Have the Senators players quit on the coach, or their goalies?

From where I sit I see and hear rants about individual players not delivering. Which, point in time, may be very fair.But if we were to look back on the year, we would think EVERY player sucks and only individually only have occasional decent moments.

Peter asks if the team has quit on its goalies. I ask if the goalies have quit on their defence? If the defence has quit on the forwards?. If the forwards have quit on their D?

Because that is what I see. If your D sucks, the opposing offence will take risks against you with impunity. Your forwards start to play like they have to make up for your weak D. Your forward’s effectiveness plummets. If the opposing team isnt worried about your attack, they’ll take offensive risks with impunity. Your D start to play like it doesn’t have confidence in its forwards.

I believe that this team, player by player, is nowhere near as bad as this team is as whole organism. This team was a winner. It is now a loser.

Now, there are individuals responsible for the health of the organism and, I’m afraid that, at this point, this is where the solution has to start. Sure, we need some new blood. But good blood into a sick organism is wasted.

I think that there may be a player or so who are cancerous. They need to be excised by someone who knows how to look after the organism of the team. I am afraid that Coach is too junior to understand the bigness of this problem, regardless of how good he may be at on-ice coaching etc. Frankly, I am most disappointed in our GM – because THIS is his job. He should know this. I don’t care about good trade/bad trade etc. He needs to know about nurturing the organism.

And he doesn’t. This was a winner team. It became a loser team under our GM. 15 games after our appearance in the Stanley Cup final, cancers overtook our team health. And our inability to get healthy again points to one place.

Sigh

Rant over

I agree that the goalies aren’t good enough, but not that the team has quit on them. I doubt the team would be losing this much if they had Jason Spezza and Danny Heatley up front – even with these goalies. The problem is obviously with skill at both ends of the ice, and maybe on D. I really think that with two key finds – an elite winger for Spezza, and a real NHL starting goaltender – they team would be a real threat. Of course, those types of players aren’t easy to find.

Another thing though, if the players have not quit on Clouston after all of this, isn’t that a case for keeping him? I mean, that would make him the only coach they haven’t quit on in the last decade. That’s something.

At the beginning of the season it was goaltending that was praised as it became painfully obvious that the team lacked offense. eventually because of injuries to Leclair, Elliot faltered and there was no other solution. Our defense was exposed quickly as Kuba, Phillips and Gonchar struggled with turnovers. Let’s also not let Karlsson off the hook. There was supposed to be a team defense concept that not everyone bought into. Forwards who shone at the end of the season and into the playoffs last year like Reggin, Foligno, Fisher fell off the map early and it became obvious it was not going to work. Alfredson is showing his age this year as his physical play has gone down and Fisher played injured for a long stretch and opposing defenseman did not fear his coming down on them. This changes the approach other teams take when facing Ottawa. My strategy would be coming into a game against them to pressure the “D”, rush Alfie and don’t worry about Fisher. The rest of the team can’t score but keep an eye on Karlsson he may come up the middle and give up the puck.

A team to be competitive needs to have strong goaltending, especially if the team in front is offensively challenged. In my opinion, Ottawa’s goaltending let’s in the first goal of the game way to often. How many times this year have we seen the opposition score the first goal on the first five or six shots of the game. Statistically, the team that scores the first goal has a better chance of winning the game or at least taking points from the game at hand. Psychologically, for a team that has trouble scoring goals with a shaky defense, it’s almost an insurmountable obstacle.

For this year’s edition of the senators, it’s an almost certain loss. They are basically unable to come back when the opp. scores first.

To back up my argument I’ve compiled some stats than might indicate this situation. The opp team has scored the first goal in 28 of 49 games thus far. Or 57 % of the time.
Which means that Ott have scored the first goal in 21 games or 43 % of the time.

In the 28 games that the opp scored first the stats are as followed.

LOSSES WHEN OPP SCORE FIRST = 26 LOSSES vs WINS BY OTTAWA WHEN OPP SCORES FIRST = 2 WINS

 when the opponent team scores first the opp up to now has won 26 out of 28 games or 92.8 % of the time.

On the side of the ledger, In Ottawa’s 17 wins, 15 have come when they score the first goal. or 88% of the time. Only twice have Ottawa come back to win when the Opp scores first.

As far as when Ottawa scores first and loses the record is not good…

LOSSES WHEN OTTAWA SCORES THE FIRST GOAL = 6. Of the 21 games Ottawa has scored 1st, a whopping 6 have resulted losses or 28.58 % of the time

So if you score first on Ottawa, chances are you’re going to win the game. Ottawa cannot afford to let in that all important first goal. In my opinion, a large portion of the blame has to be goaltending not being competitive enough since letting that first goal in is all important for this team.