By: Adamo Marinelli
January 3, 2021
The Ottawa Senators are fortunate enough to have a large pool of youth and talent on their roster and be under the salary cap limit by a healthy amount of $11 million with several team-friendly contracts as well.
According to several experts, the Senators are projected to start competing for a playoff spot and start contending to win a Stanley Cup starting in the 2022-23 season, in two seasons from now.
This season, with the all Canadian division, they are projected to finish last of seven teams. For a rebuilding Senators team, that makes sense and is not entirely bad either.
The Senators management does not want to get too far ahead of themselves in the rebuild and the new pieces like Tim Stutzle, Jake Sanderson, Ridley Greig, among others need time to develop chemistry with the team’s current core.
At the same time, because this season is a shorter 56 game campaign, and because of the Seattle Kraken expansion draft in 2021, the Senators need to be very careful about splitting ice time evenly so they can evaluate every one. They do not want to leave the wrong player unprotected and risk losing production while stunting the development of the chemistry of this young team. The worst thing that can happen is if a player gets no ice time in Ottawa, gets traded away and he excels elsewhere.
With no playoff expectations this year, the Senators should give all their prospects - especially their higher round draft picks - a ton of ice time with their current stars like Brady Tkachuk, Thomas Chabot, Alex Galchenyuk among others to see how they play together.
The Senators’ coaching staff should try to evaluate as many young players as they can and you can expect head coach D.J Smith to try a lot of different line combinations on offense and defense to see what works.
Not only did they add a lot of talent in the draft, but they also got bigger, tougher, and grittier with some free-agent acquisitions such as defenseman Erik Gulbranson, who they acquired from the Ducks for a 2021 5th round pick; right-winger Austin Watson, who they acquired from the Predators for a 2021 4th round pick; and left-winger Michael Haley who they signed to a one-year, two-way contract in free agency.
On defense, I believe Thomas Chabot will be paired with Erik Gulbranson on the first line, Erik Branstrom and Nikita Zaitsev will be on the second line. But the rookie Jake Sanderson and Jacob Bernard Dockens are both very good and will also compete for a spot as a top-six defenseman on the team.
On offense, I believe Brady Tkachuk will be the 1st line left-winger, he is the most talented left-winger on the roster and can be an all-star in the near future. Nick Paul and Alex Formenton will compete for the 2nd line spot and rookie Ridley Greig can compete for a third-line spot. He was very talented in the OHL.
At center, Colin White and Chris Tierney will compete for the 1st line spot, Derek Stefan and Alex Galchenyuk will compete for the 2nd line spot, and Logan Brown or Josh Norris can compete for the third line spot. However, I expect Tim Stutzle to compete for a spot. He’s good enough to play on the second, even perhaps the first line. He’s had a very good World Juniors.
At right-wing, Connor Brown and Drake Batherson can compete for the first-line spot. I think Connor Brown gets the 1st line spot, Batherson gets the 2nd line spot and Yevgeni Dadonov will be the third line right-winger.
At goalie, Matt Murray will start, and Marcus Hogberg and Filip Gustavsson will back him up.
The Senators have a lot of depth at all positions and they will be able to move players around from line to line to improve chemistry.
The Senators were bottom 10 in the league in power-play and penalty kill last season and hopefully, with all the talent acquired in the draft and free agency, their effectiveness on special teams will improve. Excellent power play efficiency and penalty kill often makes good teams great.
All these explosive rookies like Stutzle and Sanderson paired with the many experienced veterans like Tkachuk and Chabot can make this team very tough to beat and entertaining to watch if D.J Smith and his coaching staff can find the right rotations/lineups and if Matt Murray can stay healthy - he plays in net well when he’s healthy.
In the Canadian division, I believe the Oilers will finish first, Jets second, Leafs third, Flames fourth, Canucks fifth, the Canadians sixth, and finally, the Senators will finish seventh.
Don’t get me wrong: the Senators can shock people and maybe compete for a playoff spot this year if everything goes right, but there is just too much talent on all Canadian teams and I believe the Senators will be at the bottom of the division.
But after a full year of development for the rookies from the 2020 draft class, another year for the experienced players on the roster to hone their skills even further and develop chemistry with the rookies, and after another draft (the Senators have their first-round pick, two-second rounders and their third) where the Senators can acquire even more talent, the Senators can really start competing for a playoff spot. In a few seasons, they can even start competing to win their division to be a Stanley Cup contender.
It’s been a long rebuild, but after one or two more seasons, the Senators can be scary good.
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