Travis Green trended on X for all the wrong reasons late Saturday night.

The Ottawa Senators fourth consecutive regulation loss was not sitting well with an increasingly impatient fan base and the coach drew its ire.

“Something has to change before the season is totally lost, if it is not already,” one season ticket holder pleaded. “It kind of feels like Green may have lost the group.”

“Time for a new voice behind the bench because the Travis Green experiment has failed,” a fan claimed.

“It’s D.J. Smith all over again,” another complained.

Twenty months ago, Green was hired to usher in a new era of consistency on the ice and accountability in the locker room. The aforementioned Smith had served his purpose, guiding several young, promising players through their entry-level contracts and beyond.

Green was tasked with building upon that individual development, devising a robust, repeatable defensive structure, and ending a seven-year playoff drought.

It’s hard to argue that, a year and a half into a four-year contract, Green has failed any of those objectives.

Don’t let the historically bad goaltending fool you. The Senators are an excellent defensive team.

According to Natural Stat Trick, at 5-on-5, Ottawa has the best expected goals against — a statistic created to measure the probability of a shot becoming a goal based on shot location, angle and situation — in the league.

Combine that with the worst team save percentage the franchise has seen since 1993-94 and the culprit, or culprits, for the significant rise in goals against is obvious.

Green has cultivated a defence-first mindset within his team. Sure, the Senators are not immune to small stretches of regression — the past two performances have been especially difficult to justify from a defensive standpoint — but firing a coach should never be a knee-jerk reaction.

Comparing Green’s 126 games as bench boss to the two seasons that preceded him, the Sens have improved their NHL ranking in shots against per game (17th to 11th), goals against per game (26th to 16th), giveaways per game (29th to 1st) and takeaways per game (17th to 11th).

And then there are the core players, whose games have never been more well-rounded. First and foremost, the credit goes to the skaters themselves, but it didn’t happen until Green took the reins.

Tim Stutzle is now truly multidimensional; he’s one of the best penalty killers on the team, winning face-offs at a rate of 54.2% and has a plus rating for the first time in his career.

Jake Sanderson has somehow found another level to his game. Shane Pinto is centring the best shutdown line in the NHL for a second straight year. And, at 38 years old, Claude Giroux is having his best season yet as a Senator.

The team’s 31st-ranked penalty kill (72.7%) is a blemish, no doubt. The Senators are still far too passive on the PK, in puck pressure and in structure, and the coaching staff hasn’t found a solution all season.

But in taking a closer look, goaltending is yet again muddying the waters. Ottawa has given up the third-fewest scoring chances on the penalty kill this season, but has the worst team save percentage while down a man.

Though, maybe the most important question is: Has the coach lost the room?

That’s ultimately up to the players to decide. After Saturday’s 3-2 loss to the Florida Panthers, Green criticized his team’s lack of desperation on both sides of the puck.

By Monday, the dust had settled and the Senators regrouped with a team meeting and a particularly energetic practice. Veteran defenceman Thomas Chabot told the Ottawa Citizen the coach’s message was “one thousand percent” coming in clear.

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“It’s on us as players, man,” Chabot said. “He gives us every tool to succeed and we’ve got to get out there and just get it done. It’s as simple as that. Like I said, nobody in here is looking for excuses in other ways; it’s on us as players.

“We all know that we have a lot more in us and as a team. And I’m more than confident that we will get it done here.”

Said Green: “Our group, they really understand their game. They know how they have to play to be effective. I think they have a lot of belief and I know as coaches we have a lot of belief in our group. We know how good of a team we have and how good we can play if everyone’s playing their best. It starts there.”

The Senators will host the last-place Vancouver Canucks (16-23-5) on Tuesday. And, if they lose their fifth in a row, the calls for Green’s firing will amplify.

But for now, it’s not on him.