NHL Hockey Season Previews – Ottawa Senators
Looking for 2019-20 Ottawa Senators predictions? The Senators are looking to be little more than a pesky thorn in the side of the NHL’s contenders this season. The Sens, under new head coach D.J. Smith, are fully committed to a youth-movement rebuild, but they can take solace that the cupboards are far from bare. Still, 2019-20 will be a year of development in Canada’s national capital.
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2019-20 NHL Hockey Preview – Ottawa Senators
Head Coach: D.J. Smith
2018 Record: 29-47-6
Ottawa Senators Odds to win the 2020 Stanley Cup Championship: 100/1
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Ottawa fans (what are left of them, giving owner Eugene Melnyk’s disastrous reign) have little choice but to trust the process. They can take heart that GM Pierre Dorion’s strength is a distinguishing scouting eye and that ‘Smitty’ is hungry to cut his teeth as a head coach in the NHL.
2019 Ottawa Senators Predictions: Team Strengths
Top line winger Brady Tkachuk is a player, but you’ve got the lead-footed, uninspired Bobby Ryan on the top line with him. Local product and likely third-line centre J.G. Pageau is a crowd favourite, but he doesn’t inspire fear in anybody. Batherson probably already slots into a top-six role. There’s the defensively-responsible Connor Brown from Toronto and also the diminutive Tyler Ennis, who impressed Leafs coach Mike Babcock last season. In the middle of the ice, keep an eye on hulking young prospect Logan Brown, who has a chance to truly make waves on a team that lacks depth. At 6”6, 220 lbs, Logan Brown should be tricky to move around out there.
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There’s also the budding development of slick defenceman Thomas Chabot, or ‘Hotsam Batcho’ as the Twitter-inclined Senators fans know him as. The youngster led the team with 55 points last season, and he looks poised to take another step forward, with the only limit on his ceiling being the deficient players lining up next to him. The Sens smartly inked him to a multi-year extension, which is at least a positive show of faith from ownership. Look for Chabot to terrorize Eastern Conference teams for years.
Young pup Drake Batherson has also looked good, both in the AHL and with a cup of coffee in the ‘N’. He’s got offensive guile to spare. Additionally there is cheetah-fast winger Alex Formenton who has wowed junior fans on the London Knights. Basically, Ottawa is forced to salivate over these developing prospects, because the on-ice product in the Canadian Tire Centre in 2019-20 should be piss-poor.
2019 Ottawa Senators Predictions: Team Weaknesses
Between the pipes, Ottawa is still rolling with veteran Craig Anderson, who is a likeable guy, but is 38 years old and was never confused with Dominik Hasek even in years past. Anders Nilsson was signed a two-year extension, with the hope being that he’ll push Anderson for more playing time. The Senators have a goalie in the pipeline in 21-year old Filip Gustavsson, but he struggled in his first year in Belleville, Ottawa’s AHL affiliate.
It speaks volumes that so many of Ottawa’s depth positions are populated by leftover spare parts from Toronto’s playoff team a year ago. Obviously, former Toronto assistant Smith likes his own guys, but Connor Brown, Zaitsev, Ennis and the aging Ron Hainsey don’t exactly inspire terror in the hearts of the opposition.
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Also, such sizable spots handed to AHL players from last year – Batherson, Formenton, stud D-man prospect Erik Brannstrom, Logan Brown, Rudolfs Balcers who came over from San Jose in the Erik Karlsson deal – doesn’t augur well for 2019-20 success, despite the lofty potential of most of them.
Ottawa Senators Prediction: Eighth in the Atlantic, 15th in the Eastern Conference
Despite the likelihood of growing pains, Senators brass believe they’ve put the pieces in place to bring the franchise back in the playoff mix. It won’t happen overnight, but you have to award full marks to the brain trust for being decisive in pulling the plug on contention when they did, despite having playoff success only a few years ago.
Despite Dorion’s tone-deaf relationship with the media, he’s got a keen eye for populating the roster with talent, and Melnyk can’t get any more hated in Ottawa, so that’s nothing to worry about. How the young and hungry Smith trains up these young and hungry players will be the story of 2019-20 for the Ottawa Senators.
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