{"id":571065,"date":"2026-03-30T16:36:12","date_gmt":"2026-03-30T16:36:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/571065\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T16:36:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-30T16:36:12","slug":"goaltending-woes-put-sens-under-immense-playoff-pressure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/571065\/","title":{"rendered":"Goaltending woes put Sens under immense playoff pressure"},"content":{"rendered":"

No team is under more pressure over the next two weeks than the Ottawa Senators<\/a>. <\/p>\n

A team this talented should not be kept out of the playoffs. And yet, with nine games to go in the regular season, Ottawa\u2019s playoff outlook sits where it has just about all season \u2013 50 per cent, dancing on the razor\u2019s edge.<\/p>\n

It shouldn\u2019t be this close; certainly not for a team ranked 11th in goal differential (+18) on the season, and certainly not for a team with a top-10 scoring offence. But the goaltending woes that have ailed this franchise for large stretches of the past two decades have roared back at the worst possible time, and the poor reliability at the position has prevented Ottawa from pushing their way up the standings. <\/p>\n

It starts with the big bet on Linus Ullmark<\/a> a season ago; the Senators committed $33 million to the Swedish netminder in October of 2024. Fast forward one year, and Ullmark\u2019s game has seemingly disintegrated. His underperformance may have a lot to do with his intra-season leave of absence \u2013 Ullmark courageously came out and acknowledged<\/a> he\u2019d been dealing with mental health issues in December, and to the team\u2019s credit, they have supported him along the way.<\/p>\n

But challenged play and intermittent availability, including a curious absence<\/a> in a crucial game against the Tampa Bay Lightning<\/a> on Saturday for rest (Ottawa went on to lose in regulation), has put the Senators goaltending depth chart in a bind. <\/p>\n

Backup Leevi Merilainen was so poor in 20 games he was sent down to AHL Belleville, placing the keys of the No. 2 role in the hands of well-travelled 38-year-old James Reimer<\/a>. <\/p>\n

The trio\u2019s play has been, in one word, dreadful. If we look at every goalie\u2019s performance this year relative to the shot profile they have faced (goals saved versus expected), the Ottawa goalies come in dead last \u2013 even behind the Vegas Golden Knights<\/a>, whose goaltending has been so bad it culminated in a firing of the team\u2019s head coach<\/a> this weekend: <\/p>\n

\"\"Yost1 Yost <\/p>\n

It\u2019s true that Merilainen sank much of Ottawa\u2019s overall numbers, but backups and developing prospects at this position are expectedly volatile \u2013 these bets fail to pan out all the time.<\/p>\n

The problem is more so with Ullmark. If you are paying a goaltender north of $8 million (committing about nine per cent of the total salary cap in the process), you need reliability and availability at the position.<\/p>\n

Reliability hasn\u2019t been there. Ullmark has been indiscernible from a replacement-level goalie this year (+0.8 goals saved vs expected; 88.8 per cent stop rate), comparable to that of journeymen like Edmonton\u2019s Connor Ingram<\/a>, Columbus\u2019 Elvis Merzlikins<\/a>, and Detroit\u2019s Cam Talbot. <\/p>\n

Year over year, it\u2019s a meaningful step backwards:<\/p>\n

\"\"Yost2 Yost <\/p>\n

Ullmark\u2019s availability has also been challenged several times this season now, and it seems likely he\u2019ll finish the season with fewer than 50 games played. It goes without saying this was not what the Senators front office had in mind a year ago.<\/p>\n

But redemption is always around the corner, and this besieged goaltending group has a chance to erase a disaster of a season with just two weeks of quality play. Ottawa\u2019s finish to the season includes a five-game homestand<\/a>, with four of their remaining nine games coming against lottery-bound teams (Florida twice; New Jersey; Toronto).<\/p>\n

That presents the Senators goalies with a golden chance to rewrite this team\u2019s story and push into the postseason.<\/p>\n

Data via Natural Stat Trick, NHL.com, Evolving Hockey<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"No team is under more pressure over the next two weeks than the Ottawa Senators. A team this…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":571066,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194295],"tags":[712,49,48,89009,111230,111232,20739,84870],"class_list":["post-571065","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ottawa","tag-apple-news","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-james-reimer-sports-hockey-player-player-nhl-api-8473503","tag-leevi-merilinen-sports-hockey-player-player-nhl-api-8482447","tag-linus-ullmark-sports-hockey-player-player-nhl-api-8476999","tag-ottawa","tag-ottawa-senators-sports-hockey-team-team-nhl-api-9"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=571065"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571065\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/571066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=571065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=571065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=571065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}