Five Thoughts For Friday: Preseason is Here!

How concerned should we be about Josh Norris’s shoulder?

When a player keeps re-aggravating the exact same injury, there reaches a point where we all stop believing he’s ever fully recovered. Josh Norris reached that point last year. Now, the team can keep on insisting that he’s perfectly healthy and will be ready for opening night, but as long as they keep holding him out of scrimmages and preseason games, we’re all going to be suspicious. Remember that this is pretty much exactly what happened at the beginning of last season - Norris missed the first few games because the team wanted him at 100% and he wasn’t quite there yet, and he ended up re-injuring himself in February. 

It’s a tricky situation for the team, because they obviously don’t want to rush him, especially at this point, but the more careful they are with him the more it looks like he isn’t ready. Is this one of those “if the game mattered, he’d be playing” situations? Because that always makes it sound like he’s injured but could push through it if he needed to, which isn’t what we want to hear at all.

I’m hoping that Norris is completely fine and they’re just holding him out of preseason because preseason injuries can happen to anyone and they don’t want to risk it with him, but that’s probably wishful thinking. Bruce Garrioch's intermission interview last night made it seem like it's closer to a "if the game mattered, he'd be playing" situation.

I want to see Josh Norris back in the lineup, but more than that I want him fully recovered. I hope the Sens take more than enough time to get him back to 100%.

6th and 7th defensemen

For the first time in years, the Sens are going into training camp without that many question marks on defense. Artem Zub’s injury complicates things, but if the injury is minor as the team says it is, then there isn’t much question that the top 4 will be Chabot-Jensen and Sanderson-Zub. The third pairing and 7D position is where things get interesting, as with Brännström out of the picture there are actually 3 spots available.

Hamonic’s no move clause means that the Sens couldn’t cut him from the roster even if they wanted to, and it doesn’t sound like they want to, so he’ll be on the team whether we like it or not. Tyler Kleven seems like the frontrunner for the 3LD position, after spending most of last year in Belleville and looking good in his 9 NHL games. JBD and Guénette are both still in the mix, and probably the two frontrunners for the 7D slot.

The real wild card here is Carter Yakemchuk, the Sens’ 7th overall pick from this year’s draft. Defensemen tend to take longer to develop than forwards do, so the Sens almost certainly drafted him expecting him to need a few more years in the WHL before coming over to Ottawa. It would be pretty shocking if he played himself onto the opening night roster. He’s also known for being inconsistent and defensively irresponsible, problems that would only get worse if he were thrown into an NHL role at such a young age.

With that being said, he's looked great in preseason. If Zub misses time with this injury, that’s another spot open on defense. It might be fun to give the kid his 9 games right off the bat and see if he can hold his own.

Finally, Goaltending

We got our first look at Linus Ullmark in a Sens jersey last night, and I know preseason doesn’t mean anything, but he looked amazing despite the defense being absolutely awful in front of him. 29 shots in half a game is absurd. It was a bit reassuring to see that he is in fact good, that Ottawa is not cursed, and that all those goals against weren’t just about the defense being bad. We knew all that, but I think we all needed the reminder.

It’s been so long since we had a goalie capable of stealing a game that the Sens didn’t deserve to win. Hopefully, that won’t be as necessary this season as it has been in the past, but man, it really changes the whole outlook of the season.

Tim Stützle’s ceiling

When Tim Stützle finished the 2022-23 NHL season with 39 goals and 90 points, it felt like just the beginning for a true star in the making. Then last year happened, and he looked like a shadow of his old self for much of the season. It was not surprising at all when he announced at the end of the season that he’d been dealing with a wrist injury.

What is surprising is how many Sens fans seem to expect something closer to last year’s production from the #1 centre. Was the injury not that obvious? Do people see last season as a sign of genuine regression from Stützle?

Don’t forget that Tim Stützle is still the most skilled player on this team and only just entering the prime of his career. He’s looked incredible in preseason. I still think he’ll hit 100 points one of these days, and I’m expecting his 5th NHL season to look more like his 3rd than his 4th.

What’s going on with the Sens’ headshots?

If you go to the Ottawa Senators website and click on the “roster” page, you’ll see that the Sens’ headshots have been updated. I know they’re new headshots because of this horrific monstrosity:

Why? Why the mustache? Is he trying to manifest a better season by mixing things up, the way Erik Karlsson does with his hair? Most importantly, have we seen any clear pictures of him, where you can see whether or not he’s shaved it since picture day? It would be pretty iconic if it was a picture day only kind of thing.

But anyways, the real reason I’m bringing this up is because I need to know why all the regular players have extremely blurry pictures while the fringe players either have no headshot or a really clear one. Is this, somehow, a preview of the roster? Are the Sens humbling their players by giving them blurry headshots? Is this a repeat of the fisheye lens situation?

Mostly, I need the NHL to fix these headshots so I can get a good look at that horrendous mustache.