Dom Luszczyszyn and Sean Gentile’s league projections are out with his Ottawa article landing recently (cf). While a number of team reporters at The Athletic thought the projections were too low (Vegas, Seattle, New Jersey, Montreal, LA, Edmonton, Colorado, Carolina, Buffalo; only the Rangers and Chicago reporters thought they were too high), Ian Mendes, along with two-thirds of the others, thought they were spot on (Mendes points out that his model has been correct for Ottawa the last few years). Those projections, 94 points, assume a healthy Josh Norris (currently in question) and a signed Shane Pinto (currently not signed). Here’s how it would look in context if the model was 100% correct (basically an impossibility, but Dom does extremely well):
Atlantic
Toronto 104
Boston 103
Florida 97
Tampa Bay 95
Ottawa 94
Buffalo 87
Detroit 85
Montreal 71
Rest of the Eastern Conference ahead/near of Ottawa
New York Rangers 105
New Jersey 103
Pittsburgh 96
New York Islanders 92

This puts the team right on the bubble (8th place). In terms of the model, the team has done itself a favour dumping JBD (see below), although drags Travis Hamonic, Parker Kelly, Mark Kastelic, and Zack MacEwen remain. Funnily enough, the immediate problems the team is having are not included among the worst case scenarios, meaning there are many ways Ottawa’s season could collapse (as is generally the case for a bubble team).

A few hours after I posted the news came out that Norris is likely to miss the start of the season with no time table for his return. As fans know, issues with his shoulder go back to 2019 and it seems likely both that the Sens will place him on LTIR and that the freed cap space will finally allow them to sign Pinto. The question is: what becomes of Norris and how will the team deal with his absence? Clearly they will try putting Pinto in the #2 spot, but it’s not clear he’s ready for that or that Greig (who would likely be #3) is ready yet either. It throws a lot of chaos into what was a solid top six.

However unrealistic it was, there was a brief hope when JBD was put on waivers that someone would take him (so the opposite sentiment Ian Mendes paints the fans with), but his two year, one-way deal is too much of a poison pill for other GMs. It’s difficult to imagine, but JBD has been as useless in the AHL as he is the NHL (99-4-11-15/32-0-2-2), so he doesn’t help the BSens (who, after losing Thomson for nothing, are desperately short of puck moving defensemen). A shoutout to Bobby Ryan, who (like me) thinks Lassi Thomson was a better option than JBD. The org’s move makes me wonder if Parker Kelly will also be on the bus to Belleville sooner than later (unless an IR Norris clears space for Pinto); you have to wonder if Staios was involved as well, as JBD seems to be a D. J. Smith guy and this would be a visceral reminder of the short rope Smith has this season (I’m just speculating, however). The other waiver player, Sokolov, I was less concerned about. He was always heading to Belleville this year, so waivers were inevitable and while fans here love him other organizations have their own beloved bubble players.

The above were the third batch of players sent to the BSens (I’ll list them out momentarily; a note not all of them were physically sent down, but put through the waiver process to that end). The second batch (in order of ‘most surprising’ to least): Tyler Kleven (I think this is the best thing for him, especially with Thomson gone), Zach Ostapchuk, Nikolas Matinpalo (who made no noise at camp), Cole Reinhardt, and Kevin Mandolese. Other than Kleven, none of these are surprising. The third batch, besides JBD and Sokolov, include the pylon known as Jacob Larsson as well as Matthew Highmore, both AHL-vets whose demotion is no surprise (they also had to clear waivers). There will be one final batch to come after this.

A little follow-up on Sean Tierney: we’ve learned he’s a Steve Staios guy, so was undoubtedly brought in for his sake. I don’t know how much Staios pays attention to analytics, but he’s joined the most Luddite organization in that respect and Dorion will ignore it.

The final BSens member from last season who was without a team heading into this one has landed, as Cole Cassels signed an AHL-deal with San Jose.

This article was written by Peter Levi

October 7, 2023
Categories: Belleville Senators, Ottawa Senators . . Author: Eye on the Sens

1 Comment

Comments RSS TrackBack Identifier URI

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.