FIVE QUICK THOUGHTS
-The Senators did some good things on this West Coast road trip but in the end, have to be disappointed they only came away with 3 of a possible 6 points. A five hundred record is pretty good on the road especially for a team that has historically struggled out West but it sort of feels like the Senators left a point and maybe two on the table over the last few games. The pressure is now on the Senators to come back home and take care of business. They’ll have four days off before their next game against a strong Nashville team.
-These four days off will give the Coaching staff a chance to re-evaluate the line combinations and decide whether or not they are getting the most out of this collection of players. Despite his third period goal, it was pretty clear that the line of Michalek, Zibanejad and Ryan weren’t really able to get anything going. I’m not really sure what the answer is but right now anyway, that isn’t it. Interested to see if MacLean tries a couple different looks during practice this week. On the blueline, Patrick Wiercioch has to return.
-Ice time. It’s by far the most talked about element of each game (at least in the conversations I’m a part of) and remains the number one complaint aimed towards Sens’ Head Coach Paul MacLean. Ice time distribution is extremely important but proper analysis requires more than just looking at the total at the end of the night. I’m not saying I agree with every decision Paul MacLean is making right now but there is a thought process to most of it. Player’s handedness is a huge part of it. Remember that.
-The one thing that seemed to come up the most last night was David Legwand’s ice time. It was high, there’s no doubt about it. And right now he’s probably getting too much time on the power play. But there’s a reason for it. First off, as the team’s best left hand shot centre (by default), he’s going to take almost every faceoff in the left circle. He was around 60% on faceoffs last night. He’s pretty good at it. Structurally, the Senators like the idea of someone that can distribute from the half wall, ideally the centre. It opens up options high for Karlsson and low for MacArthur. Right now, it’s not working and maybe needs to reconsidered, but that’s the thought process behind it.
-There haven’t been many if any times this season where the finger could be pointed at Craig Anderson but last night was one of them. The HNIC crew pointed out his puckhandling issues throughout the night and it was something that ended up costing the Senators a couple goals. Anderson has earned a mulligan though and to his credit, he was quick to shoulder the blame when speaking with the media after the game. He’ll bounce back.
