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Ottawa Senators Get Goals Down the Stretch from Mark Stone

By Ian Smith

Mar 5, 2016; Toronto, Ontario, CAN; Ottawa Senators right wing Mark Stone (61) attacks with the puck against the Toronto Maple Leafs at Air Canada Centre. The Senators beat the Maple Leafs 3-2. Mandatory Credit: Tom Szczerbowski-USA TODAY Sports
Mar 5, 2016; Toronto, Ontario, CAN; Ottawa Senators right wing Mark Stone (61) attacks with the puck against the Toronto Maple Leafs at Air Canada Centre. The Senators beat the Maple Leafs 3-2. Mandatory Credit: Tom Szczerbowski-USA TODAY Sports /
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The Ottawa Senators have numerous young goal scorers on their team. After his first two seasons in the NHL have resulted in 60+ points, Mark Stone looks like the real deal.

The case could be made that Stone is their most reliable goal scorer on the roster. Last season, he ranked 3rd on the team with 23 goals. The only two players who ranked ahead of him were Mike Hoffman and Zack Smith.

Smith lead the league in shooting percentage on his way to netting 25 goals, but taking away last season, his NHL career doesn’t quite match up to those rates.

Coming into last season, Smith had played in 319 career NHL games and scored 39 goals. He made nice strides, but let’s see if he can duplicate it before we put him on the same level as guys like Stone and Hoffman.

In 2014-2015, only Hoffman had more Senators goals than Stone did. Hoffman finished the year with 27, and Stone was close behind with 26.

Hoffman is clearly more of the volume goal scorer, but he goes through prolonged periods of ineffectiveness that Stone doesn’t, particularly down the stretch.

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In the last 30 games Stone played of the 2015-2016 season before a chest injury forced him out of the lineup for the final 5 games, he scored 12 goals, indicating that his goal scoring pace actually increased as the year went along.

Comparatively, Hoffman scored 6 goals in his final 30 games last season, which represents a huge decline from what his goal scoring rates were earlier in the season.

This is one of the reasons that has been speculated as to why the Senators’ are hesitant to give Hoffman a long term deal. He has been unable to continue playing like an elite goal scorer late into the season.

These same trends between the two of them were also evident during the 2014-2015 season. Stone finished 2nd in voting for the Calder Trophy to Aaron Ekblad that year.

In Stone’s last 30 games of 2014-2015, he scored 14 goals, which also represented a higher rate than he had at the beginning of the year.

In Hoffman’s last 30 games, he scored 10 goals, which didn’t represent any significant decrease in rate, but started a precedent of Stone outscoring Hoffman towards the end of the year.

Both are extremely capable goal scorers, yet Hoffman doesn’t appear to have the same stamina to lift his game down the stretch.

Of course they’ve only been full time players for the past 2 seasons, but the small sample size is still telling. Despite the numbers saying that Hoffman is the better goal scorer, Stone seems to be the one who elevates his game towards the end of the season, while Hoffman remains consistent like he did in his rookie season, or dramatically declines like his second season.

Stone is also a great two-way player. His effort on defense resulted in 128 takeaways, which ranked 1st in the NHL. For some perspective to how impressive that is, Jeff Skinner ranked 2nd in the league with 77. Stone had 51 more takeaways than the runner-up, which really illustrates his ability as a defensive forward.

Next: Ottawa Senators Name Wichita Thunder New ECHL Affiliate

Stone is one of the Senators’ most important players, and looks to be a dependable building block as this team tries to return to the playoffs.

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