way, it is almost reminiscent of the formative days of this franchise’s modern inception. The expectations for what this team should accomplish on the ice this season are understandably not that high. The quality of depth and calibre of the veteran supporting cast is severely lacking, but it’s fun to invest time watching the young talent play significant roles and develop.
Having the opportunity to watch Josh Norris and Shane Pinto centre the first two lines every night is pretty special. For these two players to have the work ethic and two-way aptitude that they do, they are great foundational players to strengthen the middle of the ice.
Entering camp with questions regarding whether he could outplay and displace the veteran Chris Tierney on the depth chart, Shane Pinto erased any confusion with his preseason performance. Pinto finished second amongst all Senators skaters in five-on-five points per 60 minutes of ice-time (3.94) per NaturalStatTrick.com.
Without Brady Tkachuk starting the season with the Senators, Josh Norris is slated to centre the first line between Drake Batherson and Jimmy Stu. Rather than balance out the scoring depth, Tim Stützle is getting a crack at playing big minutes with the team’s other most offensively gifted forwards. The hope is that a bigger and stronger Stützle will lead to a more confident player who takes measured steps forward in his production and situational awareness.
It is no secret that Stützle’s impact on the offensive side of the puck was negatively impacted by his poor defensive metrics.
What can help Stützle improve his defensive metrics is the opportunity to play alongside a good defensive centre in Norris. For all of the attention being dedicated to Ottawa’s other younger prospects, Norris never really got the attention that his play warranted. Norris shone with his attention to detail in the defensive zone. And in finishing the season with nine goals in his last 18 games, there is hope that Norris has a much higher offensive ceiling than what many prospect prognosticators forecasted.
If Norris continues to trend upward in his development, I believe there is a real chance for him to become the best two-way centre that the Senators have ever had. Having the most dynamic and gifted offensive player, in Stützle, on his line creates the potential to boost Norris’ production. It will be worth monitoring how well the first line plays together early in the season. Provided Stützle creates offence and develops chemistry playing with Norris and Batherson, it could create an interesting dynamic when Brady Tkachuk eventually returns to the lineup.
It could be one of those situations similar to when Colin White lost his centre spot due to injury and Jean-Gabriel inherited the first-line spot playing alongside Mark Stone. Even when White eventually returned from injury, Pageau was playing so well, they could not justify removing him from that line.
After signing a seven-year contract worth $57.5 million ($8.2M AAV), Brady Tkachuk’s return to the Senators is just an incredible watershed moment and its importance cannot be understated. From the impacts that it will inevitably have on future contract negotiations in encouraging other young players to sign here long-term, one massive distraction has just been removed.
That the rumoured bridge deal never came to fruition is such a pivotal development. Tkachuk will be 28-years old when this contract expires after the 2027-28 season. The Senators bought up the prime years of his career and his first three years of unrestricted free agent status.
With his long-term future secured, it is only a matter of time before a ‘C’ is sewn onto the front of his jersey. The leadership structure on this team is now set and with it comes a ton of internal stability. Now it just becomes a matter of where Tkachuk slots in.
It may take some time for Tkachuk to work his way into the lineup and onto the top line. What cannot be emphasized is just how much of a unique player Tkachuk is. Ignoring the intangibles, charisma and qualities that everyone loves, few players create the kind of shot volume and physicality that Tkachuk brings. Fewer blend those two qualities together.
Of all the qualified skaters who logged more than 200 minutes during the 2020-21 season, Tkachuk led the league in shots per 60 minutes of ice-time (12.93) while finishing top-20 in hits per 60 (14.58) per NaturalStatTrick.com. To put that in other words, he created shots at a similar rate to Nathan MacKinnon while generating hits like a Cal Clutterbuck. Some analysts are down on Tkachuk simply because of the fact that with the volume of shots he produces, he should bury more of his chances. As the team improves around him and Tkachuk ever gets a little bit luckier with his shooting, there is a chance he can be a 30-goal scorer.
Even if Brady ultimately finds himself playing with Pinto and Connor Brown, it would give the Senators a hardworking trio that can contribute offensively. In a perfect world, Tkachuk can help Pinto replicate the kind of success that Norris enjoyed last season.
Speaking of Brown, the right-winger had a breakout campaign by scoring a team-leading 21 goals in 56 games. Brown led the league with five shorthanded goals last season, so that’s not really a reliable stat that fans can count on the winger to repeat. He also enjoyed a shooting percentage of 17.1-percent that is due to experience some regression. In saying that, Brown creates a lot of quality scoring opportunities through his hard work and diligence. It reminds me a little bit of Erik Condra because he was another player who created through the same means and often, like in the 2019-20 season, Brown didn’t capitalize on many of his chances. Last season, he generated those chances at a similar rate, he just wound up burying more of them.
Until Tkachuk enters the fold, Alex Formenton may be given more chances to play with more skilled talent or play special teams. He led the Senators in preseason scoring with four goals and six points in five games. According to NaturalStatTrick.com, Formenton’s 4.60 points per sixty minutes of ice-time rate this preseason trailed only Josh Norris’.
It was a great sign considering that I had some of the same concerns for Formenton that I did Anthony Duclair. That’s not to knock on either player, but for me, they both possess this game-breaking speed dynamic to drive a lot of their offence. And it is present on a game-in and game-out basis, but when these individual chances created through speed are not happening, the question becomes whether the player is doing enough. Although I certainly don’t have the same concerns for Formenton’s defensive impacts as I did Duclair, for Formenton’s game to grow, I want to see the player using his teammates efficiently. I want to see him create more offence off the cycle and through his defensive contributions.
If Formenton’s offence plays up and he proves he can be more than a good third-line weapon who generates a ton of rush chances, it will bolster the Senators’ left-wing depth for the foreseeable future.
Once you look past Brown and Ottawa’s young forwards, however, it becomes more difficult to get excited about the rest of the group. Not having Tkachuk to start the season is an obvious blow, but losing Colin White helps sap the depth at the bottom of the lineup.
White takes a lot of undeserved flak for signing a six-year contract worth $28.5 million. As its salary escalates with each year, a lot of fans look at White through the lens that he will never live up to his contract. It was never his fault that he was in the right place at the right time. After the organization jettisoned every star, White just happened to be one of the two young players in need of a contract extension. And after a relatively productive first campaign playing alongside Mark Stone and Tkachuk, he was marketed as proof that talent wanted to commit to Ottawa.
In the years that have passed, White has put up some modest production. He will never put up enough offence to be a great first or second-line centre, but he is a decent defensive centre. And, before a dry spell at the end of the season, he was playing at a 20-plus goal pace (note: projected over the course of a normal 82-game schedule).
White, unfortunately, received some devastating news this past week.
He dislocated his shoulder and according to the team’s official press release, White will miss the next four to six months after undergoing surgery.
For a player who will be 25 years old next summer, he desperately needed to stay on the ice and have a good season. Without it, he is a candidate for a buyout because of his age. If the Senators buy him out before White turns 26, they will only be on the hook for one-third of the money owed to him. The Senators have exercised this CBA rule before. In 2008, the Senators bought goaltender Ray Emery out after he cleared waivers.
In White’s absence, the depth just isn’t there. There are some likeable players like Nick Paul, Parker Kelly and Tyler Ennis, who predictably signed a one-year contract after playing on a PTO during the preseason. But, even with the injuries and Tkachuk’s absence, I don’t believe anyone in Ottawa was prepared for an opening night roster that could feature Logan Shaw and Scott Sabourin.
On the blue line, quality of depth is another issue.
For years, I have belaboured the point about how important it is for the Senators to separate Thomas Chabot from Nikita Zaitsev. After coming off the most disappointing season of his career, Chabot will have a chance to rejuvenate his play as he starts the year off with the incomparable Artyom Zub.
After arriving from obscurity with little fanfare, Zub had the best season of any Senator defender last season. Zub transitioned from being just a revelation to a cult figure within this fan base. Through his demonstrated ability to make everyone around him better, if Zub can bolster Chabot and allow him to return to form, the Senators will regret awarding him a two-year contract before playing him on the team’s top pairing.
In the 38 minutes and four seconds that the Chabot-Zub pairing played together at five-on-five in the preseason, the Senators generated 64.58 percent of the total shots (CF%), 72.73 percent of the shots on goal (SF%), 74.78 percent of the expected goals (xGF%), 74.07 percent of the scoring chances and all of the goals (three for, zero against).
They were lights out, but in putting the team’s two best defencemen together, the depth will be tested. D.J. Smith has already discussed the importance in cutting back Chabot’s ice time a bit this season in an effort to keep him sharper and more efficient. If that happens, the Senators will inevitably lean hard on veterans like Nick Holden, Michael Del Zotto, Josh Brown and the aforementioned Zaitsev. Throw in two smaller puck-moving defencemen in Victor Mete and Erik Brannstrom and the bottom two defensive pairings should change regularly. The defence’s usage and pairings will certainly create a lot of arguments, but it is worth reiterating that despite the team’s success down the stretch last season, D.J. Smith has never been particularly comfortable dressing two small defenceman in the lineup.
What will be interesting to watch is whether D.J. Smith breaks up the Chabot/Zub pairing if his second and third pairings get cratered by the opposition early in the year. If that happens, we may be asking ourselves, is it better to have one really good pairing 20 to 30 minutes a night? Or, would it be more beneficial to spread Chabot and Zub across two pairings and hopefully not have their impacts be mitigated too much?
At the goaltender position, the Senators cannot receive worse goaltending than they did through the bulk of last season. Incumbent starter Matt Murray had an abysmal first season with the Senators after signing an expensive three-year deal. At 26 years old, the Senators acquired Murray believing that his two Stanley Cups and youth would allow Murray to fit in well with the team’s young core. Coming off a down year in Pittsburgh, the hope was that Murray would bounce back and rediscover what helped make him successful earlier in his career. That never happened. Playing behind a rebuilding team will lead to some long nights, but last season marked one of the worst performances by any goaltender in the league.
Using Evolving-Hockey.com’s data, Murray had the sixth-worst ‘goals saved above average’ and fifth-worst ‘goals saved above expected’ metrics. Statistically, over the last two years, Murray has been one of the worst goaltenders in the league.
He did finish last season strong, so there is some hope that he can build off that and carry that performance through the beginning of the 2021-22 season. Murray arrived at training camp 15 lbs heavier and in the best shape of his career. Whether that translates with stronger play remains to be seen, but despite some poor numbers in his last preseason start, he looked better and more comfortable in net.
Thanks to the lack of depth in front of him, it could be another challenging season in which he is bombarded with shots. If he can withstand the pressure and give the Senators even just league-average goaltending, that will go a long way to keeping the Senators competitive.
If Murray’s struggles continue, the Senators will have to turn to career backup Anton Forsberg or Filip Gustavsson. In the latter’s case, Gustavsson provided the best goaltending that the Senators have received over the past calendar year. Granted, it is a relatively small sample size of games, but Gustavsson led the Senators with a .933 save percentage while compiling a 5-1-2 record in nine appearances. Evolving-Hockey.com’s data demonstrated that he was the only Senators goaltender to post positive ‘goals saved above average’ (6.28) and ‘goals saved above expected’ (3.39) rates.
This preseason, Gustavsson led the Senators in save percentage (.909) and goals saved above average (0.54). To this end, there is a strong case to be made that he has been Ottawa’s best goaltender. I recognize that the two players slotted ahead of him on the depth chart are veterans on one-way contracts. Similarly, by playing him in Belleville, the Senators will likely be affording him the opportunity to start more games. At the same time, if the rebuild is over, why isn’t the team rewarding its best performers – especially one playing such a critical position?
The Outlook
The offseason began with the owner promising some prominent Toronto media members that the organization would “search and destroy trying to find two key pieces to our team that we need to fill.”
The Senators obviously never found that veteran first-line centre that they wanted to insulate their younger players. Nor did they find the defensive defenceman to play in their top-four.
And those words hung over the offseason much like Eugene Melnyk’s brazen promises to spend to the cap starting in 2021.
In what was once billed as the first season in the team’s five-year plan of unparalleled success, the process towards contention has taken longer than many were hoping for.
Dragging things out seems to be the norm for Ottawa these days. Between the stalled Tkachuk contract negotiations and the team taking it to the first day of the NHL’s regular season to be cap compliant, things have moved slower than anticipated.
Things are beginning to shift, however.
Today’s Tkachuk contract announcement is precisely the kind of positive news that this fan base so richly deserves. For the Senators to extend Tkachuk for longer than three years and do it without bending on their internal policy on signing bonuses is a coup.
Does it erase history or alleviate many of the concerns relating to management and ownership?
No, but what it ensures is that apathy does not set in. Tkachuk’s return signifies a tremendous step forward in the process towards rebuilding some much-needed consumer confidence in the organization.
Even though this year was supposed to be the first year of unparalleled success, no one should fault an organization that relies so heavily upon gate-driven revenue for deviating from those plans. Even though the organization does have a problem with its messaging and promising events that will occur at some undisclosed point in the future, it is worth recognizing that the pandemic created an untenable financial situation for an already tight-pocketed franchise.
Projections for this year’s iteration of the Senators have not been kind.
The Athletic’s Dom Luszczyszyn unveiled his point projections for the 2021-22 season and he had the Senators finishing 29th out of the 32 teams. Dom’s projections included a full season’s worth of games from Brady Tkachuk and Colin White. But, with the latter undergoing shoulder surgery that will force him to miss four to six months and it may take some time before Tkachuk’s game rounds into form, the Senators are already behind the eight-ball to start the year.
It may benefit the Senators to continue to be patient this season and avoid any rash moves that only improve the team’s short-term interests. There would be nothing wrong with an approach that allows the young talent to develop and grow. The roster is already riddled with young players who have not only have an opportunity to play key roles, but be productive players. Talent like Chabot, Tkachuk, Stützle, Norris, Pinto, Zub, Batherson and Formenton provide the NHL-ready building blocks for this roster. And at some points this season, they will be joined by Jake Sanderson and Jacob Bernard-Docker. There are a lot of pieces to be excited about, but it’s probably going to take another season before this team contends for a playoff spot.
For the Senators to contend for a spot, they will need to stay healthy, get good goaltending and have more of their young players surpass the roles and responsibilities being given to many of the veterans. It is not impossible, but a ton of things have to go right for this team.
And if they don’t, well, another season of missing the postseason may not be the worst thing for this franchise either. The depth may not be there yet and adding another high pick could be just the silver lining this team needs before it looks to take a massive step forward next season.