Hello, and welcome back to the Ottawa Senators.

Obviously last season I could not keep up my breakneck pace of writing full recaps for literally every weekday game, but it’s not like the Senators deserved the recaps either. Putting a big 2-10-1 run in the early part of last season effectively killed both the Senators’ playoff chances in November, and also my enthusiasm for spending 2-2.5 hours in front of a WordPress post template trying to find new ways to say “Alex DeBrincat really should have scored there”. When I move all these posts to a paid Substack subscription model, I promise I will post more often, and not just for free “when I feel like it”.

Anyway, I feel like it today. I can’t remember the last time a Sens-Leafs game was this important to the vibes, the culture, and frankly the coaching staff. Fans have heard that The Rebuild Is Over™ and they are acting like it, let me tell you. While it’s true that fully half of the defence corps is out injured and has been replaced by players who probably are not even NHL replacement level, no one gives a shit. Erik Brannstrom, Artem Zub, Thomas Chabot, Nikolas Matinpalo, Jacob Bernard-Docker, Tyler Kleven, according to fans, all these players are equally good and there’s no excuse for not finding a way to win games with any combination of them.

Now, don’t get me wrong: I didn’t mind a bit of light booing from home fans. Sens fans are very enthusiastic supporters of the team when they do literally anything right, and when the team can’t do literally anything right, that’s on them. Booing at a home game is certainly nowhere near as toxic as throwing jerseys, harassing players, wearing paper bags, or any other number of embarrassing fan behaviours we’ve seen over the years from other fanbases. The Sens played like garbage, and the fans said “Hey, we couldn’t help but notice you’re playing like garbage.”. There is an easy fix to this problem, and it starts with the Sens not playing like garbage. That said, I personally found the “Fire DJ” chants distasteful. I haven’t seen anything out of DJ Smith’s four years as head coach that suggests he can make any hockey team more than the sum of its parts, but there is no way he is the biggest problem with the Sens right now; that would be Travis Hamonic: First Pairing D-man, and Jacob Bernard-Docker: NHL D-man. Is Claude Julien, Jacques Martin, Patrick Roy, or some other French-Canadian genius going to come in here and invent a system that makes JBD capable of making a breakout pass longer than 5 feet? I don’t see it happening. DJ Smith’s been consistently served shit sandwiches for the last 4 years, and he’s been eating them without complaint. He doesn’t deserved to be booed just because he’s not eating them fast enough.

And you know who agrees? DJ Smith’s players! I don’t think a Fans vs. Team environment is healthy or sustainable long-term, but if the fans are allowed to boo and openly call for the head coach to lose his job, I think the players are allowed to say stuff to the media like “We don’t like that very much.”. It’s all in the game. They know how we feel, and now we know how they feel. But here’s something that’s even better than healthy communication between the team and the fans: two fucking points. Any rift between the team and fans can be mended with consistent doses of Vitamin W, and there is no more concentrated source of potential Vitamin W than a game against the Toronto Maple Leafs. A win here will be worth two points in the standings, but it will be worth at least 6 points in Vibes.

The team talked their shit to us, now they have to back it up. The Healing begins now.

1st Period

• The Leafs are apparently 9-1-1 in their last 11 vs. Ottawa? Goddamn, I didn’t realize it had become that dire. Maybe if the Leafs fanbase wasn’t completely dead inside, they would have let us know about this a bit more.
• Sens get an early powerplay chance when Matthew Knies takes an extremely avoidable interference penalty. The Sens respond to this gift by putting out the 2nd PP unit to start, and then failing to get anything resembling a chance for the first 110 seconds of the man advantage. Tkachuk did get a pretty sweet chance and the end though, so it’s a wash.
• The Leafs get an immediate makeup call and then score instantaneously on their PP. Ok. 1-0 Leafs
• LMFAO THE LEAFS GOAL SONG IS THE DARTS SONG???? THESE GUYS REALLY SAID “GET ME THE HYPE SONG FOR MICHAEL VAN GERWEN” HAHAHAHA WHAT A FRANCHISE FULL OF WASTEMEN
• The Sens tie it with a Dominik Kubalik knuckleball from the point. More importantly, Tyler Kleven and Roby Jarventie assist on the play. Thank you, Belleville Senators! 1-1
• 10 minutes into the game both teams are playing with all the bubbling chemistry of a box of Arm and Hammer baking soda standing next to a bottle of vinegar. Or as I would prefer to call it, “a good road period”. At least I would call it a good road period if it weren’t for Ottawa giving up a clean chance on Korpisalo seemlingly every 2 minutes. Still, there’s nothing wrong with Ottawa that can’t be solved by simply being better at hockey.
• Wow this Leafs team really is exactly 5 dudes deep, huh? Every moment that Matthews or Nylander isn’t on the ice is a complete piss break. At least Ottawa sometimes has, uh, Vladimir Tarasenko out there. I even saw him win a puck battle earlier!
• Joonas Korpisalo, have a game, son!

• It would be a great bit if the last goalie Pierre Dorion signed for a deranged amount of term before he was fired turned out to be the guy who would have saved his job. We’re all rooting for you, Joonas!
• That wasn’t the tidiest period of hockey I’ve ever watched, but the Senators haven’t lost yet so I’ll take it.

2nd Period

• THE CLAUDEFATHER 2-1 Sens
• Goddamn, Giroux-Stützle-Joseph made the Leafs look like the Sens there. There were a lot of Leafs just standing around.
• Is Claude Giroux even hotter in a turtleneck? I think he might be, but I’m not qualified to say for sure. Readers who are attracted to men, please weigh in on this in the comments.
• “Tarasenko knows he has a bit of a speed advantage on Benoit.” Man, how slow is Benoit? Better question: Who is Benoit? Is this how opposing fans feel when they see Rourke Chartier? I think the Leafs might be cooked. Just completely anonymous from their 7th best player down.
• Tavares wins a draw against Norris, and Tyler Bertuzzi scores in the chaos following the faceoff. I’m not actually sure anyone did anything especially wrong on this one. This goal could have happened to anyone anywhere. No lessons other than “Don’t lose a faceoff”. 2-2
• Seeing a game with simply too much gameflow, the refs decide they’ve had enough of that and call a penalty on Ottawa.
• Tim Stützle makes a special guest appearance on the PK with Mathieu Joseph and does a pretty good job as Ottawa successfully kills off the penalty. I’m sure everyone on Twitter noticed this and was complimentary of it at the time, rather than spending their time saying stuff like “Tim Stützle doesn’t have it tonight”, or whatever. Says a lot about Stützle that he’s widely considered to be having a disappointing start to the season while still putting up better than a point per game. Sens fans will not rest until he’s putting up McDavid numbers, I guess.
• Roby Jarventie almost scores his first NHL goal in tight against Woll. Jarventie has not looked out of place in this game, and I wouldn’t mind keeping him up full time even after Greig comes back. I will not be checking CapFriendly to see if this is even possible.
• Joseph and Stützle absolutely own the Leafs below the net and it’s Jacob Chychrun who finishes the play in the high slot. It’s Mathieu Joseph’s 7th assist of the season. Can you believe we nearly traded this guy to sign Pinto? He’s gone from worst contract on the team to biggest bargain on the team in about 10 games. Mathieu Joseph: Presented by Bettissimo 3-2 Sens
• The Leafs 1st and 2nd lines respond with some strong shifts, with Travis Hamonic most obviously implicated in some minor defensive disasters, but Korpisalo comes up with the sort of timely saves which haven’t been seen in Ottawa since Craig Anderson left. I see you Joonas, you might win me over yet.
• Hey I just saw Drake Batherson. Did you know he’s still on the team? Does he know he’s still on the team? He’s on pace to finish the season -37 by the way. He hasn’t looked engaged at all for well over a year at this point. I wonder if something else is on his mind.
• Good road period by the Sens, in the sense that any period where you outscore the other team is a good road period!

3rd Period

• Leafs come out flying to start the period, but the Sens do just enough to stop the wheels from coming off entirely. It’s a good thing only half of the Leafs are good (have I mentioned this yet?), or Ottawa could have been in trouble there.
• Nick Robertson ties the game following an extended period of play without a whistle. Admittedly that was pretty sloppy from Stützle et al. there, but you still need to respect the finish from Robertson taking the puck out of the air on the backhand. 3-3
• Stützle responds by attempting a coast-to-coast rush and gets a decent shot off on Woll. You can tell he wants it bad. This is a real turning point for the Sens, it feels like. Toronto is coming on strong, Ottawa is on their heels, and time for The Big Boys to stand up and be counted to save their coach and possibly the season.
• Stützle turns on the skating and the dangles again, leading to a chance for Tarasenko who just fires it wide. On the ensuing faceoff, Claude Giroux draws a penalty and the Sens head to the powerplay. The Big Boys cometh.
• Man, where would the Sens be without Chychrun right now? In the absolute mud, is where. He’s playing an absolutely preposterous number of minutes in this game, and also quarterbacking both PP units at this point. What a stud.
• With the penalty about to expire, Kubalik fires a puck in the direction of Giroux and it goes straight in off Giordano’s skate. This feels like the first bounce the Sens have gotten in about 5 years. I could get used to this! 4-3 Sens
• The Sens take advantage of John Klingberg on a 3-on-2 and Tim Stützle finishes off a play from Giroux and Joseph, and it’s 5-3 Sens!
• I basically never want to hear Tim Stützle slandered again at this point. He’s the best 21-year-old the Sens have ever had, and no one else gets close. He is Him. This is The Guy we have always wanted.
• I WASN’T EVEN DONE PRAISING TIM STÜTZLE AND HE JUST MADE A 6TH GOAL HAPPEN HOLY SHIT 6-3 SENS

• Yeah as I was saying, Tim Stützle slander is done now. It’s over. “He falls down too much”, “He complains too much”, “He’s trying to do too much”, just shut up. Shut. The Fuck. Up. Just let this guy cook. He’s only scratching the surface of his potential at this point, and he’s already the guy who makes the team go. If you can’t see the vision for where Tim Stützle is going to take us, get off the bandwagon now.
• Leafs fans are heading for the exits, and the ones that are left are booing the Leafs. Celebrate the moments of our lives. As the Sens enjoy a meaningless powerplay to finish the game, I am simply going to savour this energy like a 2012 Châteauneuf-du-Pape. Sens Win 6-3

The Wisdom

This was far from the best Sens game I’ve ever watched, but let the record show that Joseph-Stützle-Giroux absolutely put the team on their back and hard carried in this game. Alfredsson-like performance from all three guys. Honourable Mention goes to Jacob Chychrun who played 31 minutes and didn’t get scored on once. Dishonourable Mention goes to Drake Batherson who kills every line he touches. Mention goes to Kubalik-Jarventie-Tarasenko who didn’t suck tonight.

Here It Is, Your Moment of Salieri