Ullmark should help Senators put Atlantic Division on notice
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It has been many years since the Ottawa Senators have felt confident in net. But after acquiring Linus Ullmark this off-season, Ottawa finally has a difference maker in net — one who should put Atlantic Division playoff contenders on notice.
The Senators have been mired in a painfully long rebuild since their run to the Eastern Conference Finals in 2016-17. It’s a rebuild that has spanned multiple coaching staffs, front offices, and even ownership groups — a hallmark sign of sustained underperformance.
The curious part about how long this rebuild has taken is that it differentiates from comparables around the league. We’ve seen failed (and extensively long) rebuilds many times over, but they are usually the result of front offices missing big in the draft and development cycle.
Ottawa has had their share of missteps, but the collection of young talent — and in most cases, young talent that’s now established at the NHL level — is impressive. Forwards like Brady Tkachuk, Tim Stutzle, and Josh Norris would play in most top sixes around the league. Artem Zub, Thomas Chabot, and Jake Sanderson would have a place in just about every defensive top four.
And for at least the past two seasons, if you caught this team on the right night, they looked playoff-calibre — an up-tempo, aggressive group that can take the game to opponents.
But the goaltending. Oh, the goaltending.
How much you want to blame the generally young roster and previous coaching staff for woeful defensive performances over the years is up to you. But make no mistake, Ottawa’s goaltenders rarely helped the cause. On many nights, they were just pouring gasoline on the fire.
Consider the performance of Ottawa’s goaltenders since the beginning stages of the rebuild. We will use Goals Saved vs Expected (“GSAx”) to account for the differences in shot quality faced around the league, but for the stats purists, Ottawa is a ghastly 27th in all situations save percentage (89.6) over this seven-year stretch:
Ugly, ugly, ugly. For every 60 minutes played, Senators goaltenders stopped -0.3 goals fewer than replacement-level goaltenders would have against the same volume and quality of shots, good for dead last in the National Hockey League. And with the lone exception of Anton Forsberg (2021-23), Just about every goaltender in the Senators' carousel have been blitzed off the ice:
It’s a goalie graveyard, and it’s worth emphasizing Ottawa hasn’t strategically avoided investing at this position – they simply made bad bets in bulk, be it trading for Matt Murray, committing to Joonas Korpisalo long term, and even moving off of now-Minnesota Wild goaltender Filip Gustavsson.
It’s why Ottawa was so aggressive in pursuing Ullmark this past off-season. Whether he ends up staying beyond this final year of his contract in Ottawa is up to him and the Senators front office, but for at least the 2024-25 season, you can rest assured he’s a sizable upgrade from what they have experienced. And if backup Forsberg is the healthier pre-2023 version of himself, this is a quality duo for the full season.
That said, I’m fascinated to see how much of a net improvement they get from bringing Ullmark into the fold. Ottawa’s goaltenders may not have been very formidable, but they also were under siege on some nights.
Ullmark has been reliably great for years, but he was playing in a different environment — one insulated heavily by the venerable Bruins defensive structure in the Patrice Bergeron era. It will be just as much an adjustment for Ottawa as it will be for Ullmark.
If Ullmark can deliver results close to what he gave Boston for years, this Senators team is a coiled spring, one that could see them leapfrog one of the legacy Atlantic Division playoff teams.
Data via Natural Stat Trick, NHL.com, Evolving Hockey