The Senators lost to the Maple Leafs in the opening round of this year’s Stanley Cup Playoffs. While they performed well in a six-game loss, they showed the team isn’t ready to be a serious contender. Some might argue that this is the first major hurdle in their rebuild, and they have plenty of time to ramp up expectations, but Ottawa has been rebuilding for half a decade and will need to be bold this summer if they hope to jump into the upper echelon of NHL teams.
Ottawa’s rebuild went through severe growing pains, the biggest being that the team hasn’t drafted particularly well outside its first-round picks. They took Drake Batherson in the fourth round in 2017 and Shane Pinto in the second round back in 2019, but their bottom six has been an area of concern for quite some time, and they hadn’t been able to squeeze bottom-six NHLers out of their draft picks. That put increased pressure on Ottawa’s strong top six, an area that Ottawa could look to improve if it wants to contend.
It doesn’t matter how good Ottawa’s top six is; if they don’t receive much help from the bottom two lines, winning games, particularly in the playoffs, becomes increasingly complex. A good comparison for this is the Penguins during the prime years of Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin, when the Penguins couldn’t get out of the first round with a weak bottom six but became a buzzsaw during 2016 and 2017 when GM Jim Rutherford built an above-average third and fourth line.
Ottawa needs to adopt the same approach to take the next step. Last year, Ottawa’s top six was dramatically improved by the end of the season, with Pinto centering the third line, and the acquisition of Fabian Zetterlund offering another solid piece for the bottom two lines. But if they want to be bold, there are two places they should look to improve, both of which would organically improve their overall depth.
The first is up front, where their depth was mentioned as an issue. Ottawa could tinker at the edges of their roster and sign depth players as they did last summer, or they could make a push to acquire a top-six forward who could push a David Perron or Claude Giroux (if he re-signs) into the bottom six and add some scoring. Alex Adams of Sportsnet has speculated about the Senators potentially taking a run at Winnipeg’s Nikolaj Ehlers or Florida’s Sam Bennett, and both would fit what Ottawa needs. However, the Senators have solid center depth in their top nine and limited cap…
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