It doesn’t take a great mathematician to realize it: the Ottawa Senators will miss the playoffs for the seventh straight year this spring.
Their 6-3 loss on Sunday in Vegas, a fourth in a row, a streak in which they allowed 19 goals and scored only 10, now pushes them back to… 12 points behind the Washington Capitals and the last place giving access series, with two more games to play.
The Senators are languishing in 29th place in the overall hockey rankings. Only the Anaheim Ducks, San Jose Sharks and Chicago Blackhawks are doing worse this season.
The poor Columbus Blue Jackets have three more points, but have played six more games. At the rate the Senators are winning games, could they catch up?
The arrival of Jacques Martin as coaches advisor a dozen days ago was not a bad idea, but would he be able to transform a moribund organization with so little power?
New owner Michael Andlauer and president Steve Staios must now think of Senators fans – who were promised a successful rebuild six years ago – and give them some hope. They were quite patient.
The arrival of a new general manager, a position vacant since the dismissal of Pierre Dorion at the beginning of November, and the hiring of a coach to replace D. J. Smith, whose record now stands at 131-154-32 in a little more than five years in Ottawa, would help give some hope to the team’s fans.
Upon arriving in Buffalo in 2020, general manager Kevyn Adams chose to break the mold. He traded three pillars of the previous rebuild, Sam Reinhart, Jack Eichel and defenseman Rasmus Ristolainen, over the next year for picks and prospects.
Reinhart, Eichel and Ristolainen had spent too many years losing and the climate in the locker room had become gloomy, believed the new CEO. Added to this was a conflict between Eichel and the organization over a medical plan to follow regarding the captain’s injury.
Buffalo has stockpiled draft picks in recent years through the Adams trade and has taken eleven times in the first three rounds in three years. Kevyn Adams’ strategy postponed the completion of the previous reconstruction, but helped to replenish the bank of prospects likely to eventually join Rasmus Dahlin, Tage Thompson and company. The jury is still out.
After his hiring in Edmonton in 2015 as president and general manager, Peter Chiarelli wanted to improve the Oilers’ defense. He offered a monstrous contract to Andrej Sekera, traded winger Taylor Hall for defenseman Adam Larsson, wrongly believing he could replace Hall with Milan Lucic, also covered in gold, sacrificed first and second round picks for the young defenseman Griffin Reinhart and obtained goaltender Cam Talbot for second and third round picks.
Chiarelli’s plan, welcomed to Alberta with the welcome gift of 2015 first overall pick Connor McDavid, wasn’t bad, but he didn’t make the right player choices. He was kicked out of Edmonton in infamy, after missing the playoffs three out of four years.
In Detroit, Steve Yzerman has increased the hiring of veterans for two years to finally reach the playoffs, after having missed them every year since 2017. After a splendid start to the season, the Red Wings have won only 10 of their last 24 games and would find themselves excluded if the playoffs were to start today.
Pierre Dorion believed he had built the right core to climb among the NHL’s elite with Tim Stützle, Brady Tkachuk, Thomas Chabot, Drake Batherson, Jake Sanderson, Erik Brannstrom, Shane Pinto, then Alex DeBrincat and Jakob Chychrun.
It is up to his successor to determine who among these players will be part of the future plans and who is delaying the emergence of this formation.
Pierre Dorion has promised participation in the playoffs for the last two years, or at least he has taken the means to achieve it. Kent Hughes and Jeff Gorton did the opposite in Montreal and begged for patience in a rebuilding process.
Ottawa has drafted only once in the first two rounds in the last two drafts, a 64th overall pick in 2022, and only three times in the first three rounds.
During the same period, CH drafted five times in the first two rounds, including twice in the top 5, and eight times in the first three rounds, while giving up late first-round and second-round picks. round to get Alex Newhook.
The Senators have won only six more wins than the Canadiens since the start of the 2022-2023 season and are eight points behind Montreal, with four games in hand, this season. Ottawa fans deserve better. Yes.
