Brady Tkachuk searching for answers as Senators’ season slips away

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Brady Tkachuk is searching for answers as to why this season has gone so horribly wrong for the Ottawa Senators.

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In a season in which there were expectations that the Senators would make the playoffs for the first time in seven years, the club dropped its third straight on its current road trip with a 3-1 loss to the Edmonton Oilers on Saturday night at Rogers Place.

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The Senators are now a whopping 16 points behind the New Jersey Devils for the final wild-card spot in the East. They have fallen to 4-11-0 on the road and have lost nine of their past 12 games.
Remember all the optimism coming into the season when training camp opened in September? All of the excitement has evaporated because the Senators have only 28 points in 35 games and the club is sitting in the basement in the Eastern Conference.

Speaking with legendary broadcaster Scott Oake and former NHLer Louie DeBrusk on ‘After Hours’ on Hockey Night in Canada early Sunday morning, Tkachuk had a difficult time explaining why the Senators haven’t been able to turn the corner this season.

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Asked by Oake “why is there such a gap between the expectations and the Senators’ performance so far,” Tkachuk had a difficult time trying to find the right answer. He did the best he could under the circumstances.

“That’s a tough question,” Tkachuk said. “It’s the first year that we’ve had the expectations, we’ve had that pressure and we definitely didn’t expect to be in this position that we’re in right now.

“Coming in with new ownership, and a lot of great moves that were made coming into the season, we definitely expected it to go the other way. I can’t tell you what the single problem is. I mean, you’re never out of it. The Blues (in 2019) were in a position like this, and they ended up winning the Cup.
“So, we’ve just got to find a way to turn it around. I think we have the belief amongst each other that if we do, we can go on a serious run.”

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If you’re looking for positives — and they can be difficult to find — the Senators went toe-to-toe with the Oilers on Saturday. They pulled to within a goal in the third period and didn’t give up many Grade-A scoring chances among the 46 shots that Anton Forsberg faced.

But this wasn’t a year that was supposed to be about moral victories for this group. This was the season that this young core was supposed to find a way to walk out of any rink in the league either carrying the two points or having at least played well enough to try to secure them.

“It’s frustrating right now,” Tkachuk said. “Everybody in that locker room hates to lose and we didn’t expect the position that we’re in right now.

“It’s going to be our work and our details that are going to get us out of it. We’ve just got to find a way out of it and we’ve got to learn from these lessons.”

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It’s been well-documented in this space that Steve Staios, the club’s president of hockey operations and general manager, has been working the phones looking for help.

He would like a veteran or two that can help take some of the weight off the likes of Tkachuk and the young players.

The Senators have a 3-6-0 record since interim head coach Jacques Martin and former Ottawa captain Daniel Alfredsson went behind the bench. They’ve tried to get the players to improve their games defensively, but it’s not a quick or easy fix.

Kevin Bieksa, a former Vancouver Canucks defenceman and an analyst on HNIC, told the viewers that Martin and Alfredsson weren’t going to turn this around overnight.

“It’s too difficult mid-season. Training camp is where you really put in your structure and you go over how you want to play,” Bieksa said. “It’s almost, at this point, like they’re just trying to put Band-aids on things. This is a team with tons of skill. You look at their lineup, especially up front with their top six and they have tons of skill.

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“But you watch them play and they are just loose, with lots of mistakes … It’s going to take a new coaching staff with a full training camp to fix this team.”

Longtime NHL goalie turned HNIC analyst Kelly Hrudey noted that the Senators had no idea that you can’t just flip a switch and become a good team. He agreed with Martin’s assessment that the issues with this club are as much mental as they are physical.

“There was all this hype coming into the season and they had no idea how hard you have to play,” Hrudey said. “All of a sudden, they start losing, and then they get discouraged, and then they had a lot of lapses. That’s where the attitude has to change.”

bgarrioch@postmedia.com
X: @sungarrioch

BGarrioch@postmedia.com

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