{"id":484142,"date":"2026-02-28T08:10:19","date_gmt":"2026-02-28T13:10:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/?p=484142"},"modified":"2026-02-27T23:15:42","modified_gmt":"2026-02-28T04:15:42","slug":"ottawa-senators-2025-26-need-themselves-back-stanley-cup-playoff-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/2026\/02\/28\/ottawa-senators-2025-26-need-themselves-back-stanley-cup-playoff-race\/","title":{"rendered":"What the Ottawa Senators Need to do to Get Themselves Back in Playoff Race"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Ottawa Senators are currently, seven points out of a Stanley Cup Playoff spot with 24 games remaining<\/a>. What do they need to do to make the playoffs? It was certainly fun having Olympic hockey in our lives for the last couple of weeks. But, now it\u2019s back to business. The NHL got up and running again earlier this week, with many teams back to focusing on the upcoming trade deadline and playoff races. The Ottawa Senators are definitely one of those among them.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Playoffs are Still Possible for the 2025-26 Ottawa Senators<\/h3>\n

The Senators sit seven points behind the Boston Bruins for the final Eastern Conference Stanley Cup Playoff Wild Card spot in the East. Catching up to them will be no easy feat, as the Bruins are currently on pace for 99 points. The Senators would probably have to win about three quarters of their remaining games to sneak into the playoffs.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard, yet doable. Remember the legendary Andrew Hammond<\/a> run from 2014-15? The good news for Senators fans is that the Eastern Conference is not ripe with juggernauts. There are plenty of teams that can be surpassed. Despite the hurdles still ahead, there are plenty of reasons to believe this version of the Senators can orchestrate their own memorable late season playoff push.<\/span><\/p>\n

Olympic Performances Must Translate to the NHL<\/h3>\n

Speaking of the Olympics, it was a great tournament for many Senators players. Brady Tkachuk<\/a> and Jake Sanderson<\/a> won gold while having very good tournaments and Tim Stutzle<\/a> was a standout on a German team<\/a> that lacked a lot of firepower beyond him and Leon Draisaitl<\/a>. He finished second in tournament scoring with four goals.<\/span><\/p>\n

If those players can carry over their play from Milan into the stretch run, it\u2019ll bode very well for the Senators to do some damage. They\u2019re currently all on pace to have career seasons and in the biggest moments, your stars have to be your stars. It\u2019s as simple as that.<\/span><\/p>\n

Beyond that, the challenge for the players who did not go to the Olympics will be getting up to game speed after three weeks off. It\u2019s very atypical to get a break of that length in the middle of a season so the Senators will need those players to return to form quickly, especially considering the urgency of the situation.<\/span><\/p>\n

Effectiveness of Senators’ Structure<\/h3>\n

Another important aspect in a potential late season surge will be the effectiveness of the Senators\u2019 structure<\/a>. The team has been very successful at stifling opponents and a big reason for that has been their dump-and-chase mandate. In fact, they do it more often than any other team in the league except for the Florida Panthers.<\/span><\/p>\n

The rationale behind doing it so frequently is to prevent turnovers at the offensive blueline and as a result, Ottawa to this point has lead the league in fewest five-on-five expected goals against<\/a>. It\u2019s a credit to head coach Travis Green\u2019s system, and he\u2019s mentioned trying to emulate the Florida Panthers. Why wouldn\u2019t you considering the success they\u2019ve had the last three seasons? And the defensive results speak for themselves.<\/span><\/p>\n

Unfortunately, the goaltending has completely offset them all season long. The Senators have the game breakers up front and the defensive horses to put together a good stretch, but none of that matters if the goaltending doesn\u2019t improve from being second last in save percentage at five-on-five in the whole league.<\/span><\/p>\n

Goaltending Will Need to Stand Tall<\/h3>\n

As mentioned above, the lack of saves has killed the Senators. When they get even average goaltending, they can win at a high clip, and it starts and ends with Linus Ullmark<\/a>. Ullmark was quite poor to start the season, but they still won with him in net.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Senators played at a 101-point pace with him in net. Unfortunately, they played at a 70-point pace without him. It just goes to show how much better he\u2019s been than Ottawa\u2019s other options in the crease. Even though he\u2019s still been significantly below league average, the Sens do win with him in the net. One would hope that the break gave him a much needed physical and mental reset as the team heads into the final month and a half.<\/span><\/p>\n

On top of that, it\u2019s not as if he needs to stand on his head every night in order for his team to have success. He just needs to be solid given the defensive environment the Senators have been able to insulate him with.<\/span><\/p>\n

The gold medal game funnily enough was somewhat reminiscent of many of the games the Senators have been involved with this season. They have been the ones to carry the play a lot of nights while getting outduelled by the opposing team\u2019s goaltender. If that trend can regress back in a positive direction, then watch out.<\/span><\/p>\n

Main Photo Credit: Steve Roberts-Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Ottawa Senators are currently, seven points out of a Stanley Cup Playoff spot with 24 games remaining. What do they need to do to make the playoffs? It was certainly fun having Olympic hockey in our lives for the last couple of weeks. But, now it\u2019s back to business. The NHL got up and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5738,"featured_media":482617,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8,4547,4548],"tags":[3476,1109],"class_list":["post-484142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-senators","category-hockey","category-nhl","tag-linus-ullmark","tag-stanley-cup-playoffs"],"modified_by":"Levi Pike, Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5738"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=484142"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484142\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":484164,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484142\/revisions\/484164"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/482617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=484142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=484142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=484142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}