The red-hot Ottawa Senators are making the most of a turbulent season
It’s been a weird season for the Ottawa Senators.
Fresh off their long-awaited return to the Stanley Cup Playoffs last spring, the Senators kicked off the 2025-26 regular season with high expectations — and for good reason.
On paper, their lineup has very few weaknesses. After acquiring Dylan Cozens from the Buffalo Sabres last year, the Senators have a truly formidable center group that also includes Tim Stützle, Shane Pinto, and (at times) Ridly Greig. Their defensive corps, led by Jake Sanderson and Thomas Chabot, is extremely talented. And in goal, they have 2023 Vezina Trophy winner Linus Ullmark. What’s not to like?
Sadly, for much of this year, that question hasn’t been rhetorical. Until very recently, the Senators sat on the outside of the Eastern Conference playoff picture for a variety of unfortunate reasons. It’s been a trying season across the board, one that has tested the mettle of an otherwise promising group.
Chabot has missed significant time due to injuries and is now out again, this time for at least four weeks with a broken arm after taking a heavy cross-check from New York Rangers captain J.T. Miller. Team captain Brady Tkachuk returned to Ottawa from the 2026 Winter Olympics amidst an awkward political controversy. Ullmark struggled to start the season and took a leave for mental health reasons in December, which sparked distasteful social media speculation that quickly grew out of control.
Throughout all this and more, the Senators just kept losing games. By late January, they sat in 15th place in the Eastern Conference, nine points outside a playoff spot, and looked truly defeated. Making matters worse, the Sens were still slated to forfeit their own first-round pick in the 2026 NHL Draft as punishment for ex-GM Pierre Dorion mishandling an otherwise inconsequential trade he made half a decade ago — meaning, in essence, that if they missed the playoffs, they wouldn’t even have a high draft pick to look forward to.
With the East being as competitive as it is — the threshold to make the playoffs this year could be as high as 99 points — this easily could’ve been a totally unsalvageable season, especially for a team as young and relatively untested as these Senators. Plenty of other aspiring contenders have stumbled and fallen in years like this on their way to the top of the mountain. As bleak as it seemed, it wouldn’t have been the end of the world.
But it seems this group is cut from stronger cloth than most. Despite already having a combined 55 man-games lost from Tkachuk, Sanderson, Chabot, and Pinto, not to mention their turbulent situation between the pipes, the Senators have some of the very best underlying numbers in the entire National Hockey League and have rebounded in a truly remarkable way over the past two months. Now, with 11 games to play, Ottawa sits in the eighth and final East playoff spot with 38 wins and 85 points, and they’re only just starting to see what rookie Carter Yakemchuk can do in Chabot’s place.
Take one quick look at Natural Stat Trick’s 2025-26 team stats table and you’ll see the Senators up with the likes of the Colorado Avalanche, Carolina Hurricanes, and Tampa Bay Lightning at 5-on-5 in terms of their expected goals percentage (55.08), scoring chance percentage (55.49), shot differential (54.50), and high-danger chance rate (55.13). They rank third in the league in all four of those categories.
Tkachuk, in particular, is finally meeting the standard of elite two-way play his older brother has set over the past decade, with genuinely incredible results that beat the team averages by three or four points across all play-driving categories. His line with Cozens and Greig has all the makings of a game-changing playoff force, particularly with Stützle’s unit also there to share the load of the matchups.
But bad goaltending can be all it takes to sink an otherwise strong team. And the Senators couldn’t buy a save for the first half of the season. Five goaltenders have suited up for Ottawa this year, including 38-year-old James Reimer, who stepped in during Ullmark’s absence in January. Even now, after this 9-2-1 run in March, the Senators still have the league’s worst team save percentage, at .873.
Ullmark came back from his personal leave on Jan. 31, starting against the New Jersey Devils and stopping 26 shots in a 4-1 win on home ice. Since his return, the 32-year-old Swede has gone 9-2-2 with one shutout, a .902 save percentage, and a 2.31 goals-against average in 13 games. In a league where shooting percentages seem to be increasing by the week, those are very solid numbers.
On top of all this, the Senators now have their own 2026 first-round pick back — but with a catch. When the NHL modified its punishment for the botched Evgenii Dadonov trade earlier this month, the Senators were given the No. 32 pick in the first round, with the conditions that the team could not trade the pick or win the draft lottery. That seemed like a small consolation when the Senators were outside the playoff picture, but if they do end up going on a run this spring, it’s entirely possible that their new, compensatory first-round pick might not actually be much later than it otherwise would’ve been.
The East is an absolute bloodbath, so there’s still no guarantee that the Senators get to the playoffs to begin with. At this point, there are effectively 10 teams in the running for eight spots, with the Detroit Red Wings and New York Islanders now on the wrong side of the cutoff line.
In all likelihood, the two wild-card positions will be decided in games 81 and 82, not 71 and 72.
Ottawa has the fourth-hardest remaining schedule in the league, and it won’t get any easier now that they’re without Chabot for the immediate future. But if the Senators do make the playoffs, they’ll be a tough out. It’s difficult to even imagine the chaos that would ensue if Ottawa went up against the similarly plucky Buffalo Sabres in Round 1.
For now, they still need to get there. So much will be at stake on Thursday evening when the Senators take on the Pittsburgh Penguins in Kanata. Their remaining schedule includes games against the Sabres, Islanders, Lightning, and, finally, the Toronto Maple Leafs.
It didn’t seem like it would end up this way even a few weeks ago, but the Senators control their own destiny.
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