Another November, another slump for the Ottawa Senators.
The team's inability to play well in the month is proving to be a problem again. The Senators wilted against Connor McDavid and the Edmonton Oilers on Tuesday.
“Flat”, said coach Travis Green. “Not a lot of energy, not sharp with our execution.”
Since 2021-22 the Senators are 12-29-2 in November. They are 3-5-1 so far this November after their 5-2 loss to the Oilers on Tuesday. The Senators’ play in November is befuddling.
For the first time all season, the Senators have a streak and not the good kind, losing their third consecutive game.
“I look at our record,” said captain Brady Tkachuk. “I look at the games where we've lost, where we should have won, should have gotten a point, at least, and our record looks completely different.”
You can throw all the advanced stats in the world about how the team isn’t as bad as its record suggests — from Ottawa's sixth-best CORSI percentage at five-on-five at and fifth expected goals at five-on-five.
But stats only matter so much. The eye test counts too, and against Edmonton, the Senators were abysmal in every facet. It is part of a worrisome tendency: finding ways to lose.
“I mean, one word you could say is immature,” said Tkachuk post-game. “I mean, we talk about it in here all the time, and there's just been too many moments, too many opportunities that have been missed so far.”.
Immaturity begins with your start. When you give up the first goal of the game in 10 out of the first 18 games, that’s a signal.
Against Edmonton, the Senators allowed the first goal thanks to a player who has excelled most of the season. Before the game, Thomas Chabot generated the best shot share percentage on the team at 61.31 per cent (CF%) and best share of expected goals percentage of 60.48 (xGF%). Yet Evan Bouchard made Thomas Chabot look like a turnstile by waltzing past him to shelf a shot past Linus Ullmark.
“I mean that just can't happen if I'm gonna play those minutes,” said Chabot about the Bouchard goal. “And I have a big role on the team. You just can't, can't let that happen. And you know what? It's on me.”
Despite the painful mistake by Chabot, Tim Stutzle tied the game 1-1 in the first period. But once again, within 35 seconds the lead was lost when Connor McDavid put himself at the side of the net unmarked by Jake Sanderson to reclaim the lead, 2-1.
The goal given up so quickly after tying the game provoked a one-word response from the captain, Brady Tkachuk: “inexcusable."
“No more (expletive) excuses," he said.
Here’s a sombre stat I’ve used before.
In Ottawa, Groundhog Day is a fall celebration.
Some of this is luck and some of this is goaltending, and we’ll get to that in a minute. But obviously one other place to look is the team’s defence.
In the second period, Chabot threw a bad neutral-zone giveaway onto the stick of Adam Henrique that led to the fourth goal by Leon Draisaitl to make it 4-1.
“The first two periods, (were) probably the worst two periods I played. And you know what? You got to take some ownership.”
In desperation, Green split up the pairing of Chabot and Nick Jensen for the first time all season. The pair had generated 58.58 per cent of the shots (CF%) when on the ice, the best percentage of any Senators defence pairing, out-chancing opponents’ 294 shot attempts to 207, according to Natural Stat Trick.
But desperate times make for desperate pairings. Green decided to match up Chabot with Travis Hamonic and Jensen with Tyler Kleven.
“We've been playing some really good hockey, Jensen and I,” said Chabot about his partnership with Jensen. “And he was playing well again tonight, and I just wasn't there. So, another guy stepped in, (and) Kleven played a really good game in my spot and moved (the puck) real well.”
Another theme this season is that the Senators’ goaltending simply hasn’t been good. For the fifth time in his 10 starts, Ullmark allowed more than four goals — five against Edmonton on 31 shots — dropping his save percentage for the season to .884, which is lower than Joonas Korpisalo’s .890 save percentage last season.
But the stats suggest some of November’s wobbles and foibles have been due to bad luck as well as poor play.
PDO (a statistic that adds together a team’s shooting and save percentage) is a puck-luck statistic that sums up a team’s shooting and save percentage, typically an indicator of luck — or lack thereof, in the Senators' case. On the season, the Senators are 30th in the league in PDO, which moves to 31st in the month of November. Their inability to buy saves and capitalize on chances is demonstrated with the Senators having the 25th best five-on-five shooting percentage and 27th best five-on-five save percentage. The Senators can reasonably hope that there will be a regression to the mean, meaning that if they keep doing what they are doing, their luck will improve.
Process versus results has been the quandary of the Senators season. Edmonton and Ottawa each had eight high-danger chances, but the visitors scored on four of them and the Senators just once.
How many more days until December again?
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