FIVE QUICK THOUGHTS
-Perhaps this team has earned a thought or five. Words like adversity and resilience get thrown around a lot in the sports world but you can really see that on display with this year’s edition of the Ottawa Senators. It’s been there all year actually. I don’t have the receipts to show it but I think there was maybe eight or nine separate times over the course of the season where some form of full scale panic took over in a portion of the fan base or an off-ice distraction threatened to derail the season entirely. And every time the Sens bounced back. 25 best friends, as Jake Sanderson put it. Those two ugly losses in Florida are maybe the most recent example. Down five against the very same Florida Panthers, the Sens seemed fairly cooked. And then they flipped the switch entirely. A 4-1-0 record on what looked like a brutal homestand including some dominant wins against top teams and under a next level kind of pressure with the season hanging in the balance. Still some work to do over the next few games obviously but they’re knocking on the door now.
-It’s impossible to say what caused it and maybe it’s as simple as getting completely healthy but it looks to me like Brady Tkachuk has found another gear. And at the best possible time. It’s probably worth adding that he was never really playing poorly. Maybe a little more restrained than what we were used to but still productive as heck. The thing that looks different now is his skating. Brady is motorin’ out there and it has opposing defenders on their heels. The five assists in two games certainly highlight the fact but Brady Tkachuk is such an underrated playmaker. When he’s skating, getting to the dirty areas of the ice and passing the puck like he can, he really makes everyone around him better. There’s been a lot of mindless noise around Tkachuk this season but the Captain is leading the way and seems to have saved his best hockey for the most important time of year.
-Earlier this week, Linus Ullmark was named as Ottawa’s nominee for the Masterton Trophy, in recognition of his perseverance in the face of what is an ongoing issues with his mental health. Ullmark’s struggle isn’t unique. It’s entirely human actually. What is unique is his willingness to share the details of something so personal and in a profession that has a long way to go in terms of understanding and supporting people as they deal with the realities of being uh a human being. It’s obviously been a roller coaster of a season for Ullmark both on and off the ice but in the last few games and basically since that first period against the Panthers, he looks locked in. When Ullmark is at his best, his positioning is sound and he’s challenging shooters. We’ve see a lot of that in his wins over Carolina, Tampa Bay and Florida. Like a lot of players on this team, Ullmark has stepped in a big way in the last eight days. This team will go as far as Ullmark takes them.
-“I shocked the world”. With those four words yesterday, Thomas Chabot confirmed what most of us already knew – the guy is as tough as they come. And in the words of Bruce Garrioch, Chabot “bleeds the logo”. With two metal plates in his arm and the screws still clanking around in there, Thomas Chabot returned to the Ottawa lineup on Thursday night and did his part to help drag this team towards the post-season. It’s hard to articulate just how much this guy means to the Sens on and off the ice and just how much he cares about his teammates. But when you see him come back that quickly from such a serious injury and hear the quotes from the players, it’s pretty friggin’ clear. He finished last night with 21:16 of ice time and really looked like he hasn’t missed a beat.
-And now, a quick word about Travis Green. I don’t know exactly what his secret has been this season but he has this team playing some of the most defensively sound and structured hockey we have seen from a Sens team in uh…well maybe ever. It’s the kind of five-man buy in that coaches dream of and it’s every single guy on the roster. This kind of commitment to team defence and to just outworking the opposition almost every night is one of the reasons that people around the league and even other players are noting just how far this team has come and just how dangerous they would be in the post-season. There are a few really strong candidates for the Jack Adams this year but Travis Green absolutely deserves some votes.
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