The Ottawa Senators heavily emphasized the importance of a strong start after making some stellar moves in the offseason. All the players arrived weeks before training camp, indicating they were ready to put their work boots on and get going.
17 games in, their 6-10-1 record is good enough for 30th place in the entire NHL. The upbeat vibe from the summer is gone, and the Senators are staring at a 6th straight season without the hope of playoff hockey in Ottawa. This is officially another disastrous start to a season, making it 3 years in a row.
Despite this, General Manager Pierre Dorion has stressed patience. He met with the media on November 7th while the team was in the middle of a 5 game-losing streak, stating that Head Coach D.J. Smith is here to stay.
Dorion emphasized the need for patience given how good the team’s underlying numbers were at 5 on 5. He wanted fans to be patient and let the team sort out their problems defensively while hoping that offensively, things would start to fall their way.
The Senators are 2-3-1 since Dorion backed his head coach.
In that same press conference, Dorion stressed the importance of the next 10 games. He claimed that the team deserved a better record than they had and the process was ongoing.
Fine. There was merit to that at the time.
But in virtually every game since, the Senators have failed to put together an inspiring performance. In both of their wins, they deserved to lose. In the losses, they mostly deserved better, but they shot themselves in the foot with terrible giveaways or lazy stick penalties.
Then there was Saturday’s game against the New Jersey Devils. An afternoon start, the only NHL game on TV, a nearly sold-out crowd for just the 2nd time this season, with the best team in the league visiting.
And they laid an egg.
Throughout their rebuild, the Senators have prided themselves on giving the best teams in the league a hard time getting 2 points. The Devils have now won 12 in a row, and they didn’t even break a sweat yesterday.
For the first time since I can remember, the Senators were booed off the ice. Fans letting their displeasure be known in person is much different than #FireDJ trending on Twitter:
“Fire D.J.” Chants being heard through the broadcast.
— Jack Richardson (@jackrichrdson) November 19, 2022
On Nov. 9th, following an embarrassing 3rd period collapse against the Vancouver Canucks, I wrote about D.J. Smith’s time in Ottawa and how he’d tapped the well dry with this core. I’ve been in Smith’s corner for his entire tenure in Ottawa, but I’m out of patience.
I know the players like him, but they’re not currently playing as if they do. The compete level fans became so accustomed to under this coach is just not there anymore. The players are dejected.
Brady Tkachuk, a player that any fan would love to have captain their team, had a very telling post-game scrum yesterday where he defended his head coach, saying it’s on the players more than anyone to get them out of this cycle:
Brady Tkachuk went out of his way to say the players need to shoulder the blame in Ottawa.
“It’s a Saturday afternoon and close to a sellout (crowd). It’s on us for not getting ready. It’s on me for not helping to get the group ready. So I’ll take responsibility for that one.”
— Ian Mendes (@ian_mendes) November 19, 2022
Tkachuk is right about the team needing to be able to get up for that game. The players probably need to own just as much of this disappointing start as coaching and management do.
But this is the National Hockey League. It’s a business, and when the product is failing, you make changes. Dorion took Smith’s toy away in Nikita Zaitsev, a move that was long overdue. That hasn’t proven to be enough.
It’s not unreasonable for Dorion to preach patience. This is the 2nd youngest team in the NHL after all, and you don’t just snap out of a rebuild overnight.
It’s also not unreasonable for Sens fans to clamour for change when they just watched the Devils beat their team to win 12 games in a row, as one of the most dominant 5 on 5 teams in the NHL. The Devils also happen to be the 5th youngest team in the NHL.
I’m tired of talking about picks and how elite a draft might be. We were promised improvement, and the results are brutal. The goal was to play meaningful games by the trade deadline, and here we sit in November, with another basement-dwelling team.
The Sens start a 4-game west coast swing that will wrap up next Monday night in Los Angeles, which will also wrap up Dorion’s 10-game window from his press conference. If the Sens fail to get at least 6 of a possible 8 points on this trip, I’d expect D.J. Smith’s time as head coach will come to an end.
But the fact we’ve reached this point just 17 games in is ridiculous. Senators fans deserve better after years of anguish and being the laughingstock of the NHL. At least the off-ice news is positive this time around, with the impending sale of the team allowing fans to envision a distantly bright future.
Ottawa is back at it Monday night in San Jose with a 10:30 pm (!) puck drop. Saying that their season hinges on this November road trip doesn’t seem like a stretch at this point.
-Jack Richardson
Twitter: @jackrichrdson