Ottawa Senators Postgame: Ullmark Stands Tall, Sens Back to .500

Tonight’s assignment was pretty simple for the Ottawa Senators- make sure the struggling Nashville Predators keep struggling. They had lost six in a row entering tonight, and sat second worst in the NHL with a .370 point percentage. They had also scored a league worst 60 goals entering tonight’s game. The problem is, the Senators haven’t exactly taken advantage of these types of situations over the last several years. You couldn’t blame Senators fans for feeling uneasy about tonight’s game. Maybe things are starting to change with this team, though. They played a well-rounded game, beating the Predators 3-1. This win brings them back to .500 for the first time since November 16th. Let’s dive into the details!

READ MORE: Steve Staios’ Decisions Have Led to a Shallow Ottawa Senators Defense

Linus Ullmark’s Strong Stretch

The concern over Ullmark’s early season play was valid. He came here with sky-high expectations, having signed a long-term contract after the big offseason trade to be this team’s number one goalie for the next several years. It was about two weeks ago that I wrote about his play being one of the Senators biggest weaknesses through the first quarter of the season, with a woeful .881 save percentage at that point. Flashforward to today, and it seems like Ullmark has found his game. He made a season high 37 saves tonight, and plenty from dangerous spots. That makes four straight solid starts for Ullmark. He has a .939 save percentage during that time. Ullmark playing like this is exactly what Steve Staios envisioned when he pulled off the big trade with the Boston Bruins. It’s hard not to be excited about the Senators with Ullmark playing like this.

Cousins Steps Up

Nick Cousins put up a Brady Tkachuk type statline tonight- one goal, four shots, five hits, and three blocked shots. Perhaps most noteworthy is that Travis Green trusted him to play a season high 17:21. There’s no question that Cousins is playing his best hockey of the season right now. He has two goals in the last three games, playing at least 13 minutes in all three games. Prior to that, he had played under 13 minutes in 12 straight games. Add in the physicality of Zack Ostapchuk and the peskiness of Ridly Greig, and the Senators have quite an annoying bottom six to play against.

Additional Notes

It feels like Shane Pinto is bound to break out soon. He had a solid game tonight. Maybe the most impressive part of his game was taking 29 faceoffs. That stands out as a whole lot of faceoffs. He won 17 of them, by the way. Shoutout to Jacob Bernard-Docker for his first of the season, an absolute rocket. With just four goals all season from their backend coming into tonight, the Ottawa Senators need their defense to chip in more offensively. Bernard-Docker shouldn’t be leading the way in that regard, but he’s shown himself to have a solid shot when the opportunity comes his way. That’s two straight games giving up just one goal for the Sens. Tomorrow night, they’ll look to keep up the solid defensive play, against the low scoring New York Islanders. The big question is whether or not they choose to play Linus Ullmark on back to back nights. I would, but I’m not exactly in charge of those types of decisions.