Sens primed to shake up Eastern Conference playoff picture
Published
Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear.
For the Toronto Maple Leafs, that’s more than a canned safety warning on a car’s rear-view. The Ottawa Senators delivered this message to Craig Berube’s team on Saturday, and appear primed to shake up the entire Eastern Conference playoff picture.
For months we have waited for Travis Green’s team to show us they’re more than a fringe wild-card contender. We’ve seen flashes of brilliance from their top-end players for some time now, but the repeatability of high-end play — especially against elite competition — was fleeting. Couple that with years of unreliable goaltending, and you understand why Ottawa’s playoff drought reached seven years.
But a month out from the 2025 Stanley Cup playoffs, we can say an eighth year outside the postseason looks tremendously unlikely. In a literal sense, the Senators have put some real distance between them (holding the first wild-card slot) and the chasing pack.
More meaningful to me is just how well this team is playing. If it wasn’t obvious during Ottawa’s 4-2 road victory over Toronto on Saturday night, the team is playing like a bona fide playoff power. It’s simply a deeper, more consistent skating group, backstopped by the steady Linus Ullmark.
They’re playing so well that it should give pause to several teams who may have been resting easy during the regular-season slog. Within the division, Toronto and the Tampa Bay Lightning are just four points up on Ottawa in the standings — breathing room, but barely.
Not only are they both at risk of sliding into a wild-card spot if Ottawa stays hot, but one of them sliding down might draw Ottawa into a 2-vs.-3 Atlantic series. Round one Battle of Ontario, anyone?
If you are looking for an indicator Ottawa has meaningfully closed the gap, look at the year-over-year change observed just within the Ontario teams. Toronto is just five goals clear of Ottawa after 66 games – a far cry from where we were 12 months ago.
In terms of sheer star power, Ottawa cannot match Toronto’s high-end attackers (we are three Bobby McMann goals away from Toronto having six 20-plus goal scorers), to say nothing of the extraordinary skill and depth Tampa Bay and Florida carry into the postseason.
But that doesn’t mean Ottawa is lacking punching power; far from it. Tim Stutzle is a superstar in the making and clearly the prize of the 2020 draft. Defenceman Thomas Chabot is having a Norris Trophy-calibre season. The goaltending tandem of Ullmark and Anton Forsberg has been top 10 in the NHL all season long.
In fact, it’s the defensive and goaltending results supercharging this team to the promised land. The inroads made versus prior seasons (with a similar core, mind you) tie back to their new-found ability to slow down opposition attacks and stymie scoring:
A big piece of this is the investment made to the goaltending position and Ullmark specifically, but it should not be lost on anyone that the Senators are conceding goals this season at a rate indiscernible from the Vegas Golden Knights and Minnesota Wild, historically two defensive powerhouses.
Make no mistake, Ottawa still has to seal the deal. They are qualifying for the playoffs in nearly 95 per cent of scenarios right now, but they can ill afford a slump to end the regular season; such an outcome could pose devastating effects and open the door to another chasing wild-card hopeful.
But Green’s team is firing on all cylinders right now, and if this hot streak continues through March, they may well disrupt the hierarchy of the Atlantic Division by season’s end.
Data via Natural Stat Trick, NHL.com, Evolving Hockey, Hockey Reference