Time running out to save Senators’ season
Posted Jan 13, 2026 12:36:17 PM.
Last Updated Jan 13, 2026 12:36:23 PM.
After one of the wildest few days in Ottawa Senators history, one thing is abundantly clear: the team’s playoff lifeline is on puck-luck support.
“I thought we lacked a little bit of desperation,” said Senators coach Travis Green on Saturday, after their fourth straight loss, this one to the Florida Panthers.
“Sometimes it’s five per cent more. Sometimes it’s 10 per cent. Sometimes … it’s if you play 20 shifts, it’s playing desperate for 20, not 18.”
Damning.
Hope drains and wanes when you’re not desperate enough to chase after your dream: in this case, a playoff berth.
“I don’t want to say you got to hit it right now,” Senators defenceman Jake Sanderson told Sportsnet.ca about the need for a tone of urgency.
“I feel like we’ve been hitting it. I don’t think we really sat back at all. But, yeah, I think you’re right. When you look at the standings right now, we’re kind of falling behind.”
It’s now or never to rejuvenate playoff belief for Ottawa. The Senators are now seven points out of a playoff spot while tied at the bottom of the Eastern Conference as the back half of the season approaches.
And, sure, it’s been a whirlwind over the last few days for players and staff. They might tell you they’ve been 100 per cent focused on hockey, but how could they be?
Unsubstantiated rumours surrounding Linus Ullmark, on a personal leave of absence, have been circulated on social media by “outside forces,” according to a statement released by the team. The often emotional Brady Tkachuk’s response was the most impassioned statement he’s made all season.
“It’s pretty f—— bulls—,” said Tkachuk
“I don’t think anybody’s pretty happy about a narrative being spread like that. I think it’s OK for people to critique our on-ice performance, but when it gets into family, it’s pretty f—— bulls—.”
Tim Stutzle thanked general manager Steve Staios for putting out the statement. Reading between the hockey-player cliché lines, the emotion was clear. At the same time, Ullmark’s teammates downplayed the rumours’ effects on the dressing room.
“Honestly, I really feel bad for Linus,” said Tkachuk. “Nobody knows what he’s going through. But the fact that he has to even deal with this and even have to think about it. All we care about for him is getting what he needs, and we’ve said from Day 1 that he has our support. Now that he has to deal with this, it’s f—— mind-blowing.”
“It’s silly,” Sanderson told Sportsnet.ca. “You don’t want to totally ignore it. I mean, anybody can say whatever they want on the internet nowadays, and that’s kind of the frustrating part.”
Maybe this will be the ultimate character test this Senators team needed, but it doesn’t feel that way. Quite the opposite.
The Senators’ off-ice struggles have mirrored their on-ice parade of losses. And the personal drama has evoked shades of the uproar in 2018, when players were caught denouncing their coaches on video in an Uber while infighting broke out between Mike Hoffman’s and Erik Karlsson’s significant others.
New ownership, new general manager, same drama. The narrative that Ottawa is a boring place should vanish as quickly as the Senators wish the Ullmark rumours would.
The Senators have lost the last two games since the controversy, with uninspired performances. It wouldn’t seem like such a crisis if the Senators had won those games and were in a playoff spot.
On the ice, the Senators have not gotten saves, their special teams have been abysmal, particularly of late, and their roster’s flaws have been exposed. Losses by fine margins have cut wide swaths in the standings. The Senators aren’t a bad team, and they would tell you that.
“Same time last year, we had a similar amount of points. But I think we’re a better team than we were last year,” said Sanderson.
Added forward Fabian Zetterlund: “We know we have a good hockey team in here.”
But for the Senators to match their point total of 97 from last season, they’d need to finish 24-10-4.
The Senators need to get streakin’, pronto.
So where is the hope?
“I’m not sure,” said forward Claude Giroux. “But I know that a lot of guys carry this locker room and we’re going to get out of this.”
The answers lie in addressing their deficiencies.
We’ve banged on about goaltending many times this season, as the team is last in the NHL in every category. Maybe James Reimer could be the solution, but allowing six goals in his debut in Belleville doesn’t inspire confidence.
Meanwhile, Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman said that the expectation is for Ullmark to return sometime “this year” but there is zero clarity as to when.
The good news is the Senators don’t need spectacular goaltending. Just adequate would be fine. They are top five in five-on-five expected goals share, scoring chances share and high-danger chances share.
Outside of goaltending, their biggest issue has been their woeful penalty kill that still sits second-to-last in the league.
