One Easy Fix for The Ottawa Senators’ Fourth Line: Swap ‘em Out

While it doesn't take precedence over more pressing issues such as goaltending, team defense, or goaltending, the Ottawa Senators' utilization of their depth players has been hurting their chances of success for the last several seasons — and this will likely need to improve in 2024-25 if they want to be playing the ever elusive meaningful games in April.

The problem I'm referring to is a failure on the part of management and coaching that resulted in the continued presence of ineffective players in the Sens’ lineup – particularly on the fourth line.

First, we need to talk about Scott Sabourin. Okay, we don't need to at all. But I want to.

Sabourin was a career minor league face puncher who put up just 8 points in 43 AHL games in 2018-19, only for the Senators (probably the only team that wanted him on an NHL roster) to give him his first taste of action in the show.

And this was fine! He'll always be remembered fondly in my mind for scoring an NHL goal that year before Auston Matthews did, and the quality of his play didn't hurt the Senators seeing as how they were eyeing that 2020 draft class like a glazed ham. Longtime minor leaguer makes good after years of riding the bus. Who could get mad about that?

Even as his biggest fan outside of his friends, family, and assuming he doesn't place himself into either category, D.J. Smith, I wouldn't call Sabourin the gold standard for a depth NHLer – or even silver or bronze for that matter. I'm bringing him up now because former GM Pierre Dorion, in his mission to transform the Sens from a lottery team into a playoff team, more often than not, couldn't find better talent for the fourth line. That seems hard to believe, and yet...

In this regard, the 2020-2021 Senators weren't actually too bad. They received awful goaltending for the most part, and did the worst job of building an NHL defense corps I've ever seen, but their regular deployment of fourth liners consisted of Austin Watson (10 points in 34 games), Ryan Dzingel (9 points in 29 games), and Artem Anisimov (9 points in 19 games), all of whom were mostly serviceable on the fourth line.

However, the last few seasons have shown a concerning trend. Let's take a look at how Ottawa's fourth-liners fared over the last three seasons, in terms of 5-on-5 points per 60 minutes, and where they rank among NHL forwards with 200 or more minutes played (data from NaturalStatTrick):

The volatility of 4th-line production is demonstrated thanks to Parker Kelly ranking both at the top and bottom of this list. His 1.84 points per 60 ranked in the 66th percentile (better than 66% of NHLers), in 2021-22, ahead of Phil Kessel, Jonathan Toews and Ryan O'Reilly. The following season, however, he struggled mightily, falling all the way down to the bottom 1% of forwards league-wide. As far as what we can realistically expect from a serviceable fourth-liner, the 20th percentile seems like a good benchmark considering NHL forward corps are 25% fourth-liners. No one expects fourth liners to be scoring stars, but there is a minimum threshold they need to meet in order to be positive contributors.

Looking a bit closer, the Senators committed a consistent roster spot to at least one highly ineffective fourth liner in each of the past three seasons – Dylan Gambrell, Austin Watson, and Colin White in 2022, Gambrell, Watson, and Kelly in 2023, and Rourke Chartier in 2024. And with the exception of White, all of them played more games than Sabourin. Not great!

Had the organization cut each of their games played in half, and gave a longer look to, say, Angus Crookshank, Egor Sokolov, or a waiver claim, things might've turned out better. You can argue that wouldn't have made a difference, and you could be right, but without a ~15 game sample apiece, it's all speculation. If I had to boil my thesis down to one point it’s that the Sens have, historically, been too willing to stick with ineffective depth options. If there’s one place in your lineup that you should be willing to employ a revolving door approach, this is it.

This season, GM Steve Staios has a lot more options to work with. For the opening at the center position, for example, Jan Jenik and Zack Ostapchuk have both impressed at times during the preseason. None of these guys will be in the NHL this season by necessity, as was the case with Chartier last season. Rather, two of them will be in the AHL by necessity, due to a lack of roster spots, which is a good thing when good players are occupying those spots.

I expect Nick Cousins, Noah Gregor, Zack MacEwen, and two others to be on the roster to start the season. This setup is already an improvement on 2024 since the Sens can actually use their press box this time around. Injuries will happen, and players will struggle, but that's where the depth comes in. I can see Jenik, Ostapchuk, Halliday, Adam Gaudette, Matthew Highmore, and others being called up at some point to rotate in and out.

There's no obligation to stick with an ineffective lineup. If someone has a bad game, and there's a comparable option waiting in the wings, switch it up. The more sticks you get involved, the more likely it'll be for one of them to heat up for a stretch – like Kelly's in January, finding the scoresheet 5 times in a 10-game period. The Sens' record in those 5 games was 4-0-1, by the way.

There are options this time around. Make use of them.