OTTAWA — The game of hockey should just be called “goalie.”
Most nights, the team that ices the best goalie in the NHL is the one that wins.
Recently, the Ottawa Senators and netminders go as well together as the Toronto Maple Leafs and Game 7s.
Pure, unabashed disappointment.
The crisis in the crease was front and centre on Thursday — one of the craziest days ever in Sensland, a title for which there is a lot of competition.
Reacting to unsavoury social media rumours surrounding Linus Ullmark’s absence from the team, the team released an official statement condemning internet “trolls” and “sick” people spreading what it called “completely fabricated and false stories.”
A statement you rarely see in the NHL for unfounded rumours.
And that was just the entrée.
The main course was the Senators enduring an 8-2 drubbing on Thursday to the best team in the NHL, the Colorado Avalanche.
Every Colorado shot looked destined to hit twine, no matter its angle of launch.
The game was a microcosm of the Senators’ season, earning them the league-worst save percentage and a burgeoning disaster in the standings.
When was the last time you saw a goaltender get pulled, and later return to the game because their replacement was so bad?
We never had.
It was Leevi Merilainen, then pulled for Mads Sogaard, then later replaced by Merilainen.
It was so bad that, unbelievably, it led to the Senators signing James Reimer to an AHL professional tryout, a deal that came through midway into the 8-2 debacle in Denver, a sight to be seen. Reimer is a 37-year-old goalie with 525 career games under his belt who signed a PTO with the Leafs, of all teams, in the fall before being released and before Ottawa snagged him. He played with Buffalo last season.
The Senators have been freefalling down the standings, high on the deserve-to-win-o-meter most nights but low, very low, on the save-o-meter every night
In the midst of the craziness, Ullmark’s timeline for return is as unclear as ever. On Thursday in Denver, the Senators moved him off their roster to make room for the return of Lars Eller, who suffered a broken foot last month. However, when the former Vezina Trophy winner was playing, before his leave of absence on Dec. 28, he didn’t look the part. To that point, he had been the worst goaltender in the league in terms of goals saved above expected.
Because Ullmark is signed for $8 million for each of the three seasons after this one, he’s virtually untradeable. A potential buyout would be onerous for a cash-strapped Senators team.
Ullmark is not the first goalie to lose his Midas glove touch in Ottawa.
Ottawa has become the city where netminders’ save percentages nosedive into the sub-.900 range. There hasn’t been one goaltender in Ottawa in the last decade who hasn’t been caught in the vortex.
How do we explain it?
First it was Matt Murray.
His glove malfunctioned.
Then Cam Talbot.
The Talbot era is remembered by who he was traded for, with the Senators losing Filip Gustavsson in the process of acquiring Talbot in a short-term move.
Finally, Joonas Korpisalo.
It was “Four Goals Allowed” Korpisalo.
All the while, Joey Daccord and Gustavsson have gone on to become elite NHL goaltenders — traded away or let go despite immense promise. Gustavsson will play for Team Sweden at the Olympics. Ullmark will not.
There is still no explanation for why goaltenders barely survive in Ottawa but thrive elsewhere. All we know is that it’s a trend, not a blip.
Maybe Ullmark returns to form whenever he’s ready to come back, but that must seem like fool’s gold if you’re general manager Steve Staios.
Perhaps the newly signed Reimer can provide saves. Reimer’s .897 save percentage last season would do wonders for Ottawa if he could replicate that in Senators red and black. If so, it would feel like the Senators had signed prime Dominik Hasek.
Nevertheless, the moniker of “Steady Steve” Staios will be put to the test. Sure, Reimer could work, but Laurent Brossoit, with a better track record and pedigree, was just traded to San Jose. Ottawa seems to have chosen the lower-cost option.
Arguably, the Sens’ conundrum began with Staios’ decision in the off-season not to bring in a veteran goaltender to back up Ullmark, who had never played more than 49 games in a season in his injury-prone career. Instead, the team was relying on Merilainen, who had just 14 games of NHL experience.
Staios wears a lot of this. As of today, he quite simply chose the wrong netminder to believe in due to his underperformance on the ice this season. It could be an organizational disaster of a decision if Ullmark doesn’t return to elite status, although it is still possible Ullmark returns to glory. No Vezina winner forgets how to be a good goaltender overnight, but goalies are prone to dramatic fall-offs in play.
The goaltending mess surely looks like it will impede Ottawa’s progress toward being a contender in the window with Brady Tkachuk under contract until 2028.
Senators’ fans are used to saying, “What could have been?” when it comes to their past goalies; those words are now starting to blend into their sentiments about the Tkachuk era.
Despite all the pressure on management, the Senators are just five points out of a playoff spot but are second-last in the conference with so many teams they must surpass.
This is looking like it might be a lost season for the Ottawa Senators. And, oh yeah, they don’t have their first-round draft pick for this spring.
“We’ll contend when we’re ready to contend,” said Staios in the days before Thursday’s news, not much consolation to fans who imagined their team making runs this year and for years to come.
The 8-2 loss needs to be the turning point of the 2025-26 Ottawa Senators. With even league-average goaltending, they would have allowed 25 fewer goals this season. They’d be a playoff team even with just a modicum of saves.
And, sure, we can point to how Tkachuk has underperformed, how the Senators’ depth defencemen have underwhelmed and to the fact that they’ve had a porous penalty kill. All valid points. But they would be moot if the Senators just got… well, you know what they need.
