Poll: Where will the Senators finish?
When we ran a similar poll to this one in the preseason, many of you picked the Senators to finish in the 4-6 range in the Eastern Conference. Nearly everyone had Ottawa making the playoffs. Eleven games into the season, things aren’t looking so positive.
When we ran a similar poll to this one in the preseason, many of you picked the Senators to finish in the 4-6 range in the Eastern Conference. Nearly everyone (96 per cent) had Ottawa making the playoffs. Eleven games into the season, things aren’t looking so positive. This team is now 4-6-1 and only one of those wins came against a team with a .500 or better record (Carolina at 5-5-0). So we ask you — are you keeping the faith, or have your expectations dropped?
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It is reluctantly that I voted “Out of playoffs”.
As is, they’ll likely lose to the Leafs (4-7-1), beat Atlanta (5-7-1), beat Islanders (6-7-1), lose their Saturday game (6-8-1)…so we’re talking about a team hovering around the .500 mark, a few games below, for most of the season.
To “lock” a playoff spot, the Senators would need a sequence of four or five consecutive wins, with few of those being overtime wins or shootout wins that would also give Eastern Conference opponents points. In that vein, when the Senators have lost they haven’t GAINED loser points (or Leafs points, as they’re called in some circles), which really doesn’t help their cause down the road. If they’d lost to the Bruins 5-4 in OT, well at least thats’ a point. That’s not happening though.
Sure, Kuba is back soon…he’ll help.
Leclaire is back soon, but is that really a plus? He’s unsteady at worst while being average and injury-prone at best.
To make things worse, Toronto isn’t a bottom-feeder, New Jersey will rebound sometime, you’d imagine…as will the Sabres.
It looks like a death struggle just to gain a foothold on 8th to 7th place. The Hockey News took a lot of heat for dismissing the 11-game unbeaten streak, but can we seriously look at this version of the Senators, minus shot-blockers and defensive stalwarts Andy Sutton and Anton Volchenkov (yes, both are injured, but they may not have been injured here) and really see this happening? Will Elliott really have a .925 – .940 save percentage for 11 games in a row? The answer seems to be no.
Sadly, this all adds up to a 9th to 10th place finish.
Time to jettison older players, bring in draft picks and try out some young legs from Bingo perhaps.
I thik Mr. Scanlan had a piece last year wherein teams out of the race in early November trended toward missing the playoffs or an early exit if they made it. Might be good to dust that off…