Same old issues haunting Senators as slide continues

OTTAWA — Sometimes a game is an aberration in a team’s play and sometimes it’s a perfect example of what’s going wrong or right with a team.

On Thursday, in the Ottawa Senators' 4-0 loss to the Buffalo Sabres, everything went wrong. But it also exemplified the Senators’ issues as they extended their four-game winless streak.

Dumb mistakes, inability to score and missing Linus Ullmark.

Sometimes you make one awful mistake, and it ends up in the back of your net. On Thursday, three of Buffalo’s goals were off awful mistakes. Look no further than Thomas Chabot. It didn’t start well for Chabot, who turned the puck over leading to Jack Quinn’s breakaway goal that gave the Sabres a 1-0 lead. It was double trouble when, at the end of a power play, Chabot's slapshot was blocked and Quinn once again jumped onto a breakaway to score his second goal in as many one-on-ones against Anton Forsberg.

On Jan. 3, against St. Louis, the same thing occurred when Chabot lost Brandon Saad in transition, Saad burning him for a breakaway goal. Chabot simply needs to make better reads, something that has troubled him in his time in Ottawa.

He took ownership for the poor play.

“It just wasn't good. There's no way around it,” said Chabot, post-game. “Nobody can hide behind anything. It's just from top to bottom, the whole team, just not good enough. Simple as that.”

It wasn’t just Chabot’s miscues. His partner, Nick Jensen, had the biggest muffin when he threw a puck up the middle right onto Dylan Cozens’ stick. Cozens walked into yet another one-on-one with Forsberg, ripping a shot past the netminder to extend Buffalo’s lead to 3-0. Jensen made a similar mistake against St. Louis when he got caught up at the blueline to get burned by Saad.

“Kind of handed them three goals,” said Senators coach Travis Green.

The horrific night for Chabot and Jensen went to the max after Ryan McLeod launched a shot off Chabot’s skate that redirected past Forsberg to make it 4-0.

The pairing of Chabot and Jensen, analytically speaking, has been the team’s best, but they have been prone to brain farts throughout the season.

Obvious analysis: you have to score to win. And the Senators haven’t been scoring lately. During their four-game winless streak, they’ve scored only four goals while getting shut out in two of their last three games. It’s part of a disturbing trend with this Senators core.

Last season, as much as the Senators struggled defensively and with goaltending, they weren’t good offensively either. They finished 20th in goals for at 3.05; this season, they have fewer goals, averaging 2.85 a game, which ranks them 22nd.

Sportsnet.ca asked Green before the game how his team can generate more offence.

“Good question,” said Green. “We've talked a lot about offence, it’s no secret that we haven’t scored as much as we'd like.”

In training camp, Green prioritized defensive principles that have been displayed by his group. But now, the offence is the area he’s working on with his team.

“When you defend, there’s certain parts of the game that are black and white; offence is obviously not black and white,” said Green. “(There are) certain concepts that we talk about as coaches.”

The question that arises now is, Why does this Senators forward group struggle to score? Goals have been hard to come by of late for a Senators team that shouldn’t labour to score with the talents of Tim Stutzle, Brady Tkachuk, Drake Batherson, Josh Norris and Claude Giroux.

Clearly, Green was searching for answers when he blended the lines dramatically against Buffalo:

Norris-Stutzle-Giroux

Tkachuk-Pinto-Batherson

Gregor-Greig-Cousins

Reinhardt-Ostapchuk-Gaudette

It was Norris' first stint on the wing in a long time. His coach explained his rationale.

“Trying, (and) grasping for some offence,” Green said about throwing Norris onto the wing.

In theory, Norris is less of a play-driver and needs to be fed the puck, which he will be with Stutzle and Giroux. In the second half of the Buffalo game, the trio created multiple chances but couldn’t finish. Simply outshooting teams won’t do it. They had nine high-danger chances to 10 for Buffalo, despite outshooting Buffalo 35 to 21, according to Natural Stat Trick.

“It would be nice to have a little bit more offence in our game,” said Norris. “But when it’s not going your way, you got to bear down a little bit more defensively, and we gifted a few goals tonight.”

They did "gift" goals, but they need to present their fans some goals too.

They’ve scored the fewest goals of any team in the league since Nov. 15. Also throw in that the Senators rank dead last in the league in goals from defence, with just nine, and it ain’t pretty.

It's all adding up to the point where the Senators were booed by their fans Thursday night.

Finally, the Senators miss Ullmark. Forsberg wasn’t to blame for the loss to Buffalo but he wasn’t a hero either. When the Senators needed a couple breakaway saves, he stopped none of them. Fans jeered Forsberg after he made a save in the second period. He allowed four goals on 21 shots. However, when the Senators were rolling, Ullmark consistently made the timely save. They are 4-9-1 when they give up 25 or fewer shots.

Incredibly, when the Senators give up 25 or more shots, their save percentage is .915. Regardless, they need more saves. Getting them propelled the Senators into a playoff spot thanks to their six-game winning streak last month on Ullmark's back, the back of which is now injured in an unfortunate bit of irony for Ottawa fans.