Ottawa Senators Quarter Season Review

So far in 2025-26, the name of the game in Ottawa has been “steady as she goes.” Nothing about the team’s record jumps off of the page. The offense is 10th in the NHL, scoring 3.25 goals per game. The defence is performing slightly worse, giving up 3.35 goals against per game. Likely, this is explained by the team’s subpar save percentage (.868%), which is still lagging behind the league average (.891%) in spite of recent solid performance by Linus Ullmark and Leevi Meriläinen.

Yet these are not the metrics that count at the end of the season: it’s wins and points that determine whether a team is bound for the playoffs or the golf course. And in these all important metrics, the Senators are right where they ought to be. After 20 games played, the Senators are 10-6-4 and own a .600 P%. This places the team third in the Atlantic Division, although they are level on points with both the Tampa Bay Lightning and the Boston Bruins. 

No doubt if you had asked almost any Senators fan prior to the season, they’d have been thrilled to hear the team was .600 near the end of November - a notoriously difficult month for the team over the past decade. There remains a lingering sense of malaise, though. The offence has been just efficient enough to earn a winning record, without being particularly dominant. The defence and the goaltending have similarly been “fine” at best. And with a paltry $1.46 million in remaining cap space, the team doesn’t have the room to make any meaningful additions. 

Optimists in the fan base would say that, with a winning record and subpar underlying numbers, the team has room to grow and breathing room to do so. Meanwhile, pessimists could argue that the team is one skid away from regressing to the mean that their analytics would imply. 

So where does the truth lie? We’ve broken it down, unit by unit, to see how the Ottawa Senators are measuring up at the quarter season mark.

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Forwards

While they haven’t set the world on fire, the Senators forward corps have been doing just enough to keep the team competitive in nearly every game they've played this season. 

Tim Stützle (10G, 9A, +7) and Drake Batherson (7G, 12A, +6) are tied for the team lead with 19 points each, although Batherson has done so in three fewer games. That this dynamic duo have rekindled the chemistry they’ve shown at times over the years is a bright spot. Another is the play of Shane Pinto, whose 10 goals have been a welcome contribution from the middle-six. Dylan Cozens, Claude Giroux, and Michael Amadio have all been solid contributors. Other than that, though, there has been a whole lot of “meh.” Fabian Zetterlund looks extremely snake-bitten, as is borne out by his measly 3.6 shooting percentage (SPCT). Ridly Greig is having a quiet start to the season. Lars Eller has been a serviceable fourth line C, but is solidly in the twilight of his career. 

Missing Brady Tkachuk has exposed the team’s lack of depth at wing, but with the captain expected to return before the end of the month the offence seems to have held down the fort without a significant drop in the standings. Doubts remain about the team’s firepower in the long-term, but for right now they’re getting the job done.

Grade: B

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Defence

Like the Senators forwards, results on the defensive side have been something of a mixed bag so far. On the positive end, Jake Sanderson continues to establish himself as one of the NHL’s premier defenders. The 23-year old LHD is leading the team with an average time on ice of 24:14 per night, all while contributing 14 points (3G, 11A, +0) and driving play at 5-on-5 with an even-strength CORSI of 55.4%. The only defender with a better impact at even strength is RHD Jordan Spence, who is crushing at 5-on-5 (60.1 CF%) in his 11 games played. His partnership with Tyler Kleven, combined with the typical efficiency of Sanderson and Artem Zub, has solidified the top-four. 

The holes are still there, though. Thomas Chabot was placed on the injured reserve earlier this week, and has no certain return date. At 35, Nick Jensen is showing his age and has been exposed more frequently than he was last season. Nikolas Matinpalo has been up and down. The team’s penalty kill (69.1%) is well-below league average (79.4%) and has been a weakness all year. 

With the exception of RHD Carter Yakemchuk, who is having a strong start to his AHL career with the Belleville Senators, there is not a lot of help coming for this defence corps. Replacing Jensen will be a key priority this offseason. As will ensuring that Chabot and Zub can remain healthy and contributing. Until then, the team’s defence is treading water - neither a serious asset nor a total black hole. 

Grade: B- 

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Goaltending

In the summer, if you had told fans that both Ullmark and Meriläinen would be well-below a .900 SV% a quarter of the way into the season, we’d have been very surprised. Yet here we are: Ullmark has played 16 games, Meriläinen 4, and their stats on paper leave a lot to be desired. Once you look closer, you’ll see that a few stinker games for Ullmark, and one for Meriläinen, have sunk their stats. In his last five games, Ullmark has posted a save percentage above .900 in four of them. Meriläinen has also had three games where he played very well after the Buffalo debacle (7GA, .731 SV%) at the start of the season.

Meriläinen is such an easy player to like from a technical standpoint and is very projectable. His movements are very economical, similar to former Senators goaltender Filip Gustavsson and Senators “should-have-been” Jesper Wallstedt. He doesn’t over-manoeuvre and focuses on his angles. Finnish goaltenders are also taught from an early age to hone their glove capabilities, and it shows with Meriläinen. Expect him to get more starts down the stretch to ease some of the burden on Ullmark.

In the case of Ullmark, it’s starting to become common for him to have slower starts, and, luckily for the Senators, their offence was up to the task of getting wins. But the pattern that’s emerging is concerning. Ullmark looks a step slower than usual, his rebound control is not where it needs to be, and he doesn’t inspire the confidence he did last season. As mentioned previously, his game has been much better over the past few weeks, but Ullmark needs to focus on recapturing some of the technical elements that have brought him success in the past. He’s a perfect mixture of technical and athletic prowess, and hopefully he remembers that again soon.

Grade: C 

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Coaching

Travis Green and company came into the season riding the high of reaching the playoffs for the first time since 2016–17, and they looked to build on last year’s success. The season didn’t quite start the way fans would have hoped, with the team winning only two of seven, and roster decisions were already quite confusing with the scratching of Spence and the deployment of Zetterlund. On top of that, the Senators penalty kill has been abysmal, dating back to last year’s playoffs. Every fan will tell you that the diamond formation the Senators were using was giving the forward on the goal line a free pass to have an uncontested shot on the goalie. For those who may just see a literal diamond, the formation relies on a defenseman covering the slot, two players covering the pass from the point to the goal line, and one player covering both point slots. The slot and goal line are considered high danger areas, whereas the point is considered low. Having one player solely dedicated to covering the most dangerous part of the ice was hard to justify.

It didn’t look like the coaching staff was able to adapt to the issues that were prevalent in games, and that’s a pretty big red flag. There have been adjustments since the beginning of November, though: ditching the diamond formation for the more traditional box coverage, putting Spence consistently in the lineup, and rightfully demoting Jensen to the third pair. There are still things we’d like to see from the staff, like moving Zetterlund to his preferred LW slot, giving Meriläinen more starts, and improving the PK. However, it’s hard to complain about being third in the Atlantic (without their captain) and having points in seven of eight games in November.

Grade: B-

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Conclusions

The grades handed out above reflect what the Senators have looked like so far this season: pretty average. Compared to the total collapses of years previous, “average” doesn’t have to be a bad thing. “Average” can get a team to the playoffs. But if the Senators want to buy themselves some breathing room, or if they want to do some damage come April, then the team, coaching staff, and front office are going to need to collectively find another gear. With one quarter of the season in the books, there’s still time to do so. 

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