The Ottawa Senators finished well down the stretch to clinch up their 2026 Stanley Cup Playoff spot with a couple of games left on the 2025-26 regular season schedule. Through that stretch of strong hockey, one of their star players was quite Ullmarkable. Huh? You guessed it, Linus Ullmark was the one to be quite Ullmarkable. Of course it is. Let’s get sensational!
Liz O. Baylen / The Washington Times
Linus Ullmark and Ottawa Senators 2025-26 Goaltending Stats
To start with, it was a truly roller-coaster ride for Ullmark in 2025-26. Besides ultimately ending up in the playoffs, the seasons saw him be the Sens Bill Masterton and King Clancy Trophy nominees. These awards are for perseverance and dedication in sport, and to humanitarian and off-ice leadership, being a true ambassador of the sport. Moreover, he was able to overcome well over a month off with mental health issues. The fact that he is playing this well, when the intensity and pressure has been so high, this is the stuff of legends.
Let’s Crunch the Numbers
The Ottawa Senators can succeed lending to the strong laws of large numbers, and other types of regressions to the mean. The Ottawa Senators have done remarkably well to overcome poor goaltending in order to qualify for the 2026 NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs. The idea is that you have to break up Ullmark’s 2025-26 season, in order to see how well he is done to turn it all around. If we look at goaltender stats since December 13th, 2025, consider the following.
It is quite amazing, if you cut the number of games off at 25, as is the cutoff for an NHL rookie. That would make up a good chunk of the season, and a fair representation of the data, in terms of sample size discussion. Moreover, Linus Ullmark jumps from 17th to 12th best save percentage (.903) when the cutoff is at 20 or 25 games, respectively. Therefore, being 12th in the league, for a good portion of the year, is passable. We will add that this is against the top competition. You know, the guys that played 25 games ore more, over those past four months, or so.
It has all the makings of a truly fairy-tale story in today’s era of politics and drama. We all know what we are talking about here.
Let’s go here Sen fans, being from the nation capital, and knowing how to throw down, when the dust settles.
A Star Regaining his Form
The point is for the Sens, that they would have been fine all season long as long as they were given average goaltending. They had a recent Vezina Trophy-winning goalie, they would expect to do that. Furthermore, let’s not forget that Vezina-winning campaign. He led the entire NHL in wins, despite being a tandem-starter. Giggety. It’s go time.
If you watch the Sens, you do notice Ullmark being a difference maker. It does seem like Linus Ullmark is very good at thwarting the high-danger scoring opportunities. But maybe somehow the Sens are better at generating them than their opponent. Head coach Travis Green does have them playing defensive gems out there on the nightly.
There were 58 qualifying goalies with 25 games or more, played all season long this time. Ullmark was 36th with a high-danger save percentage of .755.
The fact that Ottawa still scores more than their opposition with an actual goal percentage at 5v5 of 52.5%, or 12th ranked in the league, means they were able to overcome that poor save percentage. That is likely because they outplayed their opponents so badly.
Ullmark still made more high quality denials than his opposition, night in, night out, he just didn’t have the quantity of opportunities to have the statistics to back it up. Perhaps a form of systematic error at play here. On 5v5, Ottawa allowed the second fewest (124) high danger shots against on the campaign. So, the goals Ullmark did let in, impacted his save percentage more than his opposition.
We Have to Consider the League-Wide Changes
We just wanted to reference the league-wide save percentage for a moment. With the skill of today’s scorers and the impact it has had on the style of play, save percentages league-wide have been dropping going back about 10 years now. Then this year, the league really started cracking down on tracking saves. If a shot was deemed to be going wide, by the sophisticated tracking technology available nowadays, the goalies will no longer get credit for a save. That was always the rule, but now those shots that were just going wide, aren’t being counted.
NHL save percentage 1955-56 to 2025-26 with 3-period moving average
This is what we always want to see eh. The 30-year average is .898, to put it in context. You can see it has been pretty high, after recovering from its dip peaking right around Wayne Gretzky‘s second-best season, 1981-82, of 212 points (215 came in 1985-86). You know 1986, the very year Patrick Roy won the Conn Smythe as a rookie. Go Figure.
Finally, a Little Head-to-Head Competition
The idea is that despite Ullmark’s low save percentage, you have to keep in mind everyone’s is lower this year. We want to focus on the fact that Ullmark is a winner for a minute. With goalies having a minimum 20 decisions, Ullmark is tied for seventh at .731 point percentage, and Brandon Bussi leads at .786, since December 13, 2025.
We didn’t exactly intend to do a comparison, but hey, when the opportunity so presents itself, we take advantage. The great equalizer is save percentage above expected for the Sens upcoming Stanley Cup Playoff series with the Hurricanes. For goalies with a minimum of 25 games played, Bussi is 28th at 0.0015 versus Ullmark’s -0.0051. That puts Ullmark 49th, in case you’re wondering.
Hey, if we incorporate an era-adjusted save percentage (based on our graph above) Ullmark’s .903 versus Bussi’s .889 since December 13th, does convert to .904 to .893. So? It just shows that even though the goalies save percentages are down, they are still having an impact on wins and losses. For instance, when they are at values better than the league average, they are going to get results. This year the league’s save percentage is .896. Just a few years ago, in 2019-20, it was .910.
Putting it All Together
With all that has gone on in Ottawa this year, and that has focused on Ullmark, it has been a difficult season. Even right near the end of the season, he received much flack in the media for being too tired for the Tampa Bay Lightning game a couple weeks ago. However, to end the season, and secure the playoff positioning, he fully redeemed himself. It was a terrific season for the Sen netminder, and all the praise is well deserved.
Main Photo Credit: Dan Hamilton-Imagn Images
Linus Ullmark’s last 4 starts:
4-0-0
.942 sv%
1.50 GAA
1 SOSend can beat anybody if he keeps this up. Getting hot at the right time. #GoSensGo pic.twitter.com/Tux9Ein1S5
— Jack Richardson (@jackrichrdson) April 14, 2026
“That’s a team that plays playoff hockey,” — Taylor Hall on the Ottawa Senators just now.
— Julian McKenzie (@jkamckenzie) April 5, 2026
