Ottawa Senators Report Cards: Alex Formenton
By Daniel Bruce
Formenton played an integral role down the stretch this season, primarily playing on the 3rd line along with being a core penalty-killer
Formenton, a 2nd round pick of the Ottawa Senators in the 2017 NHL Draft, and ever since his draft day the speedy winger has been able to consistently improve. Coming into the season many didn’t expect Formenton to make the team (which he didn’t), but he arrived with the team for the final half of the season and he contributed positively to many of the Senators’ wins down the stretch.
Previous Report Cards
Josh Brown | Ryan Dzingel | Evgenii Dadonov | Connor Brown | Erik Brannstrom
2020-21 Season Stats
20GP, 4G-2A-6P, 27 shots, 23 hits, 12:00 TOI/GP
82-game pace: 16G-8A-24P, 111 shots, 94 hits
Formenton’s box stats likely won’t ever match in value to the impact that the two-way forward has on every game he plays in, just his speed alone is enough to make the opposing team alter their gameplan.
With the heavy dose of defensive situations that Head Coach D.J. Smith relied upon Formenton for makes the speedy-wingers production much more digestible as he was favoured in defensive situations far more often than in the offensive zone. The 21-year-old was used for offensive zone face-offs 39.80 percent of the time, ranking in the bottom third among Senators skaters. Consider that with the fact that Formenton was a staple on Assistant Coach Jack Capuano’s penalty-kill and didn’t see any time on the man-advantage, producing numbers similar to what he did with Belleville is just unrealistic.
I believe there’s still untapped potential in Formenton’s offensive game and there’s nothing holding the team back from potentially giving him a shot on the 2nd power-play unit to see what they have offensively in the feisty-forward.
I found a perfect little video that perfectly encapsulates the Senators speedster in all of his glory using clips from this past season:
LW. Ottawa Senators. ALEX FORMENTON. B. Due to Formenton’s small sample size (20 games) and general inexperience at the NHL level, it’s hard to give the former London Knight too high of a grade. His play, however, did most of the talking this season as he established himself as a full-time NHL player and a crucial part of the team for the foreseeable future.<p>The speed he showcased this season should strike fear into his future opponents as I’m sure Formenton will be a thorn in the sides of Senators’ opponents for years to come.</p>
All advanced stats via Natural Stat Trick