by Roger Quinn

Created on: August 10, 2010

The Ottawa Senators are kind of an odd team in their division.  While Buffalo, Boston, Toronto, and even Montreal to an extent rely heavily on defense, the Senators will have to rely on their offense if they are going to win.  In their first year without Dany Heatley the Sens made a surprise run to the playoffs and even challenged the Penguins quite a bit.  Such a miracle run may be hard to duplicate this year, but the addition of Sergei Gonchar should help.

Everything in Ottawa starts with the top line forwards Jason Spezza and Daniel Alfredsson.  These two must put up points in bunches if the Sens are going to compete.  Mike Fischer is a nice player, but he can not be the leading goal scorer if Ottawa wants to contend.  Perhaps there is a young player who can step up there game to give them some more depth, such as Milan Michalek, but even if this happens he would be a second line player or an average top liner at best.  If Spezza and Alfredsson can put up the points there should be enough offense behind them to get back to the playoffs.

Defensively the Senators lost a lot this offseason in Andy Sutton and Anton Volchenkov.  However they gained all the lost offense back with the addition of Sergei Gonchar.  They will still miss Volchenkov's grit and shot blocking, so it would be nice for them to see Filip Kuba stay healthier this season.  They will need their defensemen to be playing on top of their game, as they have some question marks in net.

Brian Elliot may be the answer in Ottawa, but probably not this year.  He struggled at times last season and when he played well he still was an average goalie most of the time.  The Senators do not have many options behind him, Pascal Leclaire was awful and they trusted Mike Brodeur enough to play in 3 games.  Ottawa must limit the shots their goalie sees because chances are that many of the shots the goalie does see will go in.

Last year Ottawa caught fire in the second half of the season and made it into a high playoff seed.  This season they will catch no one by surprise.  Their offense should be at least average, but their defense could suffer if Brian Elliot has another season like last year's.  Look for Ottawa to be battling for the final playoff spot all season.

Learn more about this author, Roger Quinn.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.