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Where Do the Ottawa Senators Go from Here? The Next Season, the Next Decade

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Offseason Recap

In: William Eklund, Andre Burakovsky, Samuel Ersson

Out: Brady Tkachuk, Lars Eller, James Reimer 

I won’t relitigate it too much: Brady Tkachuk’s a good player, he’ll do well in Florida. His behavior was at times endearing and at times alienating. It would have cost a lot to keep him, perhaps more than you want to pay for a power-forward who plays on the wing who’s already started missing a lot of games to injury. And he handled his desire to leave about as well as could be expected. As a person who lived through the Dany Heatley trade request, this was a relatively tidy exit, and everyone seems ready to move on. Tkachuk was fun to have on the team, and he’ll be fun to root against. I commend everyone for mostly keeping their heads.

Ottawa General Manager Steve Staios did well to get three first round picks, including the ninth overall, and a second rounder for Tkachuk, given the complete lack of leverage he had, though the relative quality of the return is not equal in value to Tkachuk himself. 

Staios traded the ninth overall to the Sharks for William Eklund, the kind of player a fanbase get obsessive over when their team uses a top ten pick to select him but nobody else knows anything about. Accordingly, Sharks fans seem pretty heartbroken to part with him. Pierre McGuire floated on the Sick Podcast that Ottawa wanted Eklund in that year’s draft, that the Sharks had committed to not taking him and went back on it (whatever that means) and so Ottawa (infamously) took Tyler Boucher 10th overall. So it’s a player the organization has liked for a long time. He’s three years younger than Tkachuk, has draft pedigree (he was rated the top non-North American skater in the draft), and is on an affordable deal. And of course he’s good friends with team mascot Fabian Zetterlund. I’m excited to see what he can do.

I’m reminded that when Ottawa traded away Erik Karlsson, the return was roundly lambasted at the time as a massive loss for the franchise. Well, that return turned into Tim Stützle, and Josh Norris, who begat Dylan Cozens. There’s a line from a Kipling poem: If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster / And treat those two imposters just the same. You can win or lose a trade, but only fleetingly. It’s helpful to maintain perspective. Let’s see where both Tkachuk and Eklund are in five years. Tkachuk could be an aging forward, battling injuries, with an untradable boat anchor of a contract. Or he could win the Conn Smythe. Or both.

Given Florida traded Samoskevich to Seattle to make room for Tkachuk, I’m curious to know if he was ever floated as part of the return to Ottawa. He’s a promising young player with the same kind of grit Tkachuk provided, but it’s not the kind of thing that keeps me up at night. Maybe if Florida includes him, Ottawa doesn’t get the ninth overall, which means they don’t get Eklund, who seems to have a higher ceiling as a point scorer. I would have loved a scenario in which they get Samoskevich in lieu of one of those later first rounders, and still get the ninth/Eklund. Anyway, it will be interesting to compare the two players’ careers over time.

I don’t hate the Burakovsky trade as much as some. The team is looking for cheap scoring, which is a contradiction in terms. You only get it by taking a flyer on reclamation projects. They got a Cup-winning veteran who has shown he can score sometimes, on a relatively cheap deal, for a sixth round pick. He’s horrendous defensively, so you give him favorable zone starts and powerplay time and hope he can convert more than Tkachuk could on Stützle’s wing, or at least get the puck to Cozens, who sometimes seems like the only guy on the team who can score goals. If the goalscoring and playmaking works but his terrible qualities outweigh them, you pad his stats and he’s gone at the deadline for more than a sixth rounder – there’s always a market for a Cup-winning veteran on an expiring deal. Or he’s a disaster and all you’ve wasted is money. We’ll never know what else was on the table and what could have been instead of this deal, but seeing Mason Marchment get almost $7M per year and five years from the Sharks, I understand Staios not wanting to play in that sandbox.

Errson’s stats are terrible, but Staios basically said those stats don’t count because they intend to use him differently than he’s been used in other systems, and he’s deferring to his goaltending coach. I don’t know enough about goaltenders’ styles nor hockey systems to know if that kind of statement is ridiculous or another example of how publicly available statistics fall short. Either way, Ersson and Merilainen will have a chance to battle each other for a chance to provide what has recently been unattainable for Ottawa: league average goaltending.

The Short Term

The 2026-2027 season might be a rough one for the Ottawa Senators. Ottawa squeaked into the playoffs last year, although they were almost a 100 point team, the result of the Atlantic being an absolute bloodbath. Their playoff eligibility that season coincided with down years for Toronto, Florida, and Detroit. 

Well, according to the Athletic, Toronto is the 4th most improved team this offseason, and Florida the 6th most. So the Atlantic was tough, and it got tougher. Buffalo, Tampa, and Boston got worse, according to that Athletic article, and Buffalo is the least improved team in the league with the loss of Tuch and two middle-six defenders. Hapless Detroit somehow also got worse and that’s not even accounting for the potential loss of Dylan Larkin. But Ottawa is the second least improved team in the league. So if you’re looking for three teams in the Atlantic that could find themselves on the outside looking in, Detroit, Buffalo and Ottawa would be reasonable bets.

On the other hand, Linus Ullmark went from one of the worst goaltenders in the league in Goals Saved Above Expected during the regular season to one of the best in the playoffs. So who knows what the Senators produce with solid goaltending? And lest we forget that Tim Stützle is only 24 and Jake Sanderson only 23. The Senators could very well find themselves on the right side of the bubble again.

It’s worth noting that the top 10 of the 2027 draft class is projected to be seven of 10 centers. Top-line centers are so hard to find that Philadelphia just signed Leo Carlsson to an $18M/year offer sheet trying to get one. So, if there’s a year for Ottawa to take a step back and add a blue chip prospect, this might be it. The team could also jettison Amadio, Giroux, Burakovsky, and Foegele at the deadline, add the draft haul to the 2nd rounder they got from Florida in the Tkachuk trade, and restock their prospect pool. There are worse things than missing a year of the playoffs while keeping all of your core players. Ask Toronto, who took a year off and ended up with the first overall pick.

The Long Term

There’s a lot to like about the Ottawa Senators’ long-term position. If they re-sign Batherson at $10M, Kleven at $4M, Zub at $7M (all on the higher end of what they’re estimated to get), and trade or let all other UFAs over 30 walk, they’ll be sitting at ~$92.2M against a 2027-2028 $113.5M cap, or just shy of $21.5M in cap space with all core players locked up and only depth signings to consider. You want to bring Amadio, Foegele, and Giroux back for another lap? They’ll have the room to do it. Or they can be replaced, or they’ll have the space to swing big on a trade.

Every planet in the Ottawa Senators’ solar system revolves around the twin stars of Tim Stützle’s and Jake Sanderson’s contracts. I cannot overstate how big of a deal it is that those two are signed long-term at about $8M per year. In a league where Connor Bedard is already getting $15M and Leo Carlsson is getting $18M, Tim Stützle, who scored 90 points in his third season, and was better than a point-a-game last season and was a plus player, is making a little more than half of Bedard’s AAV. Sanderson is already getting Norris votes (he tied for ninth in voting) and he’s 23.

I was accused online of glazing Dorion’s legacy, but I’ll stick by what I actually said: Dorion signing these guys to these contracts is such a big deal that it almost nullifies the boneheaded stuff, of which there was a lot. If he’d signed them both to $5M X 4 bridge contracts, Senators fandom would be running around with its hair on fire right now about how we don’t have cap space to sign them both and might have to lose one. The Carlsson deal has changed the league; if he’s an $18M player, then what is Stützle, who has better numbers and better underlying stats?

It also means that Tim Stützle and Jake Sanderson are going to make $20M apiece in 2031-2032, right around the time Andlauer is going to be trying to finance a new arena’s construction. The team has to do everything it can to win in the next five years. There’s a lot of potential – the league will have a new television deal, and league expansion will result in more lucrative expansion fees for owners. But that’s probably going to result in an even higher cap and NBA-like contracts for the league’s best players, and Ottawa will be trying to keep two of them.

There’s less to be enthusiastic about when it comes to Ottawa’s prospect pool, which consists of Yakemchuk, a truly unique defensive prospect who electrified at times when he debuted last season but on the whole got caved in, and a collection of toolsy depth who are years away. The farm team could really benefit from another blue-chipper or two. 

The Bottom Line

I’m imploring everyone not to overreact if the Senators take a step back next season. Their core is locked up long-term on team-friendly deals. Boston, Tampa, and Florida are all aging, trying to win one more Cup before entering the waning years of their contending window. Buffalo, Toronto, and Detroit are intriguing mixes of young talent, bloated contracts, and big question marks. Montreal is really the only team in the division that seems to be both just entering its peak years and with an airtight cap sheet.

If the question is, “Who is your pick going into next season?” Ottawa might not be at the top of your list. But if you could only pick one team in the Atlantic to compete with for the next decade, for me it comes down to Ottawa and Montreal. It will be important to keep that in mind when we hit the do-or-die days of March 2027, no matter where Ottawa finds itself in the standings.

Should the Sens Trade Brady Tkachuk? A Mostly Unhinged Examination

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In which Varada seeds disinformation and erodes democratic values

So we’re doing this again.

The Senators get their first-round teeth kicked in, fail to meet the whole “these guys are built for the playoffs” mythology we’ve constructed around them, and a small but vocal corner of the internet looks at Brady Tkachuk’s contract, his brother’s Florida zip code, and his offseason house in New Jersey, and decides that the only logical path forward is to ship the captain out of town for parts. Every spring, the rest of us pour a beverage and try to talk them down.

I wrote on Bluesky that “You have to admit, Sens reporters and hockey podcasters repeatedly “reporting the news” that there’s speculation about Tkachuk without citing any sources except each other speculating about it isn’t just annoying and a distraction, it’s pretty unethical journalism.” 

And “The coach, GM, and player are straight up chastising journalists to their face for manufacturing news and the news story those journalists will run the next day will be headlined “trade speculation is only beginning.” It reads like a threat!” 

My opinion hasn’t changed. I strongly believe reporters whose job is to investigate and report are being lazy writing blog posts like the one I’m writing here. There is nothing to report. Am I being lazy by writing about this topic anyway? Yes! I am not a professional hockey reporter.

Let’s call this kind of post what it is: fun speculation. If you don’t find it fun to speculate, that is fair (and healthy). If you do, read on. But keep in mind that what this post does not contain is news.

So, with that caveat delivered, let’s engage with it. Pros. Cons. Trade packages. Therapy. The works.

The thing nobody wants to talk about: the window

Before we get to whether Ottawa should trade Brady, we need to establish why this conversation isn’t insane. It’s because of two contracts that look more ridiculous every time the salary cap goes up.

Tim Stützle is signed for $8.35M through 2030-31. He’s 24. Jake Sanderson is signed for $8.05M through 2032-33. He’s 23.

When Stützle signed his deal in 2022, his cap hit was 10% of the league cap. Next season, with the cap projected at $104M and rising, that same contract is going to eat about 8%. By the back half of the deal, he could be a top-line center taking up less cap space than your average second-pairing defenseman. Sanderson is on a similar trajectory.

This is the entire ballgame. Pierre Dorion, in between making moves that are still emotionally damaging Senators fans, accidentally signed two of the better long-term value contracts in the league. The challenge — the thing Steve Staios actually has to solve — is building a Cup contender around two stars whose deals are getting more team-friendly every July 1.

Tkachuk’s $8.2M is fine. It’s not the problem. And the $12M minimum he’ll get on his next deal is probably also “fine.” But “fine” is a relative concept when the players around him are “absurdly underpaid.”

Pros of trading Brady (the case for chaos)

1. Tkachuk has a no-movement clause and two years left. This is not a five-year runway. Trade him in 2027 and you’re trading a 28-year-old rental who controls his destination. Trade him this summer and you get something close to peak value for a player coming off five straight 30-goal seasons. Waiting is expensive.

2. The roster construction problem is real. Ottawa’s lineup right now: a top-six winger making $8.2M (Tkachuk), a top-line winger/center making $8.35M (Stützle), a #1 D making $8.05M (Sanderson), and the contracts you’ve seen handed out at every other position. There’s a version of this team where the Tkachuk dollars get redirected into a 2C, a real top-pairing right-shot defenseman, and depth scoring — and that team is structurally better than the one with Tkachuk on it.

3. A star winger is the least valuable kind of star. Capology 101: an $8M top-pair right-shot defenseman is a unicorn, an $8M top-line center is the cost of doing business, and an $8M winger is — politely — a luxury good. Tkachuk is an elite version of the cheapest position on the ice. The dollars do more work literally anywhere else on the roster, which is the entire reason this conversation exists.

4. The “is he the captain of a contender” question. Brady plays incredibly hard. He also takes penalties at a rate that would make a Bruin or a Flyer blush, and the playoffs have not exactly been a coronation. This is the most heretical pro on the list. We move on.

5. He’d presumably approve a destination he wants. The list of teams he’d say yes to is short, but every team on it has assets Ottawa actually needs. That’s leverage — small leverage, but leverage.

Cons of trading Brady (the case for not setting your own house on fire)

1. He is, by a wide margin, the best power forward Ottawa has produced since the Alfredsson era, and trying to replace 35-goal, 200-hit seasons is a fool’s errand. The math of trades like this is brutal: you almost always lose the deal in pure-talent terms and have to make it up on construction.

2. He’s not just “intangibles” good. He’s actually good. Brady has won everyone over with his compete level, his leadership, his attitude, and his ability to raise his game in high-pressure moments that are not the first round of the NHL playoffs. These are important, if occasionally overvalued, characteristics. But Brady’s underlying numbers are also, to use analytics terminology, “stupid.” I’m not sure how you replace this (per HockeyViz):

Tkachuk: 0.62 xGF/60 (+25%) / -0.08 xGA/60 (-3%)

McDavid: +0.57 X GF/60 (+23%) / -0.10 XGA/60 (-4%)

3. The optics in Ottawa would be apocalyptic. “We traded our captain to clear cap” is a sentence that ends GM careers in this market. Even if it’s the right hockey move, it requires the trade return to be visibly excellent on day one — not “in 18 months when the kid develops” excellent.

4. Tkachuk has an NMC and presumably likes Ottawa. This entire conversation is conditional on him being willing to leave. Every report so far suggests he isn’t. If you ask and he says no, you’ve just told your captain you tried to trade him. Have fun with that locker room.

5. The Stützle/Sanderson window thing cuts both ways. Yes, those contracts are great. They’re also great with Tkachuk on the roster. The window doesn’t open because you trade him; it opens because the other two are signed.

OK fine, what would the trade look like

Three scenarios, in decreasing order of “I would actually do this.”

The Florida thing

Sens get: Anton Lundell, Mackie Samoskevich, 2027 1st Panthers get: Brady Tkachuk

Lundell is 24, signed at $5M through 2029-30, and is exactly the 2C Ottawa hasn’t had since the invention of indoor plumbing. Samoskevich is a young top-six winger coming off his ELC. Brady gets to play with Matthew, signs an identical deal, and hopefully visibly declines on the same trajectory as his brother and an Atlantic division rival is crippled with $30 million worth of contracts tied up in two ineffective power forwards. Net cap impact: roughly a wash, depending on what Samoskevich signs for.

The Devils thing (a.k.a. “fix the right side”)

Sens get: Simon Nemec, Dougie Hamilton Devils get: Brady Tkachuk

This is the one that solves Ottawa’s actual structural problem. Nemec is 22, a former #2 overall, RFA, and a long-term answer on the right side of the blueline. Hamilton is 32, expensive, and not the future — but he’s a real top-four RHD for two years while Nemec develops, and the Devils have been openly trying to move him. Brady gets to commute home from his New Jersey house. The Sens fix two roster holes with one trade and finally have a top-four right side that doesn’t make you want to lie down.

The Rangers thing

Sens get: Alexis Lafrenière, Braden Schneider, 2027 1st Rangers get: Brady Tkachuk

Two 24-year-olds, both signable long term, one of whom is the right-shot defender Ottawa has been trying to acquire since the Harper administration. The downside is the cap math: Lafrenière at $7.45M plus Schneider’s next deal will probably push Ottawa $3-4M over what Tkachuk currently costs. (But not what he would cost after re-signing.) You’re betting on volume over a single star, which works only if you actually believe Lafrenière is about to break out. Some days I do. And it would be fun to have three picks from the top five in the 2020 NHL draft.

So, should they?

Probably not. Probably they keep him.

The honest read is that the only deal where Ottawa unambiguously wins is the New Jersey one, and that requires the Devils to part with both Nemec while shedding Hamilton and open up a massive hole on the right side of their defence corps. It can be done. It probably won’t be.

The Florida deal is the most fun/traumatic and the most likely to actually get agreed to despite the fact that both teams are in the Atlantic, but Lundell + Samoskevich + a pick is a lateral move, not an upgrade — you’re basically swapping star power for depth and praying the depth ages well. Now, if Florida were to offer their first round pick in this year’s draft (currently eighth overall), we’d really have a conversation…

The Rangers deal is the one Twitter wants and the one that costs Ottawa the most cap flexibility for the most uncertain return. This has shades of trading for Nikita Filatov and hoping he reaches his potential, which is a pretty unfair thing for me to say about Lafrenière.

The boring answer — keep Brady, find a 2C in free agency or via a smaller trade, or just keep working with Cozens to develop his defensive game, and ride the Stützle/Sanderson contracts into the next three seasons. The window is open because of those two deals, not because of any one move Staios might make this summer.

But if it’s July 14th and Brady walks into the GM’s office with a list of four teams, well…use promo code “WTYKY” for 20% off your first online therapy session with Sens Shrink.

JAMES DAY HYPE UP: GET HYPED EDITION!

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GAN-DHI GAN-DHI GAN-DHI

Happy Xmas Pagans, its Saint Swithin’s Day for 2 more minutes and you know what that meaaaaaaaans…

BERRP TERRRP DERRRPYYYY DERRRRRRRRRR!!! (that’s that Sens trumpet thing btw)

Its playoff tiiiiiiiiime! I know I haven’t been arouuuund latelyyyyyyy I was picked up by the poliiiiiiice for VAAAAAGRAAANCYYYYYYYYY!

Okay, so are we all bleeping excited for this? It’s game 3 and the Sens return to the friendly confines of Scotia Bank presents: Large Building and —

You know what? Let’s just get to the Chipotle-Sandalwood Dijonaise of why I’ve met here with you today:

Been reading a lot of “MSG was Electric for Games 1 and 2 …Will SBP be loud?” on the Sensphere. WHOA! Wait a minute. Really, friends…no, look at me….look in my eyes.  You know I love you and I need to know…is that where we’re at? Is THAT where our Ottawa self loathing is AT right now? We’re doubting our ability to adequately cheer for the Sens returning home after defeating the Rags in OT on the road down 2 men? Puppy, puppy no, no, nooo and we were all feeling so chuffed after the All Star Game. You’ve been hanging around too many leafs fans jerk faces planting seeds of doubt in your mind.

I’m not trying to bum you out little buddy Im trying to light A FIRE UNDER YOU. Look, I’ll be realistic, I’ve been to some games lacking in intensity, usually they are of the
late season 4-0 drubbing at the hands of the Carolina Hurricaines variety but fair enough. Like the great singer-songwriter Chris Martin said in that Coldplay song that sounds really different from the other Coldplay songs, “Nobody said it would be easy / Something something cheering at a hockey game” Right? Lets take it back to the start (see what did there?)
The Ottawa Senators is a 20 years young (doesn’t look a day over 17) franchise and has the VERY FORTUNATE circumstance of being wedged between two 100 year old hockey clubs one’s fans
insane and accustomed to victory to the point of setting their city on fire if their equipment manager doesn’t get 5 points a game and speak fluent Portugese and the other suffering from a Napoleon complex where the worse the team their dad loves they love performs the more they have to lash out at Ottawa. TRY TO GUESS WHICH IS WHICH! Hard times have been given. Ottawa is a house thrice divided. We Sens fans despite building this fanbase on hostile territory have gotten a complex all our own as a result.
Another conceit I will afford this line of thinking is this: have you ever tried to start a GO SENS GO chant? I have. IT CAN BE CHALLENGING. Its just a hockey game, help your fellow fans out! But again, I want to light a fire under you, so Im here to offer answers.
If you find the atmosphere lacking at the arena YOU ARE ALLOWED TO CHEER MORE. Like many criticisms of Ottawa itself, many people enjoy being part of this faceless mass of complaining about stuff but seem to do very little in offering a solution to the things that are irking them. Theyre called “People who write in the comment section on the Ottawa Citizen website.” You’re not one of them are you? Of course not. Heyyyyy, don’t have any friends like me and you’re looking for people to get rowdy with? Look no further than the awesome and ever growing presence that is Red Scarf Union. These guys and gals are fighting the good fight! Hear that chanting on the TV? Yeah, they started it. Join em! Its free, respectful and it(?) wants to hang out with you. Scotiabank place is far and you have to drive and youre tired and whatever? Take the bus to the game. Its easy, you get out of the parking lot first and take the bus lane on the 417 (speaking of favorite complaints) AND you get to chirp the guy in the leafs jersey at a non-leafs-Sens game with me! No one hates the bus system more than me and my car but I will say the service to SBP is one instance where OC Transthing gets it right! Plus no one will rat you out about your flask *WIIIIIIINK* There, now you can have a few drinks and loosen up a bit! Maybe you’ll finally get up the courage to ask Varada to go see the new Three Stooges movie with you! He told me he “likes you likes you” btw…just DO IT.

Anyway pals, we’ve had a quite the upbringing and are pretty hard on ourselves as a fanbase. Yeah, SOME people booed Gonchar and Kuba on opening night. I was there. It was a small portion of the crowd but yes it sucked and was very awkward. Anyway, we kick ourselves all year over stuff like that but look around, how many times did Montreal and Toronto boo their own team this season alone? Like 10 (being conservative)? They are “great fans” that they wear fucking bags on their heads. Chill mon, the shit happens.

We’re all a bunch of hockey loving doofuses at heart. There’s lots of boneheads everywhere. Its weird, lets get over it. Okay aaaaaaand the last and most important reason is becaaaaaaauuuse….

It’s the playoffs. Our sweet, sweet Captain of a man might not be back next year AND (on a very related note) the Sens might not be back in the playoffs next year OR the year after. We’re lucky we’re getting to be a part of this stuff so lets shut up and go a bit bananas. If youre going to the game get wild (consider trying a hint of meth before the game 🙂 My favorite flavor is Dave’s Memories of the Meth Belt, Zesty Louisianan Style ) buy a XXL red Senators snuggie and if the name Daniel Alfredsson gets announced over the PA …well…

Here’s the words to the chants write them on your hand with a pen 1. “GO SENS GO” repeat 2. “ALFIE” repeat.
GO SENS GO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! FUCKINGPLAYOFFSANDSHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

James Day Preview: Walker New York Rangers Vs. Ottawa Beast Towers

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I had that same stupid poster of that stupid ice man, man.

Hi.

How’s going? Great orrrrrrrr really great? Really great? Well great.

Before we get started—whats that? Already started? Okay, well, whatever, so, bloggingly speaking, am I alone in being a bit confused over people’s comments about Ben Bishop’s game against Tampa out in the Sensphere? It seemed like I kept reading thing after thing about how the guy looked shaky and that Lehner is better than him etc. Damn. One game and people have some serious opinions. I was pretty surprised how dismissive of his performance people were being. I don’t really know if giving up a power play goal from Stevehair Stamkos is “one you wish you had back” nor did I think the other two were Martin Gerber specials.  A win is a win and full credit to a guy who played his first game with a new team and on the road at that. If I’m going to dismiss anyone’s play its going to be the established NHL goaltender who had a dog garbage outing on the other end of the ice. Sure he wasn’t slated to start that because Garon went down from injury due to Erik Karlsson’s manliness, but after a 73 year career you’d think Dwayne Rollerblades would be able to handle something like that.

Tonight the Sens will not look like they are on a power play for whole periods at a time when they face the New York Rangers. After an Andersonian 26 consecutive starts and a bad loss at the hands of New Jersey last night, Henrik Zoolander will get a rest and Martin Biron the OTHER Matthieu Garon gets the nod. Now, playing for the no.1 team in the East, Biron has enjoyed a stellar season going an amazing 11-3-2 this season. Biron also has a .911 PCT and 2.20 GAA. Those are back up numbers you can hang your hat on. So, just because the Crown Prince of the Republic of Handsomeness is warming the bench don’t mean this one is going to be easy.

So, yeah, Ben Bishop is a human man from the United States of America and enjoys goaltending. Not too much to say here yet what with it being his second start here. This goalie preview is a stub, help WTYKYpedia by expanding it! OOH first game on home ice, that’s a thing I can say! So if you find yourself at the game or watching it on television, Ben Bishop is Ottawa’s starting goaltender. Bishop is in for a serious test but if he can hold off the Rangers who are not exactly lacking in the firepower department, that will be huge for him going forward. Also: Water = wet.

A few posts back we, as a family that loves and cares about each other, discussed the possibility of Erik Karlsson netting 20 goals. The basic consensus (self included) was that he probably wasn’t going to do it this year but would more than likely would put up 20 in the next year or two. So, fast forward to this exact moment, King Karl now has 16 goals on the season. He is currently on pace for 19 but as I’ve said before, I find those projections tend to be quite conservative. I mean, now that I think on it, I suppose it would be pretty hard to predict hot and cold streaks so calculating it as steadily as possible seems like the smartest way to go but come here and check this out for a second: 4 more goals people, 4 more frigging goals. Can he inch closer tonight?

Speaking of goal milestones on the year, I would love to see Spezza climb to the 30 mark. He’s done it thrice before but those were in some powerhouse years and for Spezz to do it this year surrounded by a much different cast and a whole lot of rookies would just be special. He could even potentially do it tonight. Its not unreasonable to see Spezza pot two in a game, even against the Rangers. Great to see Turris and Greening get on the board against the Bolts, this would be an absolutely ideal time for frankly anyone who done need heating up to heat up. Hopefully Michalek wont be too thrown off tonight by there being a goaltender in the net.

Thinking back to the last couple of games the Sens and Rangers have played I’m not sure if the Rags they were quite east coast dominators they are now back then. Maybe they were but I always feel like the Sens have a chance against them. Its funny when you consider these teams respective places in the standings as Ottawa’s top line centre in Jason Spezza has 72 points while NY’s Brad Richards has 45 (three less than 39 year old Daniel Alfredsson) and Erik Karlsson has more points than everyone on the Rangers roster. But a quick glance at how those points are spread out over the team, the defense corps and the performance of their goaltending tandem offer a strong case for why they are challenging for the President’s Trophy. At the very least tonight we’ll get to see Biggitty Ben Bishop’s sample size that we will judge him intensely on grow.

 

Enjoy the game!