The Ottawa Senators have been one of the most frustrating teams to follow in the NHL this season. Inability to convert in key moments, deflating collapses, and poor goaltending have sunk their hopes for 2025-26. And yet, they continue to rank incredibly well in team-wide play throughout various models. They have definitely endured some bad luck, but could there be something else driving the data expectations and actual results apart here?
Looking at Ottawa’s play-driving ability, they show very strongly across the board. In both Neil-Pierre Louis (pierreanalytics.com) and JFresh’s (hockeystats.com) models, the top 4 consists of some of the league’s best: Colorado, Carolina, Tampa Bay… and then there’s Ottawa. They even hold the 3rd slot in the former’s list, and the best expected goals against per 60 rate according to the latter.
In the meantime, Ottawa’s skaters are finishing their chances at a solid rate (on average), having surpassed their expected goal output by roughly 10 goals at the time of writing. So why are they 25th in the standings when the other teams profiling like this are dominating the league? There could be three factors at play here: goaltending, sequencing, and uncaptured stylistic team effects.
Goaltending
Enough has already been said about the team’s goaltending, so I won’t dive into it too much. It’s been generationally bad for Ottawa without a doubt, as their 2025-26 goalie crop has had the worst team save percentage in over 30 years. That’s in a group of over 1000 team seasons! And the only ones placing lower since the start of the 90s were the inaugural and sophomore Senators.
Losing out on Ullmark for a long stretch hasn’t helped either. Sure he hasn’t had a great season himself, but his .881 sv% leads the team by 10 points, and the Sens have rocked an .847 sv% since his absence (as of Jan 28th).
Sequencing
Sequencing is one of the most underrated aspects of the game that can wildly swing opinions towards or against a team. It refers to how favourably a team stacks their performances and results on a game-by-game basis. For example, a strong sequencing team will have a higher density of close wins and blowout losses than other rosters. In other words, they scrape out tough wins more often than they should in exchange for poorer losses (which they potentially would have lost anyway). Teams with good sequencing tend to be classified by fans, analysts, and general observers as having some “unquantifiable edge”, while teams on the other end of the spectrum simply do not have “it”.
It can be very hard to measure, as most times it’s an extremely luck-based aspect and rarely repeats for individual rosters year-over-year. But there is a level of clutch play and poise which definitely plays a factor here. We can look at Cole Caufield’s overtime prowess and how that’s helped Montreal rack up many extra points over the last few years as an example of it. Another case is Detroit’s ability to post a top-5 league record despite not having dominant play-driving metrics, scorching special teams units, or a very high PDO (even below 100 at the moment).
Sens, Habs, Wings xG densities from the above tweet by Neil-Pierre Louis
Putting the Sens through this sequencing lens, it’s clear they’ve suffered from it (and it hasn’t just been this year). For a good number of seasons now, it’s felt like Ottawa has been unable to score with the net empty and complete comebacks. A large part of their games have gone the same way: go down early in the game, stabilize and start pouring it on, mount a comeback only to fall short by 1 (or 2 with an empty netter) in regulation.
This is also why I noted that Ottawa’s finishing average this year has been good. In reality, its distribution is less favourable. Seven-goal blowout wins against Washington, Boston, and recently versus Vegas have played a part in inflating this stat (and other metrics) after common deflating but closer losses.
The goalies have felt this sequencing as well. We can measure it through stolen and choked games: a measure of game-breaking ability between the pipes and how they tilt results one way or another. A steal is awarded when a goalie’s GSAx is greater than his team’s win differential, while chokes are when their GSAx is lower than the loss differential (we are excluding empty netters in both cases here).
Ottawa’s got the second-worst goalie sequencing after Vegas this season, with 10 more games choked by goalies than stolen wins. They are also the only team with under three steals so far, where Ullmark’s win over Philadelphia on October 23rd stands alone as the only one.
Uncaptured Team Effects
So yes, goaltending and timing have played a large part in their demise; we all knew that already. But is there a reason why each Sens goalie is underperforming to such an extreme level?
Passive Penalty Kill
Let’s take the penalty kill as a quick example: the team ranks top-5 in limiting chances against, but has allowed the third most goals when down a man. From watching this PK, their more passive defending style takes away prime locations in exchange for extra time & space to opposing shooters. Given that location is the main driver of public expected goal models, and player spatial data isn’t available to be included, it’s easy to see how the chances they allow might be marked as less dangerous than they should.
This drives goalie performance metrics even lower than they deserve to be, potentially explaining why all Sens goalies mark so poorly in these stats (on top of their lacklustre baseline).
So how could Ottawa’s stylistic approach to the game have a similar hidden negative impact in regular 5-on-5 play? Corey Sznajder has provided invaluable contributions to the community with his AllThreeZones Project (AllThreeZones.com) by hand-tracking hundreds of games every season, and thanks to his work we can dig into these potential Sens woes. He has manually-tracked 10 Senators games for 2025-26 thus far, so it’s not a complete sample. We would likely expect some regression in the majority of these metrics, but most of this data’s takeaways align with the viewing experience on the season as a whole.
Forecheck Inefficiencies
The Sens are a heavily forecheck-reliant team, and they’ve gotten quite good at turning this into long possessions in the offensive zone. That’s where Travis Green has shined as a coach. You can see his impact with the jump between 2023-24 and 2024-25, as Ottawa turned the corner from a middling forechecking team to one of the best since his hiring (top-3 in particular this season).
From those forecheck pressures and puck recoveries, the team has done a phenomenal job in establishing possessions off of them and initiating cycles. This was a big area of concern in the past, as the Sens were dwelling at the bottom of the league in this area even up until last year. But now they’ve surged not only offensively but defensively too on that front, likely as a byproduct of better understanding what works on o-zone cycles, enlightening the players on how to defend them as well.
OTT’s Breakout & Forecheck rank progressions
OTT’s Cycle Offence & Defence rank progressions
This is all reflected in their zone possession time and sustained pressure, where they rank 6th in generating these for themselves, and 2nd in suppressing their opposition’s ability to do so. After adjusting for quality, the defensive side even jumps up to an outstanding first-place position. The large majority of Sens fans would agree the team has been solid defensively, with many fully attributing the disparity in strong on-ice play and results to poor goaltending.
This degree of goaltending weakness is so extreme that it can be hard to grasp its proper scale. It’s absolutely the major culprit, but I do believe something is being masked in the numbers here, and it begins with their attacking strategy in transition.
As is expected with a forecheck-first team, the players will often defer to dump-ins rather than attempting controlled entries when entering the offensive zone. The Sens lean into this heavily, putting them second last league-wide in terms of zone entry efficiency. In other words, they rarely cross the blue line with possession. This also drives down their opportunities to generate chances off the rush. And sure enough, they’ve been a bottom-6 team when it comes to manufacturing rush offence.
But that’s just a consequence of Ottawa knowing their puck pursuit strength and leaning into that dump-to-possession focused game. Surely they’ve been able to create on those types of plays, right? This is where the main issue lies.
Despite their success on o-zone retrievals and ability to establish cycles afterwards, Ottawa’s capacity to create chances off the forecheck has been incredibly underwhelming. Their sheer volume of recovered pucks has not translated into offence at a good-enough rate. To put this into perspective, only the Bruins average fewer expected goals on the forecheck than Ottawa, but to the contrary, Boston has thrived as a top-5 rush team this season.
This all makes for an alarmingly low goal-scoring threat efficiency off the forecheck. They are nearly tied with the Leafs for last in terms of ability to immediately instill danger after recovering dumps. And that is further exacerbated by their league-leading dump-in rate at a staggering 54.6%; higher than second place by over one full percentage point and 8% above the league average. In other words, Ottawa tends to put themselves in a position which requires them to rely on an inefficient facet of their game more often than any other team.
Brady Tkachuk’s absence (and potential lingering injury) is certainly hurting the team in this aspect. Without his trademark potential to turn deep pucks and board battles into dangerous offensive chances, Ottawa’s systemic efficiency suffers greatly. Plus with cycling offence being the team’s strength, and this form of attack relying on goal line threat & traffic (another important variable omitted from public data), not having the captain’s net-front presence at 100% hurts even more.
So all of these factors regarding types of offence do not get captured in public models, and contribute to an overestimation of Ottawa’s play-driving metrics. Could there be a similar explanation behind their recent late-game collapses?
Two-Way Rush Decline
As hinted before with Boston, most teams struggling to create off the forecheck make up for it by being good rush producers, and vice versa. The Sens find themselves in a unique hole here, with the lowest rate of combined rush and forecheck expected goals across the league this season.
Despite having excellent puck carriers down the middle in Stützle, Cozens, and Pinto who have upheld superb microstats, OTT’s dump-&-chase system has suppressed transition threats from the wings and activating defencemen. So while their centres continue to post strong results, Batherson, Tkachuk, Chabot, and even Sanderson are at individual 4-year lows for Transition Attack scores in our data.
The team has also taken a step back under Green when it comes to defending the rush. And that is partly responsible for the larger volume of deflating counter-attack goals after great stretches of sustained pressure. Especially as opposing teams try to claw back and break open the game, they’ll be taking more swings and increasing their willingness to trade higher-risk rush chances. That increased degree of desperation and volatility as the time ticks down can sometimes force the Sens away from their team strengths and put them on their heels.
Obviously score effects will always have the trailing team pour it on late in tight games, but it’s the way in which these tend to devolve that puts Ottawa at a disadvantage.
For example, when the Sens are hoping to tie it, their faulty rush play doesn’t allow them to be as successful. This tends to result in their puck carriers settling for plenty of dump-ins late, and a lack of comeback completions.
OTT’s Rush Offence & Defence rank progressions
The reality is, so much of the game nowadays is dictated by what you can create immediately after a zone entry. Edmonton’s superstars have reached back-to-back Cup finals thanks to their dynamic skill and high-pace transition creation, exploiting opposing defencemen on controlled entries. The Panthers have built a modern dynasty on the back of dangerous and suffocating forecheck ability. They not only overwhelmed defensive retrievers with immediate pressure and puck-battling prowess, but turned those recovered dumps into threatening scoring chances at an unprecedented rate.
As great as Ottawa’s cycle offence & defence are, only ~15% of goals over the last 5 NHL seasons have come off cycle plays (versus ~49% on the rush and ~36% from forechecking chances). So sometimes strong possession-based games are just not enough, which is why public xG models without access to data on offensive nuance can overvalue Ottawa. Carolina has been in a similar boat for years now, though to a much lesser extent thanks to their stellar creation off puck recoveries and recently-rejuvenated rush offence.
Conclusion
Ask any Senators fan, and they’ll tell you they’ve suffered from goaltending and sequencing woes this season. Would they be a top-4 team along the likes of Colorado, Tampa, & Carolina as the public xG models seem to suggest if those issues were in check? Probably not due to various systemic issues that slip through the cracks of these models.
A passive penalty kill is aggravating goaltending performance metrics when down a man. The transition game is plagued with various issues, such as a two-way regression on rush plays. There is a startling gap between tendency and chance efficiency on the forecheck. Alone, these flawed strategies might be passable and blend more easily into the weeds of data. But when combined, they form the skeleton of a greater disconnect: slowly driving a wedge between the team’s results and the expectations drawn from their underlying data.
It’s very plausible that the microstat rankings would regress away from the extremes we’ve measured here over a full season sample. I wouldn’t be surprised if private companies who have the luxury of accounting for this type of situational offence (plus puck-and-player tracking) for every game only bring the Sens down a few notches. After all, they remain excellent at dominating time of possession thanks to their suffocating puck pursuit, ability to establish sustained zone pressure, and highly improved chance creation during those cycles.
Between just these facets and the skaters’ impressive defensive results, any improvement on this historically dismal goaltending run would almost certainly have them in a playoff spot, and likely as a strong contender in a divisional spot. Whether the aforementioned issues could be masked throughout a playoff run is a different question, but one the team will have to address at some point should they hope to take that next step in contending for a Stanley Cup.
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