Ottawa Senators year in review

[yave1964]

PRESEASON OUTLOOK: After a surprising late season surge led by an unknown goalie nicknamed the Hamburgler, the Sens made the playoffs in 2014-15 and hopes were high for this season for them to build upon it. Some thought they would build with the young forwards and be a legit contender, others felt the previous year was a bit of a fluke.

 

FINAL RECORD: 38-35-9 11TH in the East. Missed the postseason

 

STRANGE STAT: The Senators goalies were 3-1-1 in day games with an insane 1.69 goals against and .953 save pct. But Hammond and Anderson were 35-34-8 with an awful combined 2.80 goals against and ordinary at best .912 save pct. They need to petition the league for more matinee games. Mark Bowowiecki took stay at home defense to an absurd degree, on the entire year he only managed 27 for the entire year. In one stretch from mid-November til nearly Christmas, a stretch of 16 games, he only had one shot in that entire time. For then entire season he had 1 goal and 1 assist.

 

HIGH POINT OF THE YEAR: When they defeated the Panthers on December 8th, they had won 7 of 10 and were sitting at 15-8-5. The seven wins included nice wins against eventual playoff teams Florida, the BlackHawks, Flyers, Islanders and Stars. They looked like the previous season was for real.

 

 LOW POINT OF THE YEAR: They won a few from then on until March which had been the time when they caught fire the previous year. But this year from March first til the 26th they went 4-9 to essentially end their season. The goaltending which had been white hot the previous March betrayed them, in the 9 losses they gave up 34 goals, just under 4 a game.

 

WHAT WENT RIGHT: Start with Erik Karlsson who continued his magnificent career ((16-66-82) with a brilliant year. Young froward Mark Stone (23-38-61) and Mike Hoffman (29-30-59) were absolutely as good as advertised. Mika Zibinajad (21-30-51) had a breakout year. Bobby Ryan (22-34-56) had a bit of a bounce back year. Dion Phaneuf was acquired in a trade from Toronto to bolster the defense. Zack Smith came out of nowhere to score 25 goals. Jean-Gabriel Pageau was Mr. Everything (19-24-43) winning tons of faceoffs in addition to his scoring and hitting everything that moved. Cody Ceci pitched in 10 goals from the back end. Mark Methot added solid defense if nothing else.

 

WHAT WENT WRONG: Start with the netminding, the Sens gave up the third most goals in all of Hockey betraying a solid offense with putrid goaltending and defense. Kyle Turris was awful and then was injured, missing 25 games. Alex Chiasson, part of the payoff for Spezza is looking like a bust with only 8 goals in spite of being given every opportunity to shine. Chris Neil looks like his time is up. Way to many AHL defenseman with zero talent were given regular shifts, Borowiecki, Wideman and Wiercioch were regulars most ofthe year and none can play. Scott Gomez played a total of 34 games this year with 1 goal.Chris Phillips is done. Overall it comes down to the forwards and bottom four defense seriously let this team down.

 

MVP: Karlsson   continued to build his legend. Clearly the heart and soul of the team.

 

FREE AGENTS: Long time Senators Chris Phillips and Chris Neil are free agents and have likely played their final game for Ottawa. Gomez is gone. They are losing nothing they cannot live without.

 

TOP PROSPECTS: For the immediate future Nick Paul and Ryan Dzingel are forwards who can play bottom six roles but not much more should be expected. On defense a couple of guys like Ben Harpur and Fredrik Claesson will push the bottom tier guys but to be honest, neither is much of a player. The cupboards are not bare but after adding some seriously talented young players in the past few years, what is ready are more supporting role players than anything.  Forwards such as Max McCormick, Buddy Robinson and Puempel will also be in the mix but none are really much as players.

 

OFFSEASON QUESTION MARKS: Phaneuf can play, too much was expected in Toronto, in a supporting role now he should help the defense but is it enough? Can they find a bottom pair for the defense that can really play? Can Anderson bounce back from a poor year and if not, who is the real Hammond the one from two years ago that carried the team to the postseason or the one last year who was awful?

 

[ScottM]

Every Senators fan should be thankful for Karlsson. Without him, the season would have been a complete disaster. Stone and Hoffman were certainly good, but I was hoping to see a bit more advancement from both of them. Maybe I was looking for too much too early though. If we see continued growth in the upcoming season, all is good. Zack Smith was absolutely a nice surprise. And saying that is an understatement.

 

I'm ready to move on from Anderson. I've addressed that a few times on the forum, so I won't go into that. Hammond's save percentage was close to Anderson's, and his GAA was noticeably better. I was less than thrilled with him, but I'd like to see us try a Hammond/O'Connor tandem next season. We definitely need to make some moves in the offseason. Too many things to address here, and I don't want to duplicate my other thread.

 

All in all, I'm right here with the original post. I think it summed things up quite well.

[WordsOfWisdom]

On 01/05/2016 at 0:16 PM, yave1964 said:

Dion Phaneuf was acquired in a trade from Toronto to bolster the defense.

 

 

 

[yave1964]

57 minutes ago, WordsOfWisdom said:

 

 

 

Says just how bad the Senators defense is, lol.

 

  Actually Dion is not THAT bad, he just is overpaid and was asked to do too much in Toronto. As a player he could play for me, just use him within his abilities and he would be fine. Toronto just wanted more from him than he could bring to the table.

[ScottM]

7 minutes ago, yave1964 said:

Says just how bad the Senators defense is, lol.

 

  Actually Dion is not THAT bad, he just is overpaid and was asked to do too much in Toronto. As a player he could play for me, just use him within his abilities and he would be fine. Toronto just wanted more from him than he could bring to the table.

 

I think that sums it up very well. Dion is not a bad hockey player, but he's a bad guy to count on as THE guy in your defensive corps. Back in his Calgary days, he could fill that role, but that's long past. I think he makes a great #3 guy, or maybe even a #2 guy in the right set up. He'll be much more suited to a role in Ottawa, knowing Karlsson is the clear-cut #1 guy than he was to trying to fill that role himself in Toronto.