With Brady Tkachuk Out, the Ottawa Senators Have Found Leadership in Other Places

With Brady Tkachuk Out, the Ottawa Senators Have Found Leadership in Other Places

The Ottawa Senators are dealing with key injuries and some inconsistency, but boy did they get on track over the weekend. Ross Levitan of Locked On Senators will talk about where this team is and what they need to do to get to where they want to be. All that and more next on today’s Locked on NHL podcast. [Music] You’re Locked on NHL, your daily podcast on the National Hockey League, part of the Locked On podcast network, your team every day. Gil Martin here. Welcome everybody to today’s episode of the Locked On NHL podcast, part of the Locked On podcast network, your team every day. I want to thank everyone who makes Locked on NHL your first listen every day. Don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube or wherever you listen to podcasts so you never miss an episode. Today’s episode is brought to you by FanDuel. Download the FanDuel app now by visiting fanuel.com and win $300 in bonus bets if your first $5 bet wins. It is my pleasure to welcome back to the show the co-host of Sen Central Locked on Senators, Ross Levitan. And uh Ross, the Saturday was a pretty good day for the Ottawa Senators. Yeah, to say the least, Gil always appreciate you having me. And it was a much needed big win. The Suns had two wins going into yesterday or three rather, and they were all by one goal. Ottawa hadn’t been able to open one up like they did in a 7-1 victory. And with that, they’re also trying to just stay to 500 while Brady Kachchuck’s out of the lineup. So all of a sudden after a brutal loss to Buffalo 84 last Wednesday or two Wednesdays ago now the Suns are 3-1 and one. So it’s a lot of ground they’ve got to make up. This Atlantic division is outstanding. Every single Atlantic Division team won on Saturday except for Buffalo and they still got a point against an Atlantic Division team. So somebody had to give up a point there. So it’s going to be competitive all the way through and at least Ottawa like they have in years past fallen back out of the race. They’re not allowing a couple bad games to spiral at the start of the season. You mentioned Brady Kachchuck. What is the response of this team to his now, you know, expected long-term absence and and what does he mean to this organization? Well, he is everything to the organization. On locked on sends every summer, we do our value rankings where we every prospect, every player in order, what they mean to the organization. It’s the fourth year in a row that it’s been Brady Kachchuck at number one despite more arguments within the fan base than ever that it should be Tim Stutzel or Jake Sanderson. It was a pretty even split between those two. But again, Brady reigns supreme, not only because he’s a perennial 30 goal scorer and has that knack for stepping up in the biggest moments, but he’s also the heartbeat of the team leadership wise. So with him out of the lineup, these other young kids are going to have to step up and be that like you see Sanderson wears an A, Stutzel wears an A. They they kind of rotate between the two. But something that general manager Steve Stos did a really good job since coming into the role that he’s in now is bring in veterans to support the younger players. Michael Amio and David Pall, most notably up front, have done a really good job of kind of lowering the heart rate, I would say, at those tough moments in games. So that’s one thing, but the other thing is just the straight up production you’re losing with Brady Kachcha out of the lineup. And they’ve had a lot of goals scored down the middle of the ice. Just Dylan Cousins and Shane Pinto have scored 45% of the Suns total goals this season. Your second and your third line center on paper. So I think they’ve done a really good job of at least recently with this 3-1 and one stretch gotten contributions from all over the lineup. But you can’t discount what Brady Kachchuck means to this team. And it’s great to see that even a week out of surgery, he was on the trip. It’s a thumb injury, so he can still skate. He was on the ice with the team for the morning skate doing drills with one hand on his stick. So I think that that’s a huge leadership quality that’s allowing this team to to kind of bond together. And we saw it last night in the game, Gil. I don’t know if you saw Alena Almark make a sprint from his own net all the way down because Charlie Lingren was getting involved and that meant it was an oddnumbered altercation behind the Capitals net. So, you win big. You stand up for your teammates. Everyone’s got each other’s back. And it’s a good feeling going into a back-to-back Monday, Tuesday against two teams that frankly if you want to compete in the East, you should beat in Boston at home divisional matchup tonight and then tomorrow they’re going on the road second half of back to back in Chicago against a team who’s quote unquote overperformed so far this season. You mentioned Shane Pinto off to a redhot start right now. talk to me about what he’s accomplished so far and what that means for this team. Yeah, well a Long Island kid who’s gone through so much adversity through his young NHL career. Everyone knows about the 41game suspension that he served. There was nothing nefarious about it. It was just um bad decision in terms of where he was like there’s no betting on hockey otherwise the suspension would have obviously been way worse. tough situation. The team supported him through that, made sure that he got back, gave him a league minimum contract just to play the season. He he did really well when he came back. Then last year, exceedingly just developed into this player that you could trust against the other team’s top line, but then would produce offense himself. this year. I don’t think he’s going to score 90 goals like he’s on pace for, but I do think that he is still stepping up into the player we’re going to see in two, three years when he’s really in his prime. I think you can’t you can’t say enough good things about what he does away from the puck, giving him opportunity to play in these these great um you know, roles where even though he would be listed as the third line center, he’d play the most minutes or the second most minutes of every any forward on the team. So, ironically, it’s kind of funny because last year the whole story was that he wasn’t getting power play time. He wanted power play time, but they said, “We need you in a defensive role.” Well, this season he has. And yet, all eight of his goals have been scored at even strength. He’s tied for the NHL lead in goal scoring. So, none of the damage has come on the power play. Dylan Cousins, the other player I mentioned, his scoring’s been a lot on the power play. But to have that sequence of Stutzla one, then Cousins, Dylan the sends up two, the other one scored last night too, Nick Cousins. But you got Dylan Cousins and then Shane Pinto. You’re really seeing kind of the spine of this team and the wins and losses. Obviously, there’s other things. Penalty kill needs to improve. Goalending is a big story. But down the middle of the ice up front, you can really see what Ottawa’s trying to build. And if those three hit their potential, they’re going to be a tough team to match up against. You mentioned the penalty kill. You mentioned the goalending. What does this team need to do to win consistently and compete in what you accurately described as a very tough Atlantic division? Yeah. Well, last night was a good start or sun or Saturday night, I should say, where they they went 100% on the PK. They rose their average to enough to get off the basement level with the Columbus Blue Jackets. Well, you can’t have a PK in the 60s. It’s just it’s not a recipe for success. So, they just need to stick with the aggressive nature of their penalty kill. I find when they do have trouble, they play a diamond formation, which a lot of teams do, but the key to that is being aggressive. Because if you’re not, you give so much space down low on the half wall, and guys can either jam it in tight, look for a rebound, or they can walk slowly to the middle of the ice and find a lane to get a better opportunity. So, it’s really just been a mix of not getting a big save on the PK, but more so allowing way too much time and space. In the first few games, too, you’re going up against Tampa Bay. I know they’ve struggled, but they’ve got elite offensive players. Then you have the Florida Panthers in the next game, and right after those two games, you’ve already given up seven power play goals against. So, it it’s been a little bit better over the last number of games, but they have to be in the top half of the league if they want to have success. and down at 28 29th overall. It’s just not going to get it done. So, of course, you want more saves. You always do, but I think there’s a lot in terms of the strategy of the PK that if they make those adjustments, I think the players are good enough on it to play their role and be a middle of the pack unit. I’m not saying they’re top five kill, but they won’t be at the bottom of the league if they can make those adjustments. And how about Omar? How has he looked so far? And does the team need him to step up a little bit more? Well, I think he’s on the right track for sure. His first couple of games, there were some goals that you would have liked back. There were also some huge saves and that’s kind of been this the tale of two stories of Lenus Almark season. The stats up until the past two games hadn’t matched the big saves that he was making as well. So, with that said, like it was big saves and bad goals. That that was the story of his season so far. And it really culminated in that game uh two last Saturday against the New York Islanders where Ottawa was gifted that game multiple times. You get leads in it and they could never shut it down and even Yeah, it’s a great play by Anders Lee to push Spence off the puck, but he had no option but to just push it along the ice and Mark lifted his pad. It went right through. So just a little mistake, little adjustment and I think we would have seen better numbers already. But in his past two games, both wins, he’s rocking a 944 save percentage. So, two two goals against total. In uh one goal in each of the last two games against, and they’re going to need him to be a top goalie if they want to have success as well. All right, Ross, why don’t you tell our viewers and our listeners where they could find the podcast and where they could find you and your co-host on social media? Yeah, for sure. Locked on Senators is daily wherever you get your podcast and on YouTube. We’ve actually got a legendary, I’ll call him, playby-play voice, John Forsland, who’s on Prime Amazon games up in Canada. So, he’s calling Sends Bruins tonight north of the border. He’s obviously uh the daily playbyplay guy for the Seattle Kraken. So, he’s going to join us, talk a little bit about broadcasting, and get into a game day preview. And you can find us on social media as well at Sen Central on Twitter. All right, Ross, thank you so much. Today’s episode is brought to you by FanDuel. 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The Ottawa Senators have gotten back on track after some early season struggles and seem to be finding their game.

Ross Levitan of Locked On Senators joins us to discuss the great play of Shane Pinto and how the Sens are handling the injury to Brady Tkachuk plus what it will take for them to play winning hockey going forward.

All this and more on today’s Locked On NHL Podcast with Gil Martin.

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