Ottawa Senators Prospect Update: The collegiate season wraps up

The regular season is coming to an end for players around the world. Some, unfortunately, are for COVID-19 related reasons, while others (NCAA, Liiga) are because of an earlier natural end date.

Here are your biggest standouts for the week encompassing Tuesday March 3rd — Tuesday March 10th!

Biggest Standouts

The CHL goaltenders: Mads Søgaard and Kevin Mandolese

While the pro-level goalies have mostly struggled in the last few weeks, the prospects have been ramping up their play. As you’ve seen in this space before, Colin and I haven’t been impressed by Mads Søgaard’s lacklustre season — especially for a high second-round pick. However, since the calendar turned to February, all the young Dane has done is stop pucks. He was named the WHL’s Goaltender of the Week last week, and has only let in two goals on 66 shots this week.

Meanwhile, in the QMJHL, Kevin Mandolese continues to lead the QMJHL in save percentage. @SensProspects did the math, and from the Christmas break to March 7th, he’s gone 17-2 with a 0.935 save-percentage. While Cape Breton’s top goaltender of all-time is almost always going to be Marc-André Fleury, with 150+ games under his belt, Mandolese is up there as #2.

The NoDak leaders: Jacob Bernard-Docker and Shane Pinto

Your NCHC Rookie of the Month for February and all-rookie team centre, Shane Pinto, wrapped up his freshman year this past week, and my gosh, are we impressed. I’m not going to lie: when the Sens drafted Pinto instead of Arthur Kaliyev or Bobby Brink, I was disappointed as I didn’t think Pinto was a similar calibre player. Well, with his strong year, Pinto’s kept up with the two players taken after him, and if his record-challenging faceoff results are any indication, appears to be locked in as a centre in the organization’s depth chart going forward.

Belleville’s unsung depth heroes: Filip Chlapik and Max Lajoie

It’s been a trying season for Filip Chlapik and Max Lajoie. The former’s been up and down all season — fully trusted by coach Troy Mann in the AHL, but not enough by D.J. Smith to earn a full-time NHL role. The latter reportedly had a slow start from training camp onwards, and has had a rough season in terms of his NHL outlook — he hasn’t seen an NHL game all season after suiting up in a majority of them last year, and has been passed on the depth chart by Erik Brännström and Christian Jaros.

The good news? A strong stretch run and playoff performance can turn a lot of doubters away, and both appear to be picking up their game in the AHL. Chlapik registered three goals this week, and as you can see from his PIM totals, has added an edge to his game where he’s not afraid to stand up for some of his younger teammates.

Lajoie had two goals and an assist, and has been activating more from the blueline with Wolanin and Brännström out of the lineup:

Silver Linings

• All of the Sens collegiate prospects, minus Angus Crookshank, have had their teams qualify for the playoffs. We already know that the NoDak kids are playing against Chris Wilkie’s Colorado College, but also in the NCHC, Luke Loheit’s UMD Bulldogs will be up against Miami. In the ACC, Jakov Novak’s Bentley Falcons will play a best-of-three against American International, while over in the ECAC, Todd Burgess’ RPI will be facing off against Harvard.
• Alex Dubeau isn’t a Sens prospect, but gets a well-deserved shoutout for getting a win in his AHL debut last week.
• A fun article from the BSens communications team on why each player wears the number they wear. Shoutout to Jack Dougherty and Jonathan Aspirot.
• Another article from the BSens comms team, but this time, they’re detailing a scary incident. Logan Brown has been off with an injury, but managed to save his father’s life on his birthday.
• Lassi Thomson’s Liiga career will likely come to an end next week. He missed a good chunk of time due to injury and the WJC, but all in all, had a solid first pro season among men. We’ve heard the most about his shot and for good reason: it’s strong, and he uses it a lot. In fact, he ranked 34th among all players in shots/60 this season.
• Brady Tkachuk isn’t a prospect anymore... but he now owns the record for the most U21 goals in a Sens uniform.
• Speaking of Tkachuk, here’s an article from the Sens staff on his best friend: Josh Norris.

Weekly Statistics

*note that these statistics include play are up to, but not including, Tuesday, March 10th