Marc DesRosiers-Imagn Images
A lot can change for an NHL team in a year.
Take the Ottawa Senators, for example. Last season in December, the Sens’ road trip wound up costing coach D.J. Smith his job on Dec. 18.
But at the moment, the Senators are looking as good as they’ve looked in a while after winning three straight games for the first time this season and sitting in a playoff position.
With the world juniors taking place in Ottawa this year and sending the Senators on the road for the next nine games, the players are in control of their own destinies. If they stumble and sink backward again in the Atlantic Division standings, they’re more likely to miss out on the Stanley Cup playoffs for the eighth consecutive season.
Needless to say, the stakes are high for Ottawa. But they’re 7-2-1 in their last 10 games, and their 5-1-1 record in December is good for 11 points, the most in the NHL so far this month ahead of Monday’s games. Their .786 points percentage is the sixth-best, as some squads have one or two games in hand, but their latest stretch has looked very promising.
So far, Ottawa has rebounded from having the worst points percentage in November, when they went 5-8-1. They’re getting elite goaltending from Linus Ullmark again after a poor stretch, earning the third star of the week on Monday.
Is this Senators team the real deal? Or are they about to be exposed as a group that still can’t turn the competitive corner? Let’s look at what’s immediately ahead for them and see what their fans should expect.
One clear issue is their subpar road record this season. They’re currently just 5-7-1 away from home, and that could be an ominous sign for them. Meanwhile, the teams they’ll be facing on their extended road trip will not make it easier on them. In order, Ottawa will face Seattle, Calgary, Vancouver and Edmonton on the road before the holiday break and then Winnipeg, Minnesota, Dallas, St. Louis and Detroit on the road once games resume.
None of those nine teams are pushovers. The Senators could easily go 5-4 or 4-5 or worse by the time they return home on Jan. 9 against Buffalo. That might not be enough to push them back into the playoff picture. This road trip presents a huge challenge for the Senators, and how they react to it will go a long way toward defining the rest of the season.
The Senators have about $508,000 in salary cap space at the moment, per PuckPedia, so there’s no cavalry on the horizon for Ottawa on the trade front. For better or worse, this group will either sink or swim through the next three weeks.
In their current hot streak, the Senators have beaten Carolina and Calgary in the top half of the NHL standings and below-average squads, including San Jose, Detroit, Nashville, Anaheim and Pittsburgh. The schedule-maker has been kind to them of late. But that’s about to change, and Ottawa now has to clamp down and reel off a slew of wins if they want to rise through the mid-tier of the Atlantic and keep themselves in a wild-card slot or better.
A nine-game road trip would be a challenge to any team. But Senators fans who have a good memory of last year’s extended road trips will be quick to get angsty and fear the worst if Ottawa starts out this new road swing with three straight losses. They had a five-game road trip in late December and lost every match when they fired Smith. Not long after, they had another road trip against the Canucks, Kraken, Oilers, Flames and Sabres, losing all five games again.
The Sens need to go into the holiday break on a positive note, and that means taking it to the Kraken, Flames, Canucks and Oilers. The good news for Sens fans is that Ottawa controls its fate. Continue to play well, and the Senators can build a cushion in the playoff race. Play poorly, and it will be same-old, same-old in Canada’s capital city.
Because of their current hot streak, they have a bona fide golden opportunity to prove themselves worthy of high expectations at long last. Let’s see how the Senators respond to the pressure.
Related: Is Ottawa Senators’ Drake Batherson ‘One Of The Most Underrated Players’ In The NHL?
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