Why the Ottawa Senators’ 2023-24 Season Was a Failure

What’s so frustrating for Senators fans is that it wasn’t supposed to be this way. Back in the heady days of September last year, most of the hockey punditry seemed certain the team was headed for the playoffs. My colleague Jacob Billington at The Hockey Writers boldly predicted the team would finish second in the Atlantic Division. He wasn’t alone in his optimism. TSN’s Craig Button went out on a limb saying, “I have no doubt that this team is capable of being in the playoffs and I think they can be just like the New Jersey Devils last year (2022-23 season)”. He went on to boast that the Toronto Maple Leafs should be worried about the Senators and assured his listeners that, “The Battle of Ontario is back baby!”

So how did it all go so wrong for the Senators this season? How is it that they ended up, at time of writing, with a dismal 36-40-4 record after 80 games making them the second-worst team in the Atlantic Division, the third-worst in the Eastern Conference and 26^th overall in the league? Why are they now in their longest playoff drought in team history with no end in sight?

Here, in no particular order, are my thoughts on why the Senators’ 2023-24 season was a bust.

Ottawa Senators’ Management in Chaos

While the Senators claimed it was business as usual last summer, the trouble was that between the time Michael Andlauer acquired the team in mid-June until he became the official owner in late September, nothing big could really happen with the franchise. The club was in limbo.

Senators general manager (GM) Pierre Dorion on down to his players claimed their focus was on the upcoming season, but there’s no doubt that the pending change in ownership was a distraction. Everyone knew it would eventually bring big changes to the team.

Dorion was the first shoe to drop, forced to resign on Nov. 1^st last year over the Evgenii Dadonov affair. His incompetence on that file cost the team a much-needed first-round draft pick at some point in the next three drafts. While his departure was welcomed by many if not most of the Ottawa faithful, it still introduced uncertainty. It was a distraction.

Yet as far as distractions go, none was bigger in the early part of the season than demands for the head of D.J. Smith, the team’s head coach. As the team’s fortunes spiraled downward over its first 26 games, cries of “fire DJ” rained down on the team from the rafters of Canadian Tire Centre leading several players to defend the beleaguered coach in the media. Captain Brady Tkachuk even went so far as to tell fans that he was sick and tired of them criticizing Smith.

Senators Never Adapted to Jacques Martin

When Jacques Martin replaced Smith as head coach in late December fans hoped that their team would turn things around and compete for a playoff spot. Hopes were raised further in early January when Justin Peters was appointed as the Senators’ new goalie coach. Whatever improvements fans believe those coaching changes have wrought; it hasn’t shown up in the statistics.

Under Martin, the Senators have gone 25-25-4 for a points percentage (PTS%) of .463. That’s just slightly better than the team did under Smith when they notched a .423 PTS%. A run-of-the-mill team in the league sports a PTS% of .552. 

As for goaltending, the team has an average goals-against (GAA) of 3.44 per game, ranking it 28^th in the league. As for save percentage (SV%), Ottawa ranks 24^th in the league at .883. The league average is .903. In other words, goaltending hasn’t become much better under Peters.

Martin believes in defence first and playing a game focused on details. He recognizes that successful teams are those that can win games by a one-goal margin. I have no criticism of that approach, but whatever you think of it, you must admit it’s a big change from the style emphasized by Smith who seemed to prefer a fast, high-skilled game based on offensive firepower. The transition to Martin’s system was something many on the roster just couldn’t make.

Senators Are Weak at Centre

Centreman Shane Pinto’s suspension for 41 games for “activities relating to sports wagering” was a blow to the Senators. He along with Tim Stutzle and a healthy Josh Norris were expected to pack a powerful punch down the middle.

As it turned out, Stutzle went missing this season racking up a disappointing 70 points and a plus/minus of minus-17.  He is no longer the goal scorer he was with just 18 of them to his credit this campaign. Last season he put up 90 points, turning the goal light red 39 times and assisting on 51 goals. By the end of this season, Stutzle had been moved to left wing. Expected to be among the top-10 points-getters in the league this season, he fell to 51st.

As for Norris, he managed to play in only 50 games this season registering a disappointing 16 goals and 14 assists. That’s a far cry from his 2021-22 season when he put up 35 goals and 20 assists over 66 games. Most of his points came on the power play this season and his play at even strength was disappointing.

By the end of February, Norris was back on the long-term injured reserve list (LTIR). Questions swirl about whether he’d ever be the star player the Senators expected when they handed him an eight-year contract on July 14, 2022, with an average-annual-value of $7.95 million. 

With Stutzle and Norris playing so poorly at centre, the middle went from a strength to a serious weakness this season. As well as Drake Batherson and Ridly Greig have played at centre, they just weren’t able to make up for the leave of absence Stutzle and Norris took.

Senators’ Acquisitions for 2023-24 Season Disappointed

To say that Dominik Kubalik was a disappointment for the Senators this season is an understatement. In 2022-23 with the Detroit Red Wings, he marked up the score sheet with 20 goals and 25 assists for 45 points. This season with the Senators he notched just 11 goals and four assists. While he was never expected to replace the points production of Alex DeBrincat who the Senators were forced to send to the Motor City in exchange for him, he was expected to add some firepower to the Bytown bottom-six.

Vladimir Tarasenko delivered what was expected racking up 41 points in 57 games. Yet most of those were at even strength and he never really gelled on the power play the way it had been hoped. He just couldn’t replace the potent weapon that DeBrincat had been for Ottawa on the man advantage.

Senators’ Start to 2023-24 Season Was Bad

As has become their custom, the Senators got off to a terrible start this season. In their first 10 games, they played .400 hockey. By New Year’s, they had played themselves out of playoff contention racking up just 28 points over their first 32 games. That meant playing .670 hockey over their remaining 50 games to have a shot at a wild card spot in the 2024 Playoffs. It was clear by then that the Senators were who the numbers said they were – bottom dwellers.

Poor starts are nothing new for the Senators. Even so, last season they came up with 86 points and were in contention for a wild card spot up until the last few games of the schedule. This season they aren’t even close and that’s a giant step backward. Whatever management may have believed about the potential of the Senators in years past, it’s clear that they don’t have what it takes to compete for a playoff spot. At least not with their current makeup.

That’s why there are stirrings of big changes this summer.

Senators’ Special Teams Among Worst in NHL

The Senators rank 23rd in the NHL on the powerplay, scoring only 18.3% of the time when up a man or more. Even an average team in the NHL can expect to score a goal every fifth time they find themselves on a power play. As for their penalty kill percentage, they rank 29th in the league at 75%. An average team in the NHL can expect to kill off eight of every 10 penalties.

Without quality special teams you aren’t going to win in this league. The Senators are the proof in the pudding.

Senators’ Goaltending Is Bottom Tier

When Dorion inked a deal with Korpisalo last July he said, “Our goaltending was probably our biggest need and we feel we’ve addressed that in acquiring Joonas Korpisalo.” As I wrote back then, there was a good chance he’d be proven wrong, and he was.

Korpisalo and Forsberg rank 57^th and 55^th in the league respectively according to Moneypuck. Ranked as a duo, the two are 31^st in the league according to the venerable publication for which I write – The Hockey Writers.

Korpisalo’s SV% at time of writing was just .891 and his GAA was 3.25. The corresponding numbers for Forsberg are .885 and 3.36. To put that into perspective, a run-of-the-mill NHL netminder puts up a SV% of .904 and a GAA of 2.91. And in case you think Mads Sogaard in Belleville could improve the situation, his SV% is .859 and GAA is 4.05, albeit over just six games he played in Ottawa. 

Perhaps the most telling stat is the number of games in which the team’s goalies gave up four or more goals this season. You just won’t win in this league if you do that too often – and it’s something the Senators did in 36 of the 80 games they’ve played at time of writing. Put another way, almost half the time opposing teams lace up against the Senators, they know they’ll face the proverbial sieve between the pipes.

In 22 games this season, the Senators gave up goals on the first two shots of the game. This deflated the team and meant they were chasing yet another game.

Senators’ Weak Defence

It’s beyond dispute that the Senators’ defensive game is weak. Their play for most of the season has been plagued by embarrassing turnovers and an inability to exit the D-zone cleanly. Not only that, but they allow opponents to waltz through neutral ice and into their defensive zone unmolested. 

Not all of the blame for that can be put on their blue line or goaltending. As a team, the Senators have a plus/minus of minus-113. To put that into perspective, the Bruins, the Florida Panthers and the Maple Leafs have put up a plus/minus of, respectively, plus-184, plus-237 and plus-195. 

Some hoped that the Senators could cancel out their defensive weaknesses with a high-octane offence. That turned out to be a pipe dream this season with Ottawa registering an average goals-for-per-game (GF/G) of just 3.09 and an average goals-against-per-game (GA/G) of 3.45. All told, Ottawa’s goal differential this season is minus-50 putting them at 28^th in the league. This season, they simply weren’t the high-skilled offensive powerhouse many believe them to be. 

It’s easy to see why this is happening by looking at the defensive performance of their top forwards. Only Brady Tkachuk, Shane Pinto and Ridly Greig have a positive plus/minus. The rest have registered a plus/minus that is negative and some shockingly so. (that would be you, Stutzle, with your plus/minus of minus-17)

All of this speaks to the fact that in this league, winning teams are those who know how to win games by just a goal or two. That’s difficult to do when Ottawa doesn’t come close to scoring nearly enough goals to offset the number they give up because of their sloppy defensive play.

As for the D-corps itself, only Jake Sanderson and Artem Zub seem to have lived up to expectations this season. Sanderson’s plus/minus of plus-eight combined with his 38 points put him alongside Jakob Chychrun as the Senators’ most potent threat off the blue line. Yet he had long stretches this season where his points production dried up. As for Zub, he has been a solid blueliner this season racking up 24 points over 80 games and notching a plus/minus of plus-4. 

While Chychrun has put up a decent 40 points in 80 games so far this season, he has also registered the second-worst plus/minus on the team with a minus-28. He hemorrhaged goals and just hasn’t been the boon to the Senators’ blue line he was expected to be.

As for the rest of those cruising the blue line for Ottawa this season, they’ve been underwhelming. None more so than Thomas Chabot who put up just 30 points over an injury-plagued season in which he laced up in only 49 games. 

With only one of Ottawa’s top three defenders playing up to expectations, it’s no wonder defence was a problem for the Senators this season.

The Ottawa Senators’ Missing Pride

Pride is the foundation of a successful hockey team and too often this season too many Senators didn’t seem to have it. How else to explain the humiliating blowouts to which the team subjected their fans? The most recent example was their 6-0 loss to the Florida Panthers on April 4. Yet there were 13 losses in which the Senators coughed up six or more goals. 

What’s perhaps even more bewildering for their long-suffering fans is the games they lose to teams that they should beat. They have dropped games to the lowly Chicago Blackhawks, Columbus Blue Jackets, Arizona Coyotes, Anaheim Ducks and San Jose Sharks. It doesn’t get any worse than losing to teams like that.

Every team can mail in a stinker from time to time and lose to bad teams. It’s just that the Senators did it far too often this season. It only takes a few players to go through the motions to make a team look bad and it seems like the Senators had too many of them on their roster this season.

Staios and Senators Face Long Hot Summer in 2024

The Senators have deep problems that need to be addressed. Realistically there’s only so much that a GM can do over the short summer to make his team better. There will be a few players buying one-way tickets out of town and a few new arrivals this summer. Even so, I expect Staios to stick with his core and rely on new coaching to get past this dreadful season and start moving in the right direction.

I’ll make the call right now – the Senators face very long odds of becoming a playoff contender next season in the ultra-competitive Atlantic Division.