Senators Postgame: Vegas Hands Ottawa Fourth Straight Loss

Chalk this up as a pretty standard Ottawa Senators game over the last few seasons. It was a slow start that put them down after one, a better second that was ruined by a bad goal against, and then a strong finish, but too little too late. Once again, the Senators lose a November game, and once again, the Senators lose to the Vegas Golden Knights. Let’s dive into the details of what’s been going wrong with this team.

READ MORE: Solving the Ottawa Senators Consistency Issues

November Woes Continue

Make that four straight losses for the Ottawa Senators. Keep in mind, this losing streak started with a brutal collapse against a lowly Philadelphia Flyers team, when the Sens were actually vying for their third straight win at the time. That’s just how it goes with this team. They’ll show stretches that make believers out of their fanbase, but then quickly follow that up with loss after loss after loss. After a 5-4 October, they now sit at 3-6-1 in November, putting them two games under .500 for the season. They are now second last in the division, just one point up on the rebuilding Montreal Canadiens.

Middle Six Forward Issues

There are a few forwards who haven’t been anywhere near good enough during this first quarter of the season. Shane Pinto has just one goal in 11 games. Ridly Greig has only two in 16 games. Michael Amadio’s at two in 19 games. David Perron has been held goalless and pointless through his eight games of work. These four guys sit sixth to ninth among Senators forwards in average ice-time per game, at 13-17 minutes per game. To have just five goals between them is unacceptable. I had them all scoring 15-20 goals in my preseason predictions. As of now, they’re all on pace to score less than 10.

Defensemen Problems, in More Ways than One

The Ottawa Senators made a concerted effort to have a more physical, harder to play against type of defense this season. They moved on from Brannstrom and Chychrun in favour of Kleven and Jensen. The problem is, the Senators gave up some offense to put this more defensive group together. The offense from their backend has predictably suffered. Their defensemen scored 47 goals last season, better than one every two games. This season, they have just three goals, which is about one every six games.

The trade-off was supposed to be better defense. Unfortunately, the defensive problems persist. There was poor net-front coverage on the first goal against, with Kleven and Bernard-Docker both going after the same Golden Knight and leaving Eichel alone in the slot. The third goal against saw Kleven make a bad pinch, allowing Dorofeyev to get the step he needed to score his tenth of the season.

All in all, tonight was a good example of how leaving Hamonic out of the lineup will not solve all the problems. Kleven and Bernard-Docker are both going to make youthful mistakes. We’ve also seen some really poor defensive play from Zub, and even Sanderson.  This is a defensive group that needs to be better at both ends of the rink. Chabot and Jensen have been rock solid most nights, but there are too many defensive lapses from this group as a whole, and not enough offense to make up for it.