FIVE QUICK THOUGHTS
-Bad and getting worse. That’s the best way to describe the Ottawa Senators. You might think a few days off to recharge the batteries would help them get back on track but they somehow managed to look worse in their first game back from the holiday break. The Bruins are one of the teams that Ottawa would have to chase down if they were going to do the unthinkable and crawl back into a playoff spot but based on what we saw last night, there is zero chance of that happening. Boston controlled this game from the opening face off and proved that they are in another league right now.
-With the loss, the Senators now sit 15 points back of the Boston Bruins and Toronto Maple Leafs for 3rd in the Atlantic Division and 14 points back of the New York Islanders for the second Wild Card spot. With 47 games left in the season, the playoffs are pretty much out of reach. At the same time, the two teams behind Ottawa in the standings both closed ground. The Senators are just 4 points clear of the Sabres and 7 up on the Coyotes, although they have games in hand on both those teams. It’s going to take a special kind of awful for the Senators to fall any further than 29th but they look like they have it in them right now.
-Coming into this season, if I had asked you to name the most important player on this team, almost 100% of you would have answered either Erik Karlsson or Craig Anderson. It has been that way for years in Ottawa. So when those two players are both having less than stellar seasons, it shouldn’t be a huge surprise that the Senators have struggled this year. That 3rd Boston goal was a perfect example. Karlsson fails to get a shot through, that he almost always gets through and then is slow getting back. And then Anderson gets beat by a wrist shot from just inside the blue line. When those two guys look that dreadful, it’s going to be a long night. Karlsson finished the game -3 and Anderson had a .783 sv%. Not good enough.
-This was another one of those nights where the performance of a couple of the team’s young players was the only good part about the game. Filip Chlapik showed flashes of strong skating and a surprisingly good shot. That combined with solid offensive instincts is going to make him a solid NHL player one day and he actually looks like he could contribute now. And what can you say about Thomas Chabot? As if often the case with him, you could see him getting more comfortable the more he played (he finished with 21:17 last night). He’s incredibly aggressive in the offensive zone (maybe to a fault at times) but man is he fun to watch. In his post-game comments, Boucher mentioned playing the young players a little bit more in the upcoming games, mentioning Chlapik and Chabot specifically.
-It’s becoming pretty clear that the Senators are seriously considering Mike Hoffman. Bruce Garrioch talked about it during the first intermission and his name has come up in just about every rumour related to the Ottawa Senators. Easy to see why. He’s an elite goal scorer on a reasonable contract. Ottawa will be looking to cut costs and add assets for the future and Hoffman is going to be the guy that most teams are calling about. The word being thrown around right now is retool but if you trade Hoffman, that’s a big step towards a complete rebuild. Pageau, Brassard, Ceci and Smith will all hear their names come up in trade talks leading up to the deadline. The Senators would happily move any of the veteran guys (Burrows, Thompson, Dumont, Pyatt, Oduya) but it’s unlikely anybody has interest in those players. And it would take a minor miracle to move Dion Phaneuf or Bobby Ryan.
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