Five Thoughts for Saturday: Success Factors

Regular readers know that this feature typically runs on Friday. As the person in charge of the schedule, it's pretty embarrassing that I forgot that I was the one responsible for sharing my Thoughts. Big ol' whoops from me. But, never fear, we wouldn't let a full week pass without some Thoughts for you.

With the Ottawa Senators now on the precipice of qualifying for the post-season, I thought it would be a good time to dig into what's propelled this team forward. To borrow a business term, what are the team's success factors?

5v5 Defense

When Travis Green was brought in to coach the Sens this off-season, one of the key messages from the organization was that the new bench boss would improve the team's defensive play. To Green's credit, Ottawa ranks 11th in the league in xGA/60 at 5v5 this year. They're not world beaters, but, combined with some at-times stellar goaltending, it's enough to keep the opposition in check. Defensive structure is a nebulous term that often gets thrown around without much supporting evidence, but I will say that in this case it's easy to observe that this edition of the Sens is committed to limiting odd-man rushes against. The third forward is often well-positioned to help disrupt the opposition break-out, and Ottawa rarely gets burned in transition as a result. The trade-off is weakened offensive creation at 5v5, but so far the good outweighs the bad and the defensive benefits are very much appreciated.

Jake Sanderson and Thomas Chabot

Speaking of defense, Jake Sanderson and Thomas Chabot have each been sensational in their own way this season. Sanderson has continued to grow his game, in particular his work as a power play quarterback, to complement what was already exemplary defensive work. There are few players that I trust more to defend a late lead than Jake the Snake. His defensive play has been such that the Sens are winning the shot and chance battle with Sanderson on the ice by smothering the opposition.

Chabot, on the other hand, has been perhaps the team's most important driver of offense at 5v5. Just look at the difference between when Chabot is on the ice versus when he's off:

Chabot's getting similar (and in some cases better) results than even Sanderson at 5v5 through his offensive brilliance. The two are living proof that there's more than one way to be effective in the NHL, but most importantly, the Sens are getting great results for almost 3/4 of the game (just don't think too hard about what's been going on with the third pair on the ice!)

Effective Forward Depth

Three months ago, I did not think that I would be writing glowing praise of the Sens' forward depth with David Perron and Mike Amadio mired in scoring slumps and bouts of ineffective play. However, since the calendar flipped to 2025, the two aforementioned off-season acquisitions, along with Ridly Greig and Shane Pinto, have combined nicely to provide the Sens with real depth to their forward group for the first time since maybe 2017. A revamped, more skilled fourth line as compared to last season has definitely helped as well. At various points I have been a bit iffy on whether all of Staios' off-season acquisitions would pan out, but, at least as far as it pertains to the forwards, it would be hard to find much to quibble with at the moment. Ottawa could really use at least one more gamebreaker up front, but they ice 12 credible forwards every night these days and that's been a big factor in their success.

Holding Leads

If you've watched the last few weeks' worth of Sens' wins, you've probably seen a variety of stats about the Sens' ability to close out games. Though I might suggest that the shelling they took against Tampa on Thursday is not exactly a best practice, it must be noted that Ottawa's been pretty good at holding onto leads. The Sens are 30-2-1 when leading after two, good for a 90.9% conversion rate, 12th best in the league. (As an aside, I don't think there's enough of a general appreciation for just how good NHL teams are at converting leads into wins. The Minnesota Wild are 28-0-0 when leading after two periods this year. 25 teams all post winning percentage above 80% when leading through forty minutes. A 90% conversion rate is good, but it doesn't even get you into the convo as one of the best. But I digress.)

So while I wouldn't describe the Sens' ability to protect a lead as exceptional, they ranked 25th by that same category last year. The difference between between being the first Wildcard, and being on the outside of the play-off bracket and looking in, could be just as simple as going from 25th last year to 12th now.

Linus Ullmark

This one probably feels obvious, but none of the above would matter if the Sens were still getting the calibre of goaltending that they did last year. Ullmark is going to end up playing less than 50 games, but his .909 SV% across all-situations and positive goals-saved metrics are radical improvements and have allowed this team to be competitive. I've written a couple of times that at the end of the day, this part of Staios' time as GM would likely be judged by how the Ullmark trade/signing plays out. So far, so good.