Analysis: Ottawa Senators

Last season was, without a doubt, the worst since Melnyk took over the team. How did a team with the expectations it had, one goal away from the Cup Final the previous year, tank so hard?

And now that the team has jettisoned (or lost) big pieces of its roster – off-season trades of Erik Karlsson and Mike Hoffman and losing J-G Pageau for six months in a freak accident – what’s next, and could they still be succesful?

Let's take a walk down memory lane.

It’s been over 10 years since the Sens made the cup final, in 2007. Yes, the Sens were just one goal away from the 2017 Stanley Cup finals. But, since 2007 they have never looked to be a cup contender, Karlsson or no Karlsson.

It shows, first and foremost, in the amount of playoff rounds played between 2008 and 2018.

The Senators have the 16th most playoff rounds played, over the last 10 years. Noticeable teams near the top include Pittsburgh and Chicago, who suffered through their own rebuilds in the late 2000’s to become the most obvious examples of dynasties in today’s NHL.

In that time, Ottawa had made it past the first round just twice, and made the playoffs in consecutive years just twice (07/08, 12/13).

Prior to 2009, the Senators maintained an 11-year playoff streak. Part of this was during an era of no salary caps, while the franchise struggled financially (sold to Eugene Melnyk in 2003).

Since the Cup Finals appearance, it’s been a roller-coaster of emotions. Six coaching changes have occurred. The team has only won three playoff series, and the fans are staying away in droves.

Turning it around will most importantly require stability. It’s hard to win consistently when the head coaching position is a revolving door, and players don’t know if they can settle in. Now that some of Ottawa’s expensive pieces are gone, and multiple rookies look to be here to stay, it’s time to let everyone settle in and get used to working together.

Let’s take a look at some aggregate team stats, over the last ten years. Ottawa is highlighted in orange, the blue dots represent all the other teams.

Points: The Senators have been fairly middling in this respect over the last ten years. They haven’t reached the 100-point threshold since the 2007 season and haven’t placed first in their division since the 2006 season.

Save Percentage: The first year that jumps out is the lockout shortened 2013 season, where the Senators save percentage is an exceptional outlier to all other teams. In fact, it is the highest seen in all ten years. In that year, the backup duties to Craig Anderson were split between Ben Bishop and Robin Lehner. Perhaps this number was so high due to the shorter season, as most years the save percentage has been fairly middle of the pack.

Last season was extremely dire in this statistic, and we should expect that the goalies will bounce back towards their mean. However, if the team in front of them continues to allow a significant amount of shots on net, even a high save percentage won’t save them from more goals against.

Corsi For Percentage: Corsi is considered an “Advanced” hockey stat, indicative of a team or player’s total offence. It counts all shots and shots attempt made, compared to shots and shot attempts made by the other team.

What we can learn from this graph, is how Ottawa fared, year over year, in terms of being more offensive, or less offensive. In Ottawa’s case, what we see is a team hovering around or over 50% until the 2016 season. Prior to this, they were more likely to drive offense in games. Obviously, being successful in this measure doesn’t necessarily indicate success. Even seasons where they were under 50% don’t tell us as much as we could expect – in the year Ottawa made the Eastern Conference Finals (2017 season), they were solidly under 50% Corsi For on the year.

So Corsi can be a good indicator of offence, but as I will show later, it is not necessarily a strong indicator of success.

Face-Off Percentage: On their own, face-offs are not always important. An aggregate look, however, can help show us part of how a team found success, or did not. In this respect, Ottawa has actually been fairly decent, including last season. Face-offs are probably not a strong indicator of a team’s real potential.

Offensive/Defensive Zone Start Percentage: While Corsi tells us how much attacking or defending a team does, zone start percentages can help flesh this out further. Teams that start more in the defensive zone, even if they don’t allow shots to happen, are still spending more time out of the opposing team’s zone.

In both measures, Ottawa has had a fairly middling record. This doesn’t give us a lot to work with from a season-aggregate percentage, but more in-depth looks would include checking out this record against playoff vs non-playoff teams, for example.

Coaching effects
Much ado has been made of Guy Boucher’s coaching style. He has his teams playing an old-school trap style of hockey, limiting forechecks and putting emphasis on neutral-zone defense. In his first season, the 2016 season, the team obviously saw some success with this style of play. They made it to the Eastern Conference Finals and took the Pens to double-OT in game seven, partly with the system, partly because of Erik Karlsson.

Interestingly, Boucher’s time in Ottawa has played out almost identically to his time in Tampa Bay. After reaching the ECF with the Lightning, Boucher was fired the next year when his team suffered a significant setback.

The lingering question here is whether his coaching style is a one-hit wonder, and if not, can it work with an Ottawa team filled with youth and inexperience?

Playing without Karlsson
Speaking of Erik Karlsson, let’s take a look at Ottawa’s defensive corps Corsi For, over the last year, with and without Erik Karlsson.

The first chart is with, the second chart without.

The difference is quite startling.

Without Karlsson, each defenseman’s average drops below 50%. That means, when Karlsson wasn’t on the ice, over the year, all of Ottawa’s defense generated less offense than they faced. It remains to be seen how this will play out in the new season, but I think we can expect more of the same.

Even as Chabot begins to mature, and it looks like he will be a solid player in the NHL, the loss of Karlsson takes away Ottawa’s only top-tier defenseman.

Forward Group
The Senators have, at times, struggled on offense. The powerplay has been poor over the last few years, even with players like Hoffman and Karlsson playing big minutes on it. What can we expect from the forward group this year?

Here’s a look at a selection of the forward group. This chart is their points per 60 minutes of ice time, for 1-year, and 4-year averages.

Columns ending in 1 were from the 2018 season. Columns ending in 4 are an aggregation of the last 4 seasons.

The obvious best forward in this respect was Mark Stone. He wasn’t just good, that 2.68 P/60 last year was elite. He had the 9th highest score in the NHL, right behind Claude Giroux. The last four years indicate that this may be slightly higher than we can expect, but with a bigger role than ever placed on his shoulders, perhaps such a pace will continue.

Alongside him, Duchene Dzingel, and Ryan also put up decent points. With the addition of rookie Brady Tkachuk, Ottawa looks to be able to roll at least two solid lines, at least in terms of offense. Further down the depth chart, the same cannot be said. It means Ottawa may not be able to keep up with the raw offense a deep team like Toronto can bring to bear, but judicious rolling of lines might bring some success.

This chart demonstrates the Corsi For of the same forwards, for last season and a 4-season aggregate. Here's those numbers.

Most of Ottawa’s forwards, like the defense, have seen Corsi For numbers under 50% in the last season, and over the last four seasons. Obviously, the team has been on the back-foot for a little while now.

Shots for and Against
There is only so much a goalie can do, to keep a team afloat. Craig Anderson is usually a very effective goalie, but the team around him can often leave him out to dry. These are Ottawa’s shooting areas, for and against, over the last three years.

Top maps are Shots For, bottom are Shots Against.

During the year of the huge playoff run (2017), Ottawa obviously did a good job of protecting their own slot, whereas in the non-playoff years around it, especially last season, they allowed a higher percentage of shots from dangerous areas of the slot.

Meanwhile, their offense has been anemic in all the years, struggling to get traction in dangerous areas around the slot. The chart tells us they are forced to shoot a lot from the outside, and perhaps rebounds aren’t often retrieved from these shots.

They are going to need a lot more offence, from all of their players, but especially from their top offensive lines. Unfortuantely, the changes made over the off-season may effect this, as some of Ottawa's most offensive pieces are gone.

Making the playoffs

These charts show us the Corsi For by points, and the Save Percentage, over the last two years.

Interestingly, as we discussed above, Ottawa’s Corsi had little difference between the two years. Save Percentage, on the other hand, dropped off significantly in thee 2018 season. And it appears that they paid for that in points. What we can glean from this is that if the goalies have an off-year, or the team allows too many shots on, then the chances of success become extremely low.

Of all the measures looked at, goaltending appears to be one of the biggest factors in determining success. It can mask the weaknesses of a team like Ottawa, enough to get to the playoffs in multiple years.

The Future
Expectations are definitely low for this coming year, and perhaps that is the best place for the team to be. After making the Eastern Conference Finals, I think a lot of expectations were placed on last year’s group, expectations that were perhaps undeserved.

If Ottawa’s goaltending duo has a bounce-back year (and they should), then we can expect the team to punch above its weight. Maybe they won’t reach the playoffs, but they also won’t be sending the number one overall draft pick to Colorado.

If, however, Craig Anderson’s play last year is part of a downward trend, we can expect another bad year. Basically, success all comes down to the goaltenders. We know, from our review of the last few years, that Ottawa will spend more time on the defensive than offensive end of things.

If the new players turn out to be NHL ready, then their speed will improve Ottawa’s offensive abilities. Formenton might not be as good as MCDavid, but he is speedy.

This year, I think the team, media, and fans, are going to learn to roll with the punches. The Senators have been given long odds to make the playoffs, and this means anything positive will be a victory this year.

The parity in the league also means even a poor Ottawa team may not finish that badly. There are other rebuilding teams, and you never know how well the rookies will turn out to be.

For this season, at least, I think the motto is going to be: Expect the worst, and celebrate the small things.

Here’s hoping we can all get through it together.

Data was taken from Corsica.hockey and Natural Stat Trick. Huge thanks to both sites for their data collections. The shots visualization came from hockeyviz.com, and they have so many cool visualisation features for hockey. Lastly, thanks to TSN's analysts. I'm always really interested by articles from Travis Yost and Scott Cullen, and found them an inspiration to do this analysis for next year's Ottawa Senators.