It's time to look into the abyss and see what stares back.

All players are ordered by time on ice per game played. I am relying very heavily on Evolving Hockey's RAPM tables, which are the numerical data that goes into those famous charts with the purple bars. This is even-strength results only.

Forwards

Tim Stützle

Ottawa's star draft pick is their most used forward, possibly because Brady Tkachuk hasn't played every game and may have been seeing lower minutes on return from injury.

The trouble is, Stützle isn't exactly their star other than in points. While he gets a lot of assists – 53 of his 76 points are assists, split nearly evenly between first and secondary – his RAPM numbers, which control for the impact of teammates, competition and some other factors, show him good but not great at most areas of hockey. His impact on Corsi For rate, so the underlying backbone of offence, is where he places the lowest and is actually negative. His impact on Corsi Against, however, is excellent. The same holds true for Expected Goals.

He is on the first power play unit, and is not the best player there by RAPM, but he's not far off. Thirty of his points, mostly assists, come on the power play. It's fair to say his value as a setup man there is top quality, but his real value at even-strength goes towards getting Ottawa their 50% Corsi and Expected Goals and keeping things clean defensively.

Brady Tkachuk

Tkachuk is simply the best player on the Senators without any doubt in my mind. He's only played 71 games (all numbers do not include Thursday's game), and he's not always been perfectly healthy in those games, but he leads the forwards in impact on Expected Goals For, and Expected Goals +/-, which means his overall impact on the net quality of shots for and against is the best on the team. His lead over his nearest rival in xG +/- is substantial. He gets a chart:

There's likely a wider difference of opinion on a player's impact on Goals For than any other stat. Evolving Hockey don't show Goals Against, because it can't be separated from the goalie, but is impact on Goals For random and based on the shooting luck of other players too much or is it real? Of note, Tyson Barrie used to show massive quality in effect on GF, just not every season. Either way, Tkachuk's RAPM ranking in GF on the team in fourth for all forwards. Ottawa has the sixth lowest goal-scoring rate at even-strength. So again, is it him or is it the team?

How you answer that is likely how you pick between him and Stützle for who is best. Which is not really what we need to know.

Claude Giroux

Giroux plays a lot for a player at his stage in his career. He has very good impacts on Cosri +/-, but very poor on Expected Goals. I was very surprised to see that a lot of the drop from Corsi to Expected Goals it is quality of shots for. He has a very low shooting rate and he does a lot of dump-ins, and low-quality shots from the medium to low danger zones. He looks like a Leafs player during one of those games where they just can't find the net.

Giroux is good on the power play, and some of his set plays are killer, but he's not the best player on his line by any means. Grioux, Stützle and Tkachuk have played most of their minutes as a line.

Drake Batherson

Batherson has a very middle of the pack set of results at even strength, but on the power play he is a force in terms of shot rate and quality. He also has very high positive impacts on the rest of PP1. He is second on the team in power-play points to Stützle, but he has three times the goals. Ottawa sits 14th in goal rate on the power play.

He has played mostly with the departed Josh Norris and the three main top line players, so there has been some rotation in the top six. Batherson is not a very strong candidate for a top-six role.

Shane Pinto

Wait, they're paying this guy how much? $3.7 million? What a bargain. Pinto is a legitimate middle-six player with excellent impacts on the most important things – Expected Goals +/- and Corsi +/-. He also has the best value in Corsi Against within RAPM, and is right there with Stützle in terms of value all over the ice.

He's not a big assist guy, more of a scores his own goals guy, but he's a star on a third line, a good second liner, and he can play top line if you need him too. He does not get a lot of power-play time, but is fairly heavily used on the PK. A bargain.

Ridly Greig

Can he do more that slap it at the empty net? Not really. I'm not all that sure why he's so high up this list by ice time, but he's not actually good at anything, although he's not bad per se. He fills a spot on their second power-play unit, but he's a replacement level player otherwise.

Dylan Cozens

He's only played 20 games with the Senators, and I can't find anything good to say about him. Mixing in stats from the Sabres has him better at offence than Greig (a low bar) and horrible defensively, not something I put much store in since the Sabres are a disaster. His goal-scoring rate in his 20 games is middle six level, so I guess he's their Nick Robertson.

Fabian Zetterlund

Zetterlund has a small positive impact on Goals For. Otherwise he's a decent depth player of no great improvement over the ones they swapped out for him. He scored some goals in San Jose likely with usage as the reason.

Michael Amadio

Likely the best bottom-six player on the team. He has quality results, just below the top players by RAPM. He's a legitimately good player defensively.

David Perron

Perron is a good all-around depth player, better than some who play a lot more. Not as good as Amadio.

Nick Cousins

Cousins gets some good defensive results.

There are several AHLers who occasionally play, and a few depth players who share out the games, none of any great import.

Defencemen

Jake Sanderson

Sanderson gets very high rankings on the team in all essential areas at even strength, usually higher than Thomas Chabot overall. Crucially, he is almost as good defensively as Artem Zub. His power play is good, his PK is very good. If he were just a touch better offensively, he'd be the best defender on the team. Legit top-pairing all-around defender.

Thomas Chabot

Excellent offensively in impacts at even-strength and a bit weak defensively. If you take the view that offence is more valuable, and I do, and on a team like the Senators, it very much is, then he's the better player. The scale of his offensive impacts is dramatic.

Put them together, you have the perfect defender. They almost never play together, however as the Senators run a top-four/bottom pair system. I am on record as saying this is usually the wrong thing to do, but they have the talent to do this successfully (so do the Leafs).

Artem Zub

Sanderson's usual partner is the best defensive defender on the team. If you look at all NHL defenders by RAPM Expected Goals Against, this is the list:

  • Adam Pelech
  • Vladislav Gavrikov
  • Chris Tanev
  • Jonas Siegenthaler - only about half a season
  • Johnathan Kovacevic
  • Artem Zub

What more do you need to know?

Nick Jensen

Jensen, who plays with Chabot most of the time, is 34, and still has it. Most of what he has, however, is positive impacts on Goals, both for and against, so again, we have the controversy around how much of that is really him. He has good enough defensive impacts at even-strength and seems to be fabulous on the PK.

The rest of the Senators defence is Travis Hamonic, Tyler Kleven, and Nikolas Matinpalo and a depth defender they got from the Sabres, Dennis Gilbert. Their results range from spectacularly bad (Hamonic) through black hole on offence (Kleven) and onto eh, he's fine (Gilbert). None of them threaten Jensen's role.

Goalies

Linus Ullmark

I can short-form this: This season in 43 games, Ullmark has results almost identical to Joe Woll by Moneypuck's Goals Saved Above Expected. He's 13th for goalies with at least 20 games played. He's been better in the past.

Anton Forsberg

Unlikely to play much, but Forsberg is 32nd in rank by the above criteria, which is good for a backup who ended up playing 30 games.

Conclusion

The Ottawa Senators are an average team in most categories. The hit the 50% mark in Corsi and Expected Goals, and their Goals Against rate is also average. Their major weakness is scoring goals, and you can find the cliff in scoring talent pretty quickly in their roster. They make up for that enough to make the playoffs by being better defensively and getting good goaltending. Their power play is average, and that's good enough to get them some goals when they need them at least some of the time.

Their roster is strong on defence, weak on offensive impacts from most defenders, and their best player, Tkachuk, has boxcars that read like Matt Knies' do because the goals just aren't there team wide.

They get necessary possession and/or defensive skills from Stützle, Giroux, Sanderson and Zub – all at big minutes – with only Stützle bringing significant points to the table too.

Ottawa could have made the playoffs last season with decent goaltending, and they are a legitimate playoff team now, but they are not a strong contender. Good defending and a quality run from Ullmark can make them a tough out, though.

That's the Ottawa Senators.

Analysis