Senators Postgame: Road Woes Continue in Loss to Sabres

Talk about a let down. After a few great games by the Ottawa Senators that had the fanbase really starting to believe in this year’s team, they proceed to get beat down by the Buffalo Sabres. It was a bit of a fluky power play goal that got the scoring started for the Sabres in the first, but aside from that, it was a decent start for the Senators. The problems came at the start of the next two periods. Had you sat back down even a minute late to either period, you would’ve missed three Sabres goals. One at the start of the second, and two at the start of the third. In the Senators end, it was a frustrating 5-1 loss, sending the Senators back to .500 with a 6-6 record. Let’s dive into the details

READ MORE: Surprise Senators Stats to Start the Season

Woes on the Road

This loss puts the Ottawa Senators at 1-5 on the road to start the season. On the bright side, they’re sitting at am impressive 5-1 at home, but their play on the road has to improve. Sure, a few of their games on the road weren’t too bad- they had a tough late loss to the Golden Knights in Vegas and a hard-fought loss to the Rangers in New York. They’ve also played a few brutal road games, including this one, and the early season loss in Montreal. That’s two beat downs to divisional rivals. This is nothing new, either. The Senators were three games over .500 at home last season, but seven games under .500 on the road.  The year before that, they were 10 games over .500 at home and a woeful six games under .500 on the road.

If this team wants to make the playoffs, they need to figure out how to play a more complete game, with a higher compete level away from home. That comes from the leadership group, who has been a part of the losing ways on the road for years now. The likes of Tkachuk, Giroux, Chabot, Sanderson, and Stützle need to play a full sixty minutes of detail-oriented, hard working hockey on the road.

Special Teams Struggle

As the old saying goes, lose the special teams battle, lose the game. I’m not sure if that’s actually an old saying but it’s certainly true more often than not. In tonight’s game, it was the Sabres with two power play goals and the Senators with none. That’s now three straight games without a power play goal for the Senators. Their penalty kill has been mediocre all season, now sitting around 75%. All Sens fans remember the special teams struggle a season ago. They were bottom 10 in the league on the power play, and bottom five on the penalty kill. This new coaching staff has been tasked with helping improve those areas. Inevitably, though, the players have to find a way to make it work. A guy I’d like to see elevate both the power play and penalty kill is Josh Norris. He can play a little bit of a sleepy game sometimes. In these situations, he needs to take them on with full intensity.

Lack of Attention to Detail

For this one, I’ll point to a few examples that stood out to make. Let’s start with the second Sabres goal, early in the second. Brady Tkachuk was caught puck watching. He completely lost Byram pinching down low from the point. To start the third, it was another Byram goal. This time, all three forwards, Tkachuk, Stützle, and Greig wandered down low, so Byram received the puck with plenty of space. Now that’s also a shot that someone needs to block, whether it’s Stützle, Tkachuk, Chabot, or Ullmark. That puck can’t make its way through like that in a close game. The next goal saw Giroux as the first forward back. The problem is, he ended up slowing down and watching the puck instead of picking up a man. This left Sanderson to try to take two guys, which obviously didn’t work out

I also didn’t like some of the penalties. MacEwan can’t make contact with the goalie on his penalty. He can dislike that call all he wants, but he put himself in a position to take a penalty while behind the net in the offensive zone; unacceptable. Gaudette took a bad tripping penalty as well, which is when Peterka scored his second goal of the game to make it 5-1. That’s too many silly mistakes made, especially on the road against a desperate team.

Additional Notes

If it was up to me, I would start Ullmark in the next game on Thursday. I don’t necessarily think you want to start a goalie controversy early in the season. Why not show confidence in the goalie you traded for and then signed to a massive contract. He made his share of huge saves in this one, although a couple of the goals against weren’t great. Nonetheless, he’s the number one guy, and should be treated like that, for now. It’s a big game to try to say above .500, let’s have Ullmark step up and prove himself in that one.

Tkachuk is at his best when he is playing an intense game. Too often over the last few years, though, he goes from intense, to frustrated. That leads to what you saw in this one with the shenanigans at the end of the game. I honestly think a good indication of the Senators success will be how many penalty minutes Tkachuk ends up with. When his team is down big late, he usually decides to rough someone up, piling up the penalty minutes. Hopefully, there’s less of that this year, and more of the intense Tkachuk that is an absolute force in the tough areas.

The Senators need Zub back. His value to the team is so obvious when you see Hamonic being asked to play too much, and Sanderson going from a superstar when paired with Zub, to the ups and downs of the last several games. A top four of Sanderson, Zub, Chabot, and Jensen is playoff caliber. The question is, how many games will the Senators actually have all four of those guys in the lineup?

Up next for the Ottawa Senators? A home game (thankfully) against the New York Islanders, Thursday at 7pm!