In the end, the Ottawa Senators only extended their season by a week. However, it would be a disservice to reduce the team’s season to only its epilogue.
“These are kind of the worst days. We're sitting here with only a short time to reflect,” said Steve Staios, meeting the media on Monday afternoon for the final time this year.
“I think there's lots to be proud of with this group. Showed plenty of character and resilience. Every team faces adversity, but I think it was extraordinary for our group this year.”
In terms of extraordinary, how about this week that fans may have been balking at a few months ago? A home stretch in late January called for meetings with the Carolina Hurricanes, Vegas Golden Knights, Colorado Avalanche, and New Jersey Devils.
With three of those four teams being perennial Stanley Cup contenders, the task for the Senators would be hard enough. Making it even harder was the fact that the Senators would enter it without a goalie from their opening night roster.
Though they dropped the first game to Carolina, Mads Søgaard stepped up in a 7-1 win over Vegas, James Reimer stood his ground in a 5-2 win over Colorado, and after five weeks away from the team, Linus Ullmark returned from his leave of absence and backstopped the Sens to a 4-1 win.
Another week that stands out is the fourth week of March. With wins in seven of their last nine games heading into a back-to-back with travel from New York to Detroit, the Senators were playing their best hockey of the season. But the out-of-town scoreboard had been unkind to them, and they were still four points out of a playoff spot.
In New York, disaster struck. With Jake Sanderson already out of the lineup due to injury, Thomas Chabot was crosschecked in the arm by J.T. Miller and left the game at the end of the first period. Lassi Thomson, playing in the NHL for the first time since Nov. 25, 2022, then hurt his ankle and exited in the second.
Despite finishing the game with four defencemen, the Senators allowed only 10 shots, the fewest by any NHL team in the salary cap era.
“There were days where we were like, man, here we go again, is this really happening?” recalled Travis Green on Monday.
The press releases announcing call-ups just kept coming, as Carter Yakemchuk and Jorian Donovan were both called up the next day to make their debuts for the Senators. They met the team in Detroit.
“They just continued to show up. We go in on a back-to-back in Detroit, and we had two players playing their first game, and we won on the road. I think the culture that we've built here and the type of people that we've brought in has helped us this year a lot, that resilience was impressive,” said Staios.
Just over a week later, it was Cam Crotty’s turn for a debut, a 26-year-old Ottawa native who had played only two previous NHL games since being drafted by Arizona in 2017. Crotty, Thomson, Yakemchuk, and Dennis Gilbert would all later make their postseason debuts against Carolina.
“I don’t think I’ve ever coached where we’ve had 13 defencemen play. But it was also rewarding. When I say this group is a fun group to coach, you don’t find ways to win by just having the new players come in and play,” said Green.
“There’s certain things that have to be into your game, your team game, your culture, your identity. You have to have players that are fully invested and understand for players to pop into the lineup and still find a way to win. It’s a credit to the players that came up and played, but it’s also a credit to how the team plays and how they’ll play just to win.”
And then there was a thumb injury to captain Brady Tkachuk in the home opener, coming amidst a slow 1-3-0 start to the season. When he returned in late November, critics of his play popped up throughout the rest of the year despite his point-per-game average of 0.98 standing as the second-best of his career.
He had a positive goal differential of +3 at five-on-five and the best expected goals-for percentage of his career at 60.5 per cent. His career faceoff percentage entering the season was under 50 per cent, but he proceeded to win 57.6 per cent of his draws, behind only Claude Giroux among the team’s regular faceoff men.
“I think we have to really put this in perspective here. I mean, he came out of the gate, he dealt with an injury to start the season, he was off to the Olympics, wins a gold medal, there’s a lot in a condensed regular season schedule,” said Staios.
“I think we lost sight of the season that he had. I feel like I’m repeating myself a lot in this room, getting questioned about a player that 31 [other] teams would love to have,” said Green.
“Was he his absolute best? I don’t know if any player was their absolute best on our team, that rarely happens. Were there games that he could have played better? For sure, every player does. He might have had his highest point-per-game, I’ve never heard one person in the room say anything about that. Pretty sought-after guy in the league, so I don’t know why I have to keep being asked about it, to be honest.”
In terms of the condensed schedule, of course, every team in the league had to deal with it, and most teams had players that made deep runs at the Olympics. Still, for a coaching staff that Green called “very cohesive” and a group whose coachability was repeatedly praised as high, the ensuing lack of practice time may have limited how much those strengths could fully translate.
“I feel like the last two years, I’ve been kind of coaching in a blender a little bit, full blast the whole time, not a lot of practice time, and that can show up in your games. It’s not just us, it’s everyone, it’ll be nice to have a normal schedule next year,” said Green.
The wounds, bruises, bones, will all be healed when the team gathers in August, hopefully with no traces left behind. On the flip side, the traces of resilience from overcoming such adversity in a season couid help bring this group to another level mentally.
“I felt like we might have grown — as much as we grew physically — I felt like we grew mentally by going through some challenges,” said Green.
“You’re going to go through adversity. A lot of teams do. I felt like maybe we went through a little more this year, some of the things, you know, injuries and a couple other things that happened within our group, and the fact that we kind of got through it on the right side and made the playoffs is only going to help us down the road.”
“Like I said at the beginning, there’s a lot to be proud of,” said Staios. “It almost makes it harder, because we feel like we have a lot here, and we’ve got to work for another opportunity.”
