As we learned in business school (*I never went to business school) your team probably won’t respond to vague and generalized instructions such as, “Do better” or “Stop being trash.” As much as you may want to convey to your team to stop being trash and do better, the message may not land the way you want it to. So instead you can try to say something like, “Remember to empty to garbage cans today.” You’d be amazed (no you wouldn’t) how much more effectively this style of management renders results from your team. Thank you for attending my Ted Talk. And so in the spirit of small, manageable tasks, I have here five things I would like to see from the Ottawa Senators this season because simply saying, “You need to make the playoffs because you don’t have a first-round pick” hasn’t elicited the response I had hoped for.

A record above .500

As much as the Senators have 22 of their remaining 29 games against eastern conference opponents and therefore, arguably control their own destiny, this team may have simply run out of runway in the playoff race. In good news, the Sens only need to win 16 of their remaining 29 games to end the season with a respectable record, thus dampening the disappointment of failing to secure consecutive playoff berths. This team could very easily end the season with positive integers in goals and shots. They’ve lost a lot of one-goal games, had some late-game meltdowns, and given up a lot of goals in general but they have a balanced ledger very much within their reach especially with such a manageable schedule for the remaining two and a half months of the season.

A slightly improved penalty kill

At this point it seems like a really tall ask that the Senators get their penalty kill up to 80% efficiency or something like that so I’ll dilute this one a little bit. Right now the Sens find themselves on pace for about 66 goals against shorthanded over 82 games. Could they get that number down to 60? They’ll likely end up with about 60 powerplay goals this season if they maintain their current pace, so again I think balancing the ledger makes for a better objective than suddenly expecting a total shift in trajectory. This team draws penalties as well as any other in the league (enough to offset all the ones they take) so they theoretically should have a positive special teams goal differential but you know, goaltending. This team also only has three shorthanded goals which doesn’t seem like enough considering how many minutes they’ve spent shorthanded.

GOALTENDING.

This team still sits dead last in the league with a save percentage under 87 (according to naturalstattrick) and they would need an Andrew Hammond-esque run at this point to finish with a collective save percentage over 90 so maybe just not finishing last in the league would make for a fair request? Eight teams in the league currently have save percentages under 88 (yes, a quarter of the league, welcome to the live-puck era) so Ottawa has a few teams they could reasonably overtake in the standings between now and April. While Ottawa still sits dead last in five-on-five saver percentage, they rank 31st in shorthanded save percentage (take that Vancouver!) if that gives any reason for hope in otherwise bleak times.

Individual achievements

Business concept #2: Instead of telling your team to, “Just generate more revenue so we can all have boats” try establishing sales targets relative to the skills of individual team members. With just ten goals and 37 points so far this season, Claude Giroux may not get another boat this summer. His numbers have, as expected, declined annually since coming to Ottawa but I would argue he still has just enough time this spring to break that trend and surpass his totals of 15 and 50 from last season. 20-goal campaigns seem all but guaranteed for Drake Batherson, Dylan Cozens, and dare I say Shane Pinto? It would go a long way for fan morale to see Brady Tkachuk and Fabian Zetterlund join that list. An 80-point season seems reasonable for Tim Stützle. Could Jake Sanderson get to 60 and Ridly Greig up to 40 to complete the 2020 trifecta? Most importantly, will Nikolas Matinpalo score a goal? I wager he pulls off an empty-netter in game 82 (to seal a playoff spot for Ottawa obviously).

Exact revenge

Even if the Senators do miss the playoffs this season, they can still avenge some of the more soul-crushing defeats suffered at the hands of mortal enemies. Let’s run down the list quickly:

Boston: Ottawa won season series 3-0-1 by a combined score of 20-10. Perfect.Buffalo: Already lost season series and down 6-11 in goals. I cannot emphasize enough the importance of winning on April 2nd to end this years-long curse.Detroit: Ottawa down 0-2 in season series and 6-9 in goals. Ottawa has a great chance to even things out with meetings both at home on the road remaining. Not as crucial as beating Buffalo but still very important for the culture.Florida: Again down 0-2 and 4-9 in goals (and this Panthers team has dealt with a lot more injuries than Ottawa has). Ottawa again has opportunities at home and on the road to save face here for Brady’s sake.Montreal: Down 1-2 in the season series and but up 13-12 in goals as two losses came in overtime. This March 11th game in Ottawa bears almost as much importance as the game against Buffalo in April, culturally speaking.Tampa: The Sens won game one of this series in Tampa 5-4 and have a good chance to win the season series with a game in Ottawa and a game in Tampa left of the schedule. For whatever reason, Ottawa has played much better against the Lightning than they have against lesser rivals in recent years. Curses are real.Toronto: Do I even need to type it out? The Sens lost game one of this series by a score of 7-5 and have one more game to play in Toronto before two final chances in Ottawa, including the season finale. Considering the fact that we won’t get a playoff rematch this year, this amounts to our Superbowl, World Series, and Stanley Cup all rolled up into one fat spliff. Go Sens Go (forever and always).