Assessing the Ottawa Senators Nine Game Road Trip

Three weeks ago, I broke down the gruelling road trip that the Ottawa Senators had just embarked on. It was to be a nine game road trip, their longest in team history, split up by Christmas. The Senators started the road trip in a playoff spot, with the hopes of staying in one after the nine games. Well, the nine games are up, and the Senators are out of the playoffs! Kind of. They sit a point back of the Columbus Blue Jackets and Pittsburgh Penguins, but they have a better point percentage than both those teams because of their games in hand.  Let’s dive into the details on what went right and what went wrong with the Senators longest road trip of the season.

READ MORE: It’s Now or Never for Anton Forsberg

Injury Issues

Let’s go down the list of injuries suffered by the Senators over the road trip, shall we?

• Michael Amadio, injured against the Canucks.
• Linus Ullmark, injured against the Oilers.
• Travis Hamonic, injured against the Blues.
• Jacob Bernard-Docker, injured at practice.

To add to that, David Perron is still out, and the Senators battled through a flu bug during the trip. While not with the Senators, top prospect Carter Yakemchuk was also injured during this time and will be out for a while.

The reality is that the one injury that truly matters is Ullmark’s. He had been playing so well and the depth behind him is a big question mark. It’s also hard to gauge when he’ll be back. Hopefully the other Senators goalies can stand in well enough over the next while to keep the Senators in the playoff mix.

Offensive Struggles

The Senators didn’t have a single player close to a point per game during the road trip. Their best was Brady Tkachuk, with six points. Ridly Greig scored the most goals with four. Their power play operated at just 16.7%. They scored just 2.33 goals per game, which ranked 30th in the league during that time. Two guys who really struggled to get going were Drake Batherson and Adam Gaudette. Batherson scored just three points, none of them goals. Gaudette was held to just one assist and has now gone goalless in 12 straight games. Tim Stützle was off his normal pace, scoring just five points in the nine games.

Goalie’s Galore

It’s always a scary time when a team has to work their way to their third string goalie. On this trip alone, the Ottawa Senators started four different goalies. Here’s how they did:

• Linus Ullmark: 2-0, .957 SV%, one unfortunate injury
• Leevi Merilainen: 2-2, .884 SV%
• Anton Forsberg: 0-1-1, .879 SV%
• Mads Sogaard: 0-1, .826 SV%

With numbers like these, you can understand the nervousness of the fanbase as they face life without Ullmark.

Final Thoughts

All in all, the road trip was solid enough for the Ottawa Senators. It had the looks of being an all-time great trip early on, but the Senators fell into tough times during the second half of it. The goal was to stay in the playoff mix by the end of the trip, and that’s what they did. As a bit of an aside, how annoying is it that their arena was being used for a World Junior Tournament where Team Canada decided to leave some of their best players off the roster (including Yakemchuk) and weren’t even able to make it to the medal round? Oh well, let’s hope for better hockey to be played by the hometown team in that arena in the months to come.