{"id":608312,"date":"2026-04-16T16:19:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-16T16:19:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/608312\/"},"modified":"2026-04-16T16:19:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-16T16:19:08","slug":"steve-staios-backs-linus-ullmark-as-ottawa-senators-prepare-to-battle-carolina-hurricanes-in-first-round","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/608312\/","title":{"rendered":"Steve Staios backs Linus Ullmark as Ottawa Senators prepare to battle Carolina Hurricanes in first round"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Ottawa Senators<\/a>\u2019 belief in goaltender Linus Ullmark<\/a> has never wavered during a turbulent second season with the team.<\/p>\n

Ullmark, 32, struggled out of the gate, going 14-9-5 going into late December with an .881 save percentage and 2.90 goals-against average.<\/p>\n

After a wild 7-5 loss to the Toronto Maple Leafs<\/a> on Dec. 27 that saw Ullmark allow four goals on 10 shots, the 2023 Vezina Trophy winner took a leave of absence from the team for what was later announced as mental health reasons.<\/p>\n

Ullmark missed 16 games, and the Senators had a 6-6-2 record in his absence. The team sat in last place in the Eastern Conference on Jan. 12 with the playoffs seemingly out of reach.<\/p>\n

Upon his return, the 6-foot-4 netminder went 14-4-3 with a .904 save percentage and 2.30 GAA the rest of the season as the Senators overcame a 10-point deficit to claim the final wild-card spot in the Eastern Conference.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve said this before, and I stand by it; I would not change what I did on acquiring Linus Ullmark<\/a>,\u201d Senators president of hockey operations and general manager Steve Staios<\/a> told Postmedia\u2019s Bruce Garrioch<\/a> on Thursday. \u201cWhen you\u2019re in my position, you see your group, you believe in them, you see the growth potential in them. You see it moving in the right direction.\u201d<\/p>\n

When the Senators acquired Ullmark from the Boston Bruins<\/a> in June of 2024, it was a move to bring stability to the team\u2019s net.<\/p>\n

Ullmark did just that during the 2024-25 campaign, going 25-14-3 with a .910 save percentage and 2.72 GAA to lead the Senators to their first playoff appearance since the 2016-17 season.<\/p>\n

Despite the horrid start and the lack of availability in his second season, Staios has no regrets putting his faith into Ullmark.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have a chance to get a top-10 NHL goaltender, to me, I wasn\u2019t going to tiptoe around that,\u201d said Staios. \u201cVery rarely do you have an opportunity to go and do that for the goalie position. As we know, some of the top goaltenders didn\u2019t have good years this year, and they tend to bounce back.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ullmark\u2019s absence wasn\u2019t the team\u2019s only problem early in the season as the team\u2019s depth was tested with numerous injuries to key players.<\/p>\n

Captain Brady Tkachuk<\/a> missed 20 games in the first two months of the season due to a torn ligament in his thumb, and the team was forced to use 12 defencemen from the end of February through the end of the regular season due to various injuries on the backend.<\/p>\n

However, Ottawa was able to overcome the obstacles, going 21-6-4 in their final 31 games in order to make the playoffs.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was unbelievable,\u201d said Staios. \u201cYou almost couldn\u2019t believe it was happening. No one\u2019s going to sympathize with injuries because it happens around the league. But for that to happen to us at that time, with the amount of injuries in one position, it was something I\u2019ve never seen before.\u201d<\/p>\n

The task at hand now is finding a way to get by the Carolina Hurricanes<\/a> in the first round of the playoffs.<\/p>\n

The Hurricanes finished as the conference\u2019s top seed with a 53-22-7 record and have been itching to take the next step towards a Stanley Cup appearance.<\/p>\n

Carolina has made the playoffs each of the past eight seasons under head coach Rod Brind\u2019Amour, making the Eastern Conference Finals three times without being able to advance.<\/p>\n

\u201cCarolina\u2019s been there, they\u2019ve been in the playoffs, and they\u2019ve been a Stanley Cup-contending team for a while now, so they have that experience,\u201d said Staios. \u201cWe believe in our group, and even when we\u2019re looking at matchups, once we did clinch, there were three or four teams involved, we just focus on our group. Even with some of the things we talked about outside of our control, we kept it strong in the room, and we believe in how we play, and we know how we need to play to have success. It\u2019ll be interesting.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Ottawa Senators\u2019 belief in goaltender Linus Ullmark has never wavered during a turbulent second season with the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":608313,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194295],"tags":[712,49,48,111232,20739],"class_list":["post-608312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ottawa","tag-apple-news","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-linus-ullmark-sports-hockey-player-player-nhl-api-8476999","tag-ottawa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608312","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=608312"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608312\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/608313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=608312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=608312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=608312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}