Senators feeling effects of ailing Jensen’s limited impact
The Ottawa Senators have not had a healthy top-four blue line all season and Nick Jensen’s limited mobility is having a negative impact down the stretch.
OTTAWA — A player’s impact isn’t solely based on their talent or scoring output. Team success comes when the right players are slotted in the right roles.
Nick Jensen has been an essential addition to the Ottawa Senators‘ blue line this season as a veteran partner for Thomas Chabot. But he’s been banged up since January and missed four games in March with a lower-body injury.
In Tuesday’s 5-2 loss to the Buffalo Sabres, which gave the Sabres a four-game season sweep of the Senators, Jensen was clearly less than 100 per cent. With Brady Tkachuk also out of the lineup with an upper-body injury, the holes were hard to overcome.
“It’s a very day-to-day thing. For me, we’re assessing it on a daily basis,” Jensen said of his injury last week. “I found myself at a point where it was getting hard to even finish a game, so we had to take another step to try to fix that, like I did a few months ago.”
Really good teams rely on an efficacious top-four defence. Ottawa has a top pairing of Jake Sanderson and Artem Zub that has dominated possession and shot share since the calendar flipped to 2025, but the Jensen-Chabot pair has not kept up.
|
|
CF% |
xGF% |
Goal differential |
|
Chabot-Jensen before Jan. 1* |
54.57 |
54.40 |
+10 |
|
Chabot-Jensen since Jan. 1 |
49.76 |
43.90 |
-5 |
|
Sanderson-Zub before Jan. 1 |
51.91 |
53.70 |
-6 |
|
Sanderson-Zub since Jan. 1* |
51.55 |
56.75 |
0 |
From Natural StatTrick at five-on-five.
*Pair leads the team in each category.
Jensen’s limited mobility was a factor on two Sabres goals. In the first period, Jensen and Chabot got mixed up, leaving nobody to box out the Sabres in front. That allowed Ryan McLeod to screen Linus Ullmark on Rasmus Dahlin’s slapshot goal that gave Buffalo a 2-0 lead.
Then, in the second period, Jensen was out with Sanderson at four-on-four. Tage Thompson walked into the zone and Jensen was slow to skate out, leaving Thompson to bury a tic-tac-toe goal that held up as the winner.
Earlier in the season, Jensen would consistently jump up to create plays. However, his eagerness to activate offensively has taken a step back since January. Before Jan 1, the Senators were scoring 3.63 goals per 60 minutes at five-on-five with Chabot and Jensen on the ice, but in the time since, that has dipped to 1.67. Ottawa has only mustered two goals with that pair on the ice at five-on-five in the last five games since Jensen’s return to the lineup. A goal created by Chabot or Jensen in the third period could have helped Ottawa come back against Buffalo.
The Senators have not had their top four defence rolling at the same time all season long. Zub was limited to only 11 games in the first three months of the year due to a concussion and foot injury. His return to the lineup full-time in January has coincided with Jensen’s injury bug. In order for the Senators to go on a long playoff run, Jensen’s return to full health and strong play will be key.
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Why does Buffalo have Ottawa’s number?
It’s a “funny league,” said Claude Giroux post-game in trying to describe why one of the worst teams in the NHL beat the Senators four times this season.
“I wish I had the perfect answer,” head coach Travis Green said.
One answer could be that Ottawa struggles against fast teams. Ten of the 12 forwards Buffalo dressed on Tuesday night are above league-average skaters, according to NHL Edge.
“I don’t know if it’s the way they play,” said Sanderson. “(A) run and gun type of game, high skill or whatnot, but we got to figure it out.”
Since the 4 Nations break, the Senators have lost in regulation to the Sabres twice, the Canadiens twice and to the Avalanche and Jets. Those four teams are some of the fastest in the league and can disrupt Ottawa’s breakouts to capitalize in transition.
After the 5-1 loss to the Avalanche, Green confirmed that speed was an issue.
“Against Colorado, I thought we struggled tonight a little bit with the speed of their checking,” the coach said.
While trade-deadline additions Dylan Cozens and Fabian Zetterlund bring pace, Ottawa is still a slower group and can be exploited.
Speed kills playoff dreams.
Adams Apples
• Tkachuk missed Tuesday’s game with an upper-body injury stemming from the hit from Pittsburgh’s Ryan Graves. He is also been dealing with a hip injury from the 4 Nations. Despite the loss to Buffalo, it is almost a foregone conclusion that the Senators will make the playoffs, so the team is right to be cautious with Tkachuk. Fans may be distressed until the Senators punch their ticket, but it’s the right call. Two losses to Buffalo in a week make it even more important that Ottawa secures a spot sooner rather than later so that Tkachuk can truly rest up for the playoffs.
• The Senators crowd gave a standing ovation to the now-Sabre Jacob Bernard-Docker in his return, but they couldn’t match his former teammate Ridly Greig’s hospitality.
The friends reunited Monday night when Greig hosted Bernand-Docker for a meal.
“He actually cooked me some chicken thighs,” said Bernard-Docker. “It’s pretty funny because I usually cook for him, but he actually cooked for me for once… It was pretty good. It’s kind of our classic (cooking) chicken thighs.”
• Recently, Shane Pinto has been celebrating with his tongue out after scoring goals. Pinto said that his tongue celebrations are not intentional and just happen when he gets overjoyed.
