The Ottawa Senators season has been recharged in the last four weeks. Could this prolonged hot streak end with a playoff berth?
If you left the Ottawa Senators season for dead on February 1st you aren’t alone. The Senators were one game over .500 with a losing road record and trailed the Washington Capitals, the second wild card team, by eleven points. With three teams to jump and so many points behind a playoff berth seemed as likely as the Toronto Maple Leafs finding a way to trade the massive contract of David Clarkson.
By the looks of things we could see both happen in the same season. The Ottawa Senators have caught fire shortly after losing starting goaltender Craig Anderson to a hand injury on January 21st and backup Robin Lehner to a concussion on February 17th. Enter the most recent example to why any team, on any given night, can win a game. Or even a playoff series.
Andrew Hammond has been nothing short of a revelation. In his eight games (seven starts), Hammond has posted off-the-charts numbers with a 1.35 GAA and .957 save percentage. Before you start with “who did he beat?” he also has two shutouts in back-to-back games. The opponents were the Anaheim Ducks and Los Angeles Kings and both games were on the road. Add to that sharing a nickname with a cheeseburger-stealing cartoon connected to a fast food restaurant and you get one of the more interesting and fun stories of the season.
Great goaltending covers up a lot of flaws and the Ottawa Senators have their share of them, as do the best of teams. The Senators are in the bottom third of the league in possession stats and before Hammond got on his hot streak the team was allowing an average of just over three goals per game (157 goals in 52 games without Hammond). While there is reasonable balance up front with eight players scoring more than ten goals the forwards need to produce more beyond Bobby Ryan as games tighten up toward the end of the season.
But there lies the potential of the Ottawa Senators. Anderson, Chris Neil, David Legwand and Chris Phillips are the only players over the age of 30. And young teams need to figure out how to win and find consistency in the process. Look at the Senators record against the different conferences. Against the supposedly weaker East, Ottawa is 14-15-7. Against the big and powerful West, the record is 14-8-4, one win behind Tampa Bay for most in the conference.
Perhaps just missing the playoffs would serve this young group well. To get so close by charging toward the finish with such success can bring a team together. The same could be said for making the playoffs and experiencing a first round exit, getting the taste in your mouth and having a greater reward for your efforts. Whether the Ottawa Senators make the playoffs or not, there is youth and talent on this team now backstopped by a goaltender perhaps to green to know what he and this team could do.
In the playoffs or not, the Ottawa Senators are giving Canada another reason to believe the Stanley Cup may return sooner than later. Maybe not this year, but this is a team much like the Calgary Flames that is building towards better quicker than they get credit for. This will be an interesting offseason in Ottawa, one that may end later than expected just four short weeks ago.
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