SENShobo
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Senators Finding A New Hope
by SENShobo on 11/25/08 at 09:03 AM ET
Comments (4)
Gerber still waiting his turn, many a quarter mark review of the Senators, and an interesting stat that might explain some of Ottawa’s woes, but first…
From the Ottawa Sun, on the status of Fisher and Shannon,
As the Sens left the ice following a hour-long twirl this morning, centre Mike Fisher (knee) and winger Ryan Shannon (post-concussion) were going for a skate yesterday and one or both could return against the Toronto Maple Leafs at Scotiabank Place.
Senators coach Craig Hartsburg said he has no plans to use defenceman Christoph Schubert, who has been a healthy scratch for the last two games, as a forward which means if Fisher or Shannon are ready they’ll likely be used against the Leafs.
“I have no idea. If I feel good I’ll play,” said Fisher before taking the ice.
It would not be the first quicker-than-expected recovery, Alfredsson returning from anthroscopic knee surgery earlier this season after a single week, but it might be a stretch to hope for a repeat.
Knees damaged during play are quite different from knees that have undergone surgery, and are far less predictable. On the topic of knees, Neil’s knee surgery on Friday was deemed a success, but he is still likely out for a while.
With Schubert potentially mulling whether or not he’s happy to only be ‘playing’ defense as he looks primed to be a healthy scratch once again, a return would be needed to keep Binghamton’s roster intact for any decent stretch. Should both return, I imagine it will be a call as to whether Shannon or Bass has earned enough respect for their talents up here to stick around, and what needs the not-so-hot of late Binghamton Senators might have.
From the Ottawa Sun, on Ottawa’s goaltending duo,
Auld will make his seventh straight start when the Maple Leafs pay a visit on Thursday.
While Hartsburg was non-committal about when he might use Gerber again, the coach did say the Swiss netminder will get his chance because the club has “lots of games coming up here.”
....
“There’s going to be an opportunity for (Gerber) to contribute. It’s more about (Auld) than it is about (Gerber). (Auld) has been good,” said Hartsburg.While Gerber stopped 28-of-30 shots in his last appearance, his numbers this season tell the story: He is 1-4-1 in six appearances with a 3.17 GAA and a .898 save-percentage.
Taking a look at the schedule, the Senators have 5 games in 8 days starting on December 6th, and Gerber might be able to draw into that action, possibly against the Panthers on the 8th, or the Bolts on the tail-end of back-to-back games on the 13th (a Saturday).
Gerber has given the team one very important thing this season: no headaches. With Ray gone, nobody picked up the slack of the late for practice, lashing out in anger, fighting teammate ways. Gerber has the potential to knock Auld off his high post. If he could pick up his four-game play from last season’s playoffs, where his .912Sv% was 6th among playoff goaltenders, and only he and leader Dan Ellis of Nashville saw over 35 shots a night.
But that’s just a part of Gerber; inconsistency. As much as the team is to blame for playing some of its worst hockey at both ends of the ice with Gerber in net, Gerber still has not been able to offer the continual, solid, dependable presence that Auld has defeated him with. Even when he wins, stopping 28 of 30 Carolina shots, he loses, having his teammates score only a lone goal, collapsing in front of him to surrender the game.
There’s plenty of opportunity for Hartsburg to put Gerber back in the crease as Christmas approaches, and hopefully he’s had more thorough discussions with him than with the press. You have to have a little sympathy for a guy who’s done nothing but be a team player and a good soldier. Maybe if I ever get out to a practice, I’ll keep stats on both of them, hoping to find a moral victory for Gerber there.
From the Ottawa Senators’ website,
“We think we’re going in the right direction but we’ve got to prove it over a long period of time,” he said after the Senators’ workout Monday at Scotiabank Place. “We’ve got to get those (bad) games out of our system and be consistent in how we play.
“When we play well, we have a certain look to us, and when we don’t play that same type of game, we haven’t had a lot of success. Hopefully, the players are starting to understand what will give them the best chance of winning…. We have to string a bunch of these games together so that gives us a chance to win hockey games.”
....
“We struggled early and learned what it takes for this group of guys to win and what we have to do every night and we’re going to be better off in the long run,” [Phillips] said. “The last few games have been good for that and we want to keep it going forward and continue.”
From the Ottawa Sun,
Seventy-four.
At the quarter-pole, that’s how many points the Senators are on pace to earn this season.
Not only would the Senators likely miss the post-season, a 74-point campaign would be their worst since they had 41 in 1995-96—the last time they failed to make the playoffs.
So, after a lacklustre first quarter, the Senators will focus on the rest of season rather than dwelling on the first 20 games.
From the Ottawa Citizen‘s Wayne Scanlan, and posted earlier by Paul,
How accurate a snapshot do we get of the NHL standings at the quarter-pole of the regular season?
....
I took a snap of the standings about one year ago, Nov. 21, at which point most clubs had reached the 20-game mark. I wanted to see how many of the top eight teams at that juncture actually finished in the top eight.
....
The results:Of eight Eastern Conference teams holding playoff spots on Nov. 21, five held on to those spots, while three fell out.
In the West, the picture was even more in focus. Six of the eight eventual playoff teams were already in postseason position.
Of course, it’s the anomalies we’re interested in. Which teams are capable of putting on a late charge and supplanting current “playoff” teams, and how worried should fans in Ottawa and Edmonton be that their teams are just outside the top eight cutoff after 20 games played?
From the Ottawa Citizen‘s Allen Panzeri,
Their 7-9-4 record in not the worst the Ottawa Senators have been after 20 games.
In fact, just two seasons ago, 2006-07, they were one point worse than they now, at 8-11-1.
Fortunately, they rebounded, made the National Hockey League playoffs and went all the way to the Stanley Cup final, which just serves to prove that a team’s low standing after 20 games is not always fatal.
....
[Hartsburg] has seen how good the Senators can be, as in their 3-1 victory against the Pittsburgh Penguins in Stockholm or Saturday’s 4-1 win against the New York Rangers.He has also seen how bad they can be, as in back-to-back losses to the New York Islanders two weeks ago. He’s hoping he starts to see more of the good team than its evil twin.
From the Globe and Mail, the longest of the bunch and posted earlier by Paul,
Ottawa fans have watched the slide to mediocrity with incredulity. Unlike Toronto Maple Leafs fans, Sens supporters expect their team to be in the playoffs. (What the Senators did once in the playoffs was another matter.)
After last year’s early spurt, the Senators played below .500 for the rest of the season, barely made the playoffs, were swept in four games by the Pittsburgh Penguins, and again this year are below .500.
They have burned through two coaches - John Paddock and Bryan Murray - and are not responding for the third, Craig Hartsburg. He whips them like a mule, but a mule is a mule. It can speed up a little under the whipping, but it remains a mule.
The Senators won Saturday 4-1 against the New York Rangers, offering a spirited effort. They won the only way they can, given a limited amount of talent, playing a chip-and-chase game and outworking their opponents.
The days of a fast, skilled Senators team are over. Apart from the trio of Jason Spezza, Daniel Alfredsson and Dany Heatley, they have nothing but pluggers up front.
Quite a mix in there, from the optimistic to the all-out doomsayers. I find myself to be some strange mix of optimist, realist, and pessimist.
I know the Sens can turn it around. Not only were the Senators down and out two years ago before making it to the Cup Finals, Philly was in these shoes last season, before they caught fire, knocked out Montreal’s dreams in the second round, and wore heavily on Pittsburgh before bowing out.
This team has many of the pieces is needs to succeed. The Finals were partly achieved on the backs of the big three, who scored 28 of the team’s 59 playoff goals, Including 6 of 13 game winning goals.
Instead of hoping to win games 5-4, and having huge pressure to climb out of 4-0 holes, the team has averaged less than 2 goals against per game, Minnesota still leading the League in that category with 2.05GA/G (Ottawa sitting in 5th with 2.40). Scoring may be struggling, but it’s much easier to get back into a 1-0 game, and this has been one of the better defensive incarnations of the Sens in a long time.
Harp on Hartsburg, but much of that is his doing. Team defense is what wins Cups, as Detroit has shown (no, we are not Detroit, but they have shown that you don’t need Brodeur to win, as have the Devils shown a few times this season). The troubles of the team have been in finding what they’ve had for so long: even strength goals, gritty play. They had it before, and with over 60 games to go, they can find it again.
What they have found is what’s been missing for so many seasons. The solid team committment to defense, the powerplay success, the pestering play, the defense less bound to the gaffes of yore.
There’s plenty left to do. Murray does need to use his two first round picks, and all the other picks, to restock Binghamton, and must continue to keep his eye out for free agents like Winchester. He should not be concerned with blowing up the team, and should stick to the focus of bettering his club with trades, not scrapping it for whatever is available.
Hartsburg must turn his focus to transition play, opportunistic play, and goal scoring (or at least less goals being disallowed, being able to think of half a dozen Ottawa goals this season that fall into that category). The bounces have plagued Ottawa, as has having faced some of the toughest goalies in the League.
For my one potentially compelling statistic of the day, I’ll try to explain part of Ottawa’s lack of goals. Take the shots a team manages per game (OTT - 29.9S/G), subtract the goals they manage per game (OTT - 2.40G/G), and you’ll get the number of saves the opposing netminder averages in a game (OTT faces 27.5 saves per game). Divide that again by the shots they manage per game, and it gives you a reasonable estimate of the quality of the goaltenders they face, better accounting for the hot streaks of less-than-stellar netminders.
Ottawa ranks 3rd in the League, having their opposing netminders playing to a .920Sv% on average, with only Tampa Bay (.922) and the NY Rangers (.924) facing stiffer competition. The Red Wings, the Capitals, the Penguins, Vancouver, Chicago, and Philly are all part of the ten teams whose opponents have averaged less than a .900Sv%, showing a bit of the challenge (or lack thereof) they have faced, and yes that also accounts for some of their struggles.
The average Sv% for the League this season is .904, meaning if Ottawa was facing average opponents, their 29.9 shots should be averaging 2.86G/G, which would place them tied with Montreal in 15th place, with only Boston and Vancouver ahead of them allowing fewer goals against. That might have some small effect on their place in the standings, but who knows. Makes me wish the League had a team stat to show the shots they blocked and had blocked, and the shots they missed and that missed against them; it would help give an even better picture of the pressure teams mount and face.
The fact remains that the Senators have shown themselves worthy of winning the past three games, able to mount an attack, score goals, and have their opponent skating in circles, looking lost and confused. That, at least, is reason enough to stay the course. At least until the offered returns go much higher.
Filed in: NHL Teams, Ottawa Senators | SENShobo | Permalink
Tags: Chris+Neil, Martin+Gerber, Mike+Fisher, Ryan+Shannon,
Comments
Is it always perfect? No. If the Senators were averaging 20 shots per game, I would put little to no stock in it, but 30 shots per game is reasonable.
Take a look at the teams and goalies that have handed Ottawa its losses. The Rangers and Lundqvist, the Canadiens and Price, the Isles and MacDonald, both in a very hot streak right now, Leighton (whose 2-1 win would have been a loss had his arm not hid what by all accounts appeared to be a Spezza goal, and another goal by Ruutu being half a skate offside), Mike Smith as he was leading the League’s goaltenders, a stellar Anderson, the Bruins, the Red Wings, and the Penguins.
A team can certainly make a goaltender look good, and this ‘estimate’ is not perfect, but if you’ve watched the 20 games thus far, the goaltenders have raised their game for Ottawa, and many times left the team with its jaws dropped (just like the refs, in making iffy and blatantly wrong calls to waive off half a dozen goals).
Posted by SENShobo from Waterloo, ON on 11/25/08 at 10:18 AM ET
SensHobo, thanks as always for your fair and balanced presentation.
The Simpson article in the G&M was indeed a curious piece of opinion, and IMHO, an irresponsible editorial decision. Simpson’s diatribe belonged on a fan blog…not the front web sports page of a national newspaper.
There are many insightful writers, including yourself, who have examined the Senators and their numerous issues—but Simpson, his article bursting with metaphors more Quentin Tarantino than Red Fisher, isn’t one of them.
Posted by davetherave from Ottawa, Canada on 11/25/08 at 10:59 AM ET
There is rampant speculation in the Globe and Mail article, but since I try to cover the Sens, if it is from MSM, or backed up with facts and proper sourcing, I will report on it.
I might have left it out normally, as when two or more sources cover the same story, I’ll only pick up the most interesting and well-written one, or the ones that offer unique viewpoints, but today I thought all these 20-game reviews were of interest, and it certainly was the longest of them all, even if it was the most grim and speculative.
Posted by SENShobo from Waterloo, ON on 11/25/08 at 11:32 AM ET
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>a reasonable estimate of the quality of the goaltenders they face, better accounting for the hot streaks of less-than-stellar netminders.
Don’t delude yourself about Ottawa facing stiffer competition than most of the league. It’s a clever attempt, but it doesn’t work - it’s circular reasoning.
On the bright side for Ottawa, I think they’ve turned the corner and will at least be fighting for a playoff spot until the end of the season.
Posted by CheGordito on 11/25/08 at 10:08 AM ET