Ottawa Senators: Top 3 burning questions for 2019 season

Question #1: Is DJ Smith the right man to lead the young Ottawa Senators onto the right path?

DJ Smith was hired to be the next Head Coach for the Ottawa Senators on May 23, 2019, after having spent four seasons as an assistant coach on Mike Babcock’s staff in Toronto. The Senators were dead last in goals against last season, the only team to allow more than 300 goals against. That’s a lot of goals against. The team averaged 3.68 goals against last season. Priority number one for the new Head Coach was always going to be finding a way to reduce the goals against.

So in comes DJ Smith. The former Leafs assistant coach was in charge of the defence in Toronto (yes that same defence that Sens owner Eugene Melnyk said Toronto forgot about). I saw a lot of fans point out that the Senators hired a coach that oversaw a pretty bad defence in Toronto to be the bench boss, but to be fair to DJ Smith we need to point out and remember that the Maple Leafs are Mike Babcock’s team and they play the way he wants them to play. Let’s be honest, they also don’t/didn’t have a defensive corps that was at the top of the League!

Fans also questioned this hiring because many people thought this was simply the cheaper option of those available out there. DJ Smith has never been a Head Coach in the League so he was not in any position to command the type of salary that more experienced NHL Head Coaches are getting these days. So he might, in fact, be the cheapest Head Coach the team interviewed. I took a quick look at the Coaches page on CapFriendly which details the salaries of some NHL Head Coaches. Of the coaches with salaries that are public knowledge, only three make less than two million per season: Travis Green, Jim Montgomery, and Rick Tocchet. Two of those three are first time NHL bench bosses, so their lower salaries kind of make sense and Tocchet was a failed first-time bench boss with this being his second shot so his lower salary also makes sense.

I can’t argue with some people who believe that the Senators always take the cheaper option when available (team history would probably serve as the best argument for that statement), but judging the DJ Smith hire simply because he might have been the least expensive option is not fair to the coach. First time NHL Head Coaches do not all fail (contrary to experience here in Ottawa), and DJ Smith might turn out to be a very good coach for the team, which brings me back to my original question for this season.

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It should not take very long for fans of this team to figure out what kind of hockey Smith is going to have his team play. If I look specifically on the defensive aspect of the game, the group back there might not be the most experienced but that does not mean they cannot be structured properly. If Smith is able to come in this season and establish a defensive zone coverage scheme that will help the younger defensemen, that should become apparent regardless of what the scoreboard says at the end of the night. Fans will be able to see if the team is playing structured defence or if it isn’t.

If DJ Smith is able to come in this season and instill a fun and competitive environment for the young players to grow and develop in then I think most people could deem the first season a success. The bottom line of Smith’s job for the foreseeable future is to develop the team’s youth while fostering a positive environment for the players to come to the rink every day, regardless of the number of losses (and there will be a lot of losses).

What do you guys think of the DJ Smith hiring? Do you have high hopes for him as a coach? Do you think he has what it takes to be a successful NHL Head Coach? Let us know in the comments below!

Question #2: Dear God, will somebody please fix this team’s Penalty Kill?

I don’t know how much detail I need to go into for this question. Each and every fan of this team knows how terrible the Ottawa Senators have been the past few seasons on the Penalty Kill. There is a saying in hockey that you simply can’t teach skill, which might very well be true but if there is one thing coaches can teach in hockey is how to play defence. Defence is a teachable aspect of hockey, no matter what level of play the player performs at.

With that, the team not having the talent to play defence is simply an idiotic stance to take. The Senators finished 23rd in the League on the Penalty Kill last season and were even worse at 26th the season prior. If the team ever has a chance of being competitive in the relatively close future they need to be able to keep the puck out of their net when they are killing penalties.

With the new coaching staff in place, it will be Jack Capuano’s responsibility to run the defence and the Penalty Kill. Capuano spent the last two seasons has the associate coach with the Florida Panthers, where he was in charge of the defense and the Penalty Kill units. The Panthers’ Penalty Kill ranked 10th in the League last season. This was a team that couldn’t buy saves at many times during the season, but they managed to be a pretty good Penalty Kill unit.

That makes me think that Capuano was able to put together a system that was simple for the Penalty Kill units to play with, while maybe taking a little pressure off the goaltender by not allowing many second and third opportunities with rebounds.

If this new coaching staff is able to get this team to play a simple, but efficient way of playing in the defensive zone all while taking some pressure off from the goaltenders which in turn should help reduce the goals against.

Sens fans, do you think the special teams will be improved going into this season? Do you have hopes that Capuano, Smith and the rest of the staff will be able to run a decent Penalty Kill unit? Let us know in the comment section below!

Question #3: Who is going to score goals for the Ottawa Senators?

The Ottawa Senators finished 17th in the League in goals scored last season, with Matt Duchene, Ryan Dzingel, and Mark Stone accounting for 77 of the 242 goals scored. That’s a pretty big chunk of goals taken out, but the organization is going to have to rely on young players to graduate to the NHL and produce in order to remain competitive on most nights.

Of the returning forwards on the roster, only Bobby Ryan and Brady Tkachuk scored 15 goals or more last season. The addition of Artem Anisimov in exchange for Zack Smith should help provide a little more offence compared to what Zack Smith had been providing for the last few seasons. Other than that, players are going to have to keep progressing.

Players like Colin White, who scored 14 goals last season. White is going to need to be closer to the 20-goal mark if this team is going to win some games. A full season of Anthony Duclair should help provide some decent offence as well. Duclair, who came over at the trade deadline last season, recently signed a one-year contract to remain in Ottawa. Duclair had 8 goals in 14 games with the Senators after the trade deadline, which brought him to 19 goals on the season. Realistically, I think fans can expect Duclair to score anywhere from 15 to 25 goals next season. God knows the team is going to need him to.

With Drake Batherson expected to graduate to NHL duties on a more full-time basis this season, he should be able to help provide fans with goals to cheer for. If this team is to play fast-paced and energetic, like the General Manager and Head Coach wants them to play, then someone somewhere is going to need to score goals. Fast-paced hockey is great, but if the team struggles to score goals I wonder if the coaching staff is going to be tempted to going away from that and playing a stauncher defensive style? I sincerely hope not, we went through three years of Guy Boucher hockey here in Ottawa, we don’t need any more of that!

Needless to say that this will be an interesting season for the Ottawa Senators and the fanbase. The team has said that the building part of the rebuild is underway, which means we need to start seeing improvements with the on-ice product, night in and night out. It also goes without saying that there is a very strong chance that we are not done seeing roster turnover, with eight players on the current roster who are slated to become unrestricted free agents at the end of the season. On top of that, the Senators also have six players slated to become restricted free agents, one of which is Thomas Chabot so hopefully that number goes from six to five before the end of the season. I don’t think this fanbase could handle losing Erik Karlsson and Thomas Chabot in under two years!

Hopefully, the management group and coaching staff have the team on the right path to success. The fanbase sure could go without any negativity for a while, so let’s hope it keeps going this way. Hopefully, the fans can enjoy a season where we see improvement with the on-ice product, all while knowing that there are very good chances that the team will once again finish at the bottom of the standings. At least this time the team owns their first-round pick! One last thing: remember the power of positivity! This fanbase sometimes gets stuck in a rut of negativity and that’s not good for anyone! Alright, go back to enjoying your summer!

Let us know what your thoughts are for the upcoming season in the comment section below! Are you expecting more of the same from last year, or can there be improvements?