After losses in Toronto and Montreal, the Edmonton Oilers will look to avoid being swept on this three-game trip through Eastern Canada when they face the Ottawa Senators.
1. The Sens are in the midst of their very own Decade of Darkness right now.
The team has missed the playoffs in seven consecutive seasons since a surprise run to the Eastern Conference Final in 2017, by far the longest drought in their history. Ottawa also went through an ownership change and some arena drama recently, adding to the similarities with the Oilers of the late-2000s and early-2010s.
A lengthy rebuild has landed the Sens a skilled core of internally developed players, but putting together a successful supporting cast around that group has been a challenge. The Sens have ranked in the bottom third in goals against in each of these seven playoff-less seasons.
2. General manager Steve Staios made a couple of trades over the off-season to help keep pucks out of Ottawa’s net, sending Joonas Korpisalo and futures to the Boston Bruins in exchange for former Vezina Trophy winner Linus Ullmark and moving the struggling Jakob Chychrun to the Washington Capitals for shutdown defender Nick Jensen. In free agency, the Sens added forwards David Perron, Michael Amadio, Nick Cousins, and Noah Gregor.
Through 17 games, the new-ish-looking Sens sport an 8-8-1 record, good for a tie for 11th in the Eastern Conference standings but eighth in terms of points percentage. They’ve scored 55 goals, which ranks 17th in the league, and they’ve allowed 53 goals against, which ranks 11th.
Interestingly enough, it hasn’t been goaltending that’s resulted in the Sens’ improvement in the goals-against department. The team is allowing the third-fewest high-danger scoring chances at even-strength this season, according to Natural Stat Trick, but their goalie tandem has been among the worst in the NHL with an 89.64 even-strength save percentage.
The newly-acquired Ullmark has a .890 save percentage over his first 10 games in Ottawa, backup Anton Forsberg has a .903 save percentage in eight appearances, and third-stringer Mads Sogard posted a .765 save percentage in one relief appearance.
3. Six forwards have accounted for almost all of Ottawa’s goals this season. Brady Tkachuk leads the way with nine goals, Tim Stutzle, Drake Batherson, Josh Norris, and Adam Gaudette have seven goals, and Claude Giroux has five. That’s 42 of the team’s 55 goals from those six players.
Other than Gaudette, who plays mostly as the fourth-line centre, the bottom-six has provided little depth scoring for the Sens. Shane Pinto has only one goal in nine games and David Perron hasn’t scored yet while being limited to six games because of a personal issue.
The Sens have also been getting virtually no scoring from their blueline. Thomas Chabot, Jake Sanderson, and Nick Jensen each have one goal, while Artem Zub, Jacob Bernard-Docker, Tyler Kleven, and Travis Hamonic have not yet found the back of the net.
The Oilers no longer have the league’s worst penalty kill, as they’ve surpassed the Detroit Red Wings with a 67.35 percent efficiency on the kill this season. That said, they’ll still have their hands full with Ottawa’s power play, which ranks sixth in the league with goals on 27.6 percent of opportunities.
4. Since Calvin Pickard started against the Montreal Canadiens on Monday, Stuart Skinner will go against the Sens in the second leg of this back-to-back on Tuesday in Ottawa. Skinner picked up the first win of his NHL career back in 2021 against the Sens and has gone 3-1-0 against them with an .888 save percentage over four starts.
It won’t matter who’s in the net or how they perform if the Oilers put in the same effort against Ottawa that they did against Montreal. The Oilers managed only four high-danger scoring chances during their 3-0 loss to the Habs because the team refused to play anywhere other than the periphery. They need to crash the net and find a way to score a few ugly goals because many players up and down the lineup are snakebitten right now.
There was once a time when playing against Sens felt like an automatic win for the Oilers, but that hasn’t been the case lately. Since Edmonton swept the nine-game season series against Ottawa in the All-Canadian North Division in 2021, the two teams have split their last six meetings. The Oilers won the meeting in Edmonton last season by a score of 3-1 and the Sens won 5-3 in Ottawa a couple of months later.
