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Thursday Think Tank: Duchene's Phenomenal 12 Months

January 17, 2019, 4:05 AM ET [30 Comments]
Trevor Shackles
Ottawa Senators Blogger • RSSArchiveCONTACT
You can follow me on Twitter @ShackTS

New Thursday Think Tank coming off of a great 5-2 win over the Avalanche!

Tkachuk off the schneid

Brady Tkachuk hadn’t scored since December 17th, which was 12 games ago. In fact, he had just one goal in his past 21 games. He finally got the monkey off his back last night with the first goal for the Senators, and it wasn’t exactly the prettiest:




Still though, it was a product of him being in the right place at the right time, which he has a knack for. It was only a matter of time before he scored again because it’s not like he wasn’t getting chances. Let’s cool it with the “send him to the AHL” talk; he is doing more than fine and just had not been getting any bounces.

What a year for Duchene

Over the past 82 games Matt Duchene has played (spanning two seasons), here are his totals:

-40 goals
-48 assists
-88 points

That is definitely first line centre production, and he has been everything the Senators possibly could have hoped for. His career high in points is 70 in 71 games, so I’m assuming that this is the most productive 82-game stretch of his career. If the Senators can keep him around and he is a first line centre for a while, then that will take the sting out of losing this year's first-round pick. However, that’s a massive if...

Considering he is a new father as well, I’d say it has been a pretty good twelve months for him overall. Although he is on a bad team right now, he will be handsomely paid by some team in the next six months, so I’d say that’s pretty solid.

Nilsson playing well so far


Anders Nilsson has played in six games with the Senators so far, and has posted a solid .923 SV% in that span. For a team that doesn’t want to give away a lottery pick, his performance is much appreciated, and there’s a chance that he can keep them from finishing dead last. He certainly hasn’t been a great goalie per se over the course of his career, but from now until the end of the season he will be tested to see if they should re-sign him for next season.

Ottawa still has Craig Anderson and Mike Condon under contract for 2019-20 as well, but Nilsson could be an option if one of them are able to be moved. I certainly wouldn’t rush to re-sign Nilsson, nor do I think he will come close to keeping up this pace. However, he’s gotten off to a good start, and you can be sure that the Senators will be watching him closely down the stretch.

Joint bid for LeBreton?

There’s a chance that LeBreton could be redeveloped with an arena for the Senators while having Melnyk still on board but not as full owner of the team:










As with any Melnyk rumour, I’ll take this with a grain of salt. Who knows if any of this is true, but the fact that all sides are willing to negotiate is interesting. Any deal that gets a rink for the Senators at LeBreton is a good one, although it would be bittersweet if Melnyk were still involved. At the same time, I’m not sure how long he would actually last, and this plan should theoretically help the team financially. It wouldn’t be perfect, but getting a rink at LeBreton is the first step towards getting Melnyk out of the picture.

7D madness

I don’t think anyone on planet earth would disagree with the statement that the Senators forwards are miles better than their defensemen. The defense has been historically bad, yet Guy Boucher just can’t stop playing seven defensemen, just like he did last night. Sure, they have a lot of bodies with Thomas Chabot, Cody Ceci, Dylan DeMelo, Christian Wolanin, Max Lajoie, Christian Jaros, Mark Borowiecki, and the injured Ben Harpur and Justin Falk, but half of those players haven’t even been good enough to play every single night.

The only ones who deserve to consistently be in the lineup are Chabot, DeMelo, and Wolanin to be honest. I don’t expect Ceci to be scratched, and the same goes for Lajoie. Falk can easily be waived, and then it’s a three-way battle between Jaros, Borowiecki, and Harpur for the last spot, which Jaros should probably have. Adding another mediocre 6th/7th defenseman to the lineup isn’t going to make the team better, and it just makes the lines much more complicated. Furthermore, it submarines the fourth line, so whoever is on it gets hardly any ice time. Someone like Nick Paul isn’t a world beater, but there’s no reason to have Borowiecki as the 7th defenseman over Paul. Stop this madness.

What on earth is this?


I leave you with this...If the creator is reading this, then I’m sorry, but these would instantly become worse than anything the Senators have ever had:




The rest of the odd designs were posted at BarDown.
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