By Ken Hawkins (a.k.a. khawk)
The Senators lost 4-0 to the St. Louis Blues on Friday, in a game where they once again failed to gain any kind of offensive traction. Despite Brady Tkachuk having claimed in the media that their effort in the Dallas game wasn’t good enough, it was every bit as lacking in this game as they once again failed to register more than 20 shots on goal. This has become a problematic trend for the Senators, who have now scored 2 ES goals or less in each of their past 5 games. Anton Forsberg played his first game since Dec. 8th, but unfortunately couldn’t do better than yielding 4GA with a 0.840 sv% on just 25 shots. They even somehow managed to allow Brandon Saad to score a natural hat trick… his first hat trick since the pre-COVID era, and just his 5th, 6th, and 7th goals on the year.
STL 4 - OTT 0 (NHL Highlights)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmNXf-cyZIM/
At this point, you can either choose to see the glass as half-full or half-empty. Half-full would focus on the fact that they’re now 8 games into a gruelling 9-game road trip with a 4-4-0 record, despite being without Linus Ullmark for 6 of those games. Most fans would have been satisfied with them being 4-4-0 under those circumstances, and they’ve now got Zub back from injury and Pinto playing more like the 2023/24 version of himself. Half-empty will remind people that this team started the road trip at 3-0, meaning that they’ve now gone 1-4-0 in their last 5GP, and really only played one solid 60-minute game vs. MIN. Key players like Tkachuk and Stutzle have been producing at their lowest rate of the season on this road trip, and it feels like Head Coach Travis Green is just scrambling lines. As always, reality is probably somewhere in between, but it will certainly be a welcome change of pace to have the benefit of a few home games in the near future.
The Good - You kind of have to re-imagine the meaning of “good” in order to legitimately apply that word to the Senators’ performance in this game. The only players who didn’t have a minus +/- rating for this game were Gaudette, Ostapchuk, Cousins, Gregor, Kleven, and Hamonic… who were 6 of the 7 F/D with the least ice-time in the game. The 7th was Reinhardt, who deserves a nod for dropping the gloves after Hamonic was hit awkwardly into the boards with just seconds left in the 1st period. It’s also good to have Zub back in the line-up, who didn’t have a great game but still led the team with 3 blocks and was the only top-4D to not be worse than a -1 rating.
The Bad - To some extent everyone else wearing a Senators jersey could be noted in this section, however there were a couple of stand-outs. The top-D pairing of Thomas Chabot and Nick Jensen was absolutely dreadful in this game, where they were a combined -5 and conspicuously at fault in both of the first STL goals of the game. Bad decisions with the puck, poor recovery speed… you just hope that it was an off-night, because there are far more dangerous threats in the NHL than Schenn/Saad. Tim Stutzle gets a lot of leash because of how good he usually is, but he’s now gone without a point in 3-straight games, and has just 1A in his last 5GP. Secondary scoring has also been scarce with limited production from the likes of Giroux, Batherson, and Norris.
The Ugly - Goaltending just keeps rearing its head as a source of drama for the Senators. Despite the substantial move of adding Linus Ullmark, only 2 NHL teams have used more goaltenders than OTT so far this season. The return of Anton Forsberg allowed for the return of Mads Sogaard to the AHL, but it also reinforced the need for a positional upgrade. Despite having 2 shutouts, Forsberg has given up 3 or 4 goals in each of the 10 other games in which he’s played, and has registered a sub-.890sv% in 9 of those 10 games. It’s one thing for that to be coming from Leevi Merilainen at age 22, but it’s just not the kind of support that’s expected of an established NHL back-up G. GM Steve Staios needs to be looking for a more secure beta option in goal for when Ullmark isn’t available.
The loss drops the Senators to a 19-17-2 record on the season, but they remain in the 8th playoff spot in the Eastern Conference with games in hand. That said, the last game of their extended road trip is next Tuesday, and is a critical one as it represents a 4-point game vs. the Detroit Red Wings. For the first time in a month they will be facing an Atlantic Division rival, and they’ll need to play with a lot more focus and intensity than they showed vs. DAL/STL if they want to avoid another 3-game losing streak. David Perron, Michael Amadio, and Linus Ullmark will remain out of the lineup for the Senators, and there remains no clear timeframe for their return. Don’t be surprised if Leevi Merilainen gets the start in DET, given that he’s the only goaltender other than Linus Ullmark to have registered a road win since late October.
What did you think of the Senators’ loss to the Blues? Please feel free to comment below, and as always thanks for reading!
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