Ottawa Senators Three Stars of the Week: Week 16
Started from the bottom, now we 28th
Not a bad week at all. This time a week ago, we were rejoicing that the Sens had broken their losing streak and won two out of three games. A week later, and the Sens repeated the streak. Beating Matt Duchene’s old team in his return, followed by beating the Hurricanes for the first time in Carolina in a hundred years since 2015, and then wrapped up with a close loss to the Blues in which the winning goal was definitely contentious. Outscoring your opponents 12-7 in three games isn’t bad at all.
Three stars
- Matt Duchene — Hard not to pick the guy having the best week of his life. New baby, turned 28, put up four points.
- Ryan Dzingel — Sense a theme about this team’s pending UFAs? They’re often their best players. Dzingel for his part had three points this week and at times looked like the team’s most-threatening forward.
- Anders Nilsson — He did his part to win the two games he played this week. He looks like a very reliable goalie to pair with Craig Anderson. You know what that means: three years, $3M-per-year extension incoming.
Trending up
- Speaking of Anderson, it was nice to see him not look too rusty in his return from injury.
- Speaking of rust, it was nice to see Thomas Chabot return to action and look pretty good. The Sens need him as a no. 1 D.
- As for no number-one defencemen, Cody Ceci actually put up some point this week, and Christian Wolanin is continuing to convince me his this team’s second-best defencemen.
- Also nice to see Nick Paul finally get his first goal of the season. It’ll be a nice memento to reflect on over his next eight healthy scratches./
Trending down
- Maxime Lajoie was a scratch one game this week, and got eaten up by the opposition in the other games. I think he could benefit from being sent down, especially if the Sens are serious about keeping Harpur and Ceci around.
- Rudolf Balcers is seeing his ice time drop to the lowest on the team, and he was the team’s worst possession player in two out of three games this week. A demotion could be in order soon./
Who to watch
Mark Stone has been quiet by his standards the last couple weeks. That means we’re probably do for a six-point game or something like that.