{"id":508420,"date":"2026-03-17T20:56:14","date_gmt":"2026-03-17T20:56:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/508420\/"},"modified":"2026-03-17T20:56:14","modified_gmt":"2026-03-17T20:56:14","slug":"senators-nick-jensen-undergoes-meniscus-surgery-done-for-regular-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/508420\/","title":{"rendered":"Senators’ Nick Jensen Undergoes Meniscus Surgery, Done For Regular Season"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nick Jensen<\/a>\u2018s 2025-26 season is over, as Senators head coach\u00a0Travis Green<\/a> told reporters (including Bruce Garrioch of the Ottawa Citizen<\/a>) that the defender has undergone surgery to repair a torn meniscus. Carrying a six-week recovery time, he\u2019s ruled out for the regular season. He could theoretically return past the first round if Ottawa manages to snag a wild-card berth \u2013 which is no guarantee \u2013 and they pull off an early upset.<\/p>\n

Jensen, a pending UFA, has played his last regular-season game for Ottawa, Garrioch indicates. The organization has no plans to offer him a contract extension. Green doesn\u2019t expect the surgery to be career-ending by any stretch for the 35-year-old, though. \u201cI feel bad for him\u2026 We didn\u2019t think originally it would end up going this way. It\u2019s going to be best for him that he does the surgery, and he\u2019ll be back to 100 per cent for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not the only recent lower-body issue Jensen has had. He needed a hip procedure last offseason, which he underwent in May. That put his availability for the beginning of the regular season in doubt, but he managed to return in time. He had only missed three games this season prior to the meniscus tear last week against the Canadiens, all due to healthy scratches.<\/p>\n

This has not been a kind year for the Minnesota native on the ice. Acquired from the Capitals in the 2024 Jakob Chychrun<\/a>\u00a0deal to give the Sens a top-four-capable right-shot shutdown option to pair with Thomas Chabot<\/a>, he flourished last season but hasn\u2019t looked like the same player in 2025-26. His average time on ice is down more than three minutes from 20:13 to 17:01, and his 0.62 hits per game are the lowest of his 10-year NHL career. He\u2019s still managed a respectable 17 points in 61 games, but is controlling only 48.3% of shot attempts at 5-on-5, down from 50.6% last season.<\/p>\n

He had nonetheless spent most of his time at even strength next to Chabot, although he also saw significant time in third-pairing deployment on his off side with fellow righty\u00a0Nikolas Matinpalo<\/a>. A good portion of his overall ice time reduction came from Jensen essentially being removed as a regular on Ottawa\u2019s penalty kill. He\u2019s still a real puzzle piece for the Sens, who already had the longest odds at a postseason berth of any team still realistically in the race for a playoff spot.<\/p>\n

Of course, Ottawa has also been without #1 rearguard\u00a0Jake Sanderson<\/a> for the last four games with an upper-body injury. He\u2019s still listed as week-to-week, with Green saying he could get back on the ice for some skating work in the next seven days.<\/p>\n

Both their absences have put immense strain on Ottawa\u2019s defense corps.\u00a0Tyler Kleven<\/a> and Jordan Spence<\/a>, averaging just over 17 minutes per game this season between them, are now the club\u2019s second pairing behind Chabot and Artem Zub<\/a>. Dennis Gilbert<\/a>, who\u2019s never played more than 35 games in a season, is now a lineup regular until Sanderson returns. That\u2019s far from an ideal place to be from a roster management perspective for a team in a playoff chase, although the fact they\u2019ve been able to eke out a pair of wins in their two games without both Sanderson and Jensen should be of some consolation.<\/p>\n

Ottawa has the ninth-most difficult remaining schedule in the league, per Tankathon<\/a>. The good news is that several teams they\u2019re potentially competing with for wild-card berths, including the Blue Jackets, Bruins, Islanders, and Red Wings, are in the top eight above them. MoneyPuck<\/a> still projects them to finish ninth in the East with 97 points, though \u2013 a total that would win them the Pacific Division but leave them out of the picture in what has turned out to be a ridiculously competitive race to the finish out East.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nick Jensen\u2018s 2025-26 season is over, as Senators head coach\u00a0Travis Green told reporters (including Bruce Garrioch of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":508421,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5104],"tags":[5,4,2805,72,25,5157,73],"class_list":{"0":"post-508420","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ottawa-senators","8":"tag-hockey","9":"tag-nhl","10":"tag-nick-jensen","11":"tag-ottawa","12":"tag-ottawa-senators","13":"tag-ottawasenators","14":"tag-senators"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116246517552872817","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508420","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=508420"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508420\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/508421"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=508420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=508420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=508420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}