After disastrous road trip, Senators must regroup in a hurry

As far away as last summer, this December road trip loomed large for the Ottawa Senators. 

Five games over eight days, with time-zone travel, against stiff competition. 

It would tell us about this team. This season. 

Where would the Sens be when the trip started on Dec. 14 in St. Louis – comfortably in a playoff spot, so that a 2-3-0 record on this trip would be absolutely fine? Ah, the pre-season dreams of late summer. Such folly. 

Who knew that Ottawa would have handcuffed its season before the trip began, stumbling to a sub-.500 record despite a favourable, home-heavy early schedule. 

At 11-12-0 before flying to St. Louis, the Sens needed a winning record on this big roadie just to stay afloat. In the end, they didn’t win a blessed game, going 0-5-0 while being outscored 25-16. A trip so bad, it got head coach D.J. Smith fired after the first three losses. Jacques Martin took over and picked up the final two defeats – the last one a valiant effort in a 6-4 loss to rampaging Nate MacKinnon and the Colorado Avalanche. MacKinnon scored four of the Avs’ six goals, his 299th, 300th, 301st and 302nd career goals.

Ottawa’s record is now 11-17-0, even though its goal differential is just minus-4. 

The Sens blew leads in four of these road games, including three leads going into the third period. They just cannot win, even when it looks for all the world as though they finally will. 

Critically against the Avs, the Sens gave up an agonizing power-play goal off a wild scramble and a failed clear with 17 seconds left in the second period. Goaltender Joonas Korpisalo, heroic in the early going before his team found its legs, smashed his gloved hands onto the ice in frustration as Mikko Rantanen hammered that shot home at 19:43. 

You just knew that meant trouble to come. It came in the form of three more Colorado goals in the third, including one that looked offside but was not overturned. 

The Sens pumped 45 shots at Alexandar Georgiev, outshooting the home team 45-38. 

But four power-play goals allowed were too much to overcome, despite how Ottawa battled. 

Senators captain Brady Tkachuk took the loss hard. He wasn’t shirking his own role in this six-game losing streak. 

“It’s hard to look at positives right now,” Tkachuk said. “It’s a pretty (expletive) feeling. I don’t think I’ve ever felt worse in my life. It’s not fun right now.”

Tkachuk is known for physically imposing his will on opponents, but he is beating himself up at the moment.

“At the end of the day, it kind of starts with me as a leader,” Tkachuk said. “I’ve got to do a better job. Individually, I’m not there. I’m not playing the way I need to be playing and it’s trickling down. It’s on me. It’s on me as the guy in charge to do a better job.”

Well, it’s on a lot more than the captain. But kudos to him for his accountability. 

There’s little time to reflect. The Senators play host to Pittsburgh on Saturday night, the last game before the Christmas break, and then are in Toronto on Wednesday. 

Tkachuk has been mired in losing seasons since he arrived in 2018, and so it’s easy to understand his frustration, which mirrors that of Ottawa fans. 

New and former head coach Martin brings a different perspective. Unlike his predecessor, Smith, Martin doesn’t have a win-or-else tag on him. He is here on an interim basis to teach and help evaluate this roster. 

Playoffs? That shouldn’t even be part of the lexicon at the moment. 

This roster needs to be in survival mode, before it gets altered under new management, kind of like the local restaurant that just got sold and will likely opt for  a new menu. 

Martin is charged with bringing structure to the Senators and he liked the improvements he saw between the loose game in Arizona on Tuesday and the more committed effort in Denver. 

“Five-on-five, we were a little slow to start ... but in the second and third period, I really liked what I saw,” Martin said. “I thought we played a really good game. We did some good things. We were better on the forecheck, we were better at moving the puck. 

You knew Martin would have something to say about team discipline, especially when the Avalanche power play was so lethal.

“There’s areas we need to clean up,” Martin said. “We have to cut down on the penalties. We took some penalties in the offensive zone that we don’t need to take.”

Ridly Greig’s interference penalty on Rantanen 200 feet from the Ottawa net comes to mind. 

“Overall, I thought the effort was better than last game,” Martin said. 

“We scored enough goals, we need to clean up some areas without the puck.”

After the game, Martin tried to pick up his team. 

He told them he knows they’re disappointed to play that hard and lose, but he reinforced the positives.

“What’s important to me is that we progressed from last game to tonight’s game,” Martin said. “We had a better effort, we did a better job of protecting the red line, not giving our zone as easy as last game. And we got stronger as the game went on.”

Small improvements that will eventually result in a win one of these days. 

The Sens aren’t where anyone thought they would be just before Christmas. 

But they owe it to themselves and to their fans to soldier on and be the professionals they are.