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The Senators' season from hell: A timeline of despair
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- The Senators' season from hell: A timeline of despair
What didn't go wrong for the Senators this season? (Yahoo Sports Canada//Ciaran Breen)
For even the most decorated and accomplished horror writers, it would be almost impossible to script a worse year for a professional hockey team than the one the Ottawa Senators just endured.
And the carnage hasn't quite reached its conclusion just yet.
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After finishing last overall the Sens will have the best shot at the No. 1 pick when the NHL draft lottery balls are pulled on Tuesday. Normally, this would obviously be a very good omen for a club fully entrenched in a publicly proclaimed scorched-Earth rebuild, but absolutely nothing has been anywhere close to normal for the team and its fans this season, so why would this?
Rather than reaping the rewards of their horrendous campaign and having the chance to take either of the highly-touted talents available — Jack Hughes and Kaapo Kakko — at the top-end of the draft, Ottawa will likely be stuck watching the Avalanche use the first-rounder they collected from the Sens in the Matt Duchene trade to pick what should've been their future franchise cornerstone.
As far as season recaps go, this one is pretty dark — but there is a sliver of light, too, in the form of Brady Tkachuk , Thomas Chabot and Erik Brannstrom, who all look bound to be studs for a long time to come.
So let's get the gruesomeness out of the way first, shall we? Keep in mind the issues plaguing the Senators today go back to last season. It's been a long 18-plus months in Ottawa, low-lighted by the departure of a franchise legend, a viral Uber video and an owner and GM becoming the symbols of the Senators' demise.
Simpler times. (Getty)
The grimmest timeline there ever was
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November 2017— Ottawa trades a bunch of assets, including a couple of top prospects and a first-round pick, and also had to deal Kyle Turris in order to get Matt Duchene.
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December 2017— Citing attendance issues, owner Eugene Melnyk starts to really emerge as the villain and threatens to move the team if ticket sales and the like don't improve. He even calls out fans for not supporting the club at an outdoor game celebrating the league's 100th anniversary.
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December 2017— After captain Erik Karlsson publicly said he would not take a "hometown discount" to remain with the Senators, Dorion asks the star blueliner for his 10-team no-trade list, marking the first true sign of the end of Karlsson's time in Ottawa.
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March 2018— The Karlsson situation did NOT go over well with the fan base, which turns on the owner with a "Melnyk Out" social media campaign that is going strong to this day. Billboards with the slogan started appearing on Ottawa streets by the middle of the month.
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April 2018— The arena issue continues to linger as hope for a new location in downtown Ottawa dwindles by the day
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June 2018— Former teammate Mike Hoffman 's girlfriend, Monika Caryk, is accused of creating burner accounts to harass Karlsson and his wife, Melinda, after the death of the Karlsson's newborn child. The two parties eventually went to court over the situation.
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June 2018— As a result of these allegations, the Senators try to clean up the mess by trading Hoffman to the Sharks for essentially nothing before San Jose turns around and deals the winger to a divisional team in Florida, yielding a better return than what Ottawa got from the Sharks. Asset management, baby.
(Take a deep breathe.)
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August 2018— Assistant general manager Randy Lee, who had previously denied any wrongdoing, eventually steps down due to the sexual harassment allegations levied against him.
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September 2018— Dealing from a position of self-induced weakness, the Senators put an end the Erik Karlsson saga by flipping arguably the best player in franchise history to the Sharks for, well, not a great return.
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September 2018— The team releases that weird Mark Borowiecki-Eugene Melnyk "hype" video which did anything but get anyone hyped for the team's future.
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November 2018— The Ottawa Citizen publishes a wild article linking fake Twitter "bot" accounts, which were defending Melnyk while attacking the city's media outlets for their treatment of the team, to the owner and organization.
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November 2018— The now infamous "Uber video," which (illegally) captures six prominent Sens players and prospects talking trash about their team's coaching staff and other facets of the organization, is leaked and goes viral .
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February 2019— The club is unable to come to terms with any of its star UFA's and are forced to trade away Duchene and Mark Stone. The team was able to yield high-end prospect Erik Brannstrom from Vegas in return for Stone.
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March 2019— GM Pierre Dorion gets torched once again for telling players he doesn't want "any more excuses" for their slumping play, despite the fact that he literally traded all the team's good players away.
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March 2019— Plans to revive LeBreton Flats in Ottawa with a new downtown arena for the Senators officially fall apart after Melnyk and Trinity Development's John Ruddy launch lawsuits against each other totalling billions of dollars.
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April 2019— Senators finish last in the NHL, earning the best odds at landing the No. 1 overall pick. Whatever selection the Sens get will go to Colorado.
Okay, I think that's all of it. If I did miss anything, feel free not to tell me because this was already hard enough on my soul.
There's hope amongst the hell
Somewhat mitigating the losses of Karlsson, Stone and a first-round pick set to return a possible generational player are the kids in the pipeline.
Starting with the emergence of Thomas Chabot, who at 21 began rounding into an elite NHL defenseman in just his second season. The potential future captain of the Sens filled the void left by Karlsson as much as one could expect, posting 14 goals and 55 points while logging a heavy 24-plus minutes per gam, tops among all Ottawa skaters. He finished in the top 10 among NHL blue-liners in goals, points and points-per-game, and was 15th in TOI.
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The blow of potentially missing out on Jack Hughes or Kaapo Kakko in this year's draft will be softened substantially by the play of rookie Brady Tkachuk, who the Senators chose to draft in 2018 instead of keeping their 2019 first-rounder and passing last year's pick to Colorado.
Tkachuk, for all intents and purposes, blew the expectations set for him coming into his freshman campaign right out of the water, putting up 22 tucks and 43 points while providing some much-needed youthful exuberance to an organization that needs it more than any other.
The 19-year-old is a likely Calder Trophy nominee after finishing behind Canucks star Elias Pettersson in rookie scoring.
Brady Tkachuk has been a revelation in Ottawa earlier than expected, on and off the ice. (Getty)
Add Brady to a group of forward prospects that features several other potential NHL regulars — Colin White, Drake Batherson, Alex Formenton and Logan Brown — and the team has a nice little start on building its future Top 9.
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And then there's Erik Brannstrom, who the team acquired in exchange for Mark Stone at the trade deadline. Despite his ugly track record, the fact that Dorion was able to snag such a high-end defensive prospect while dealing from the position he was in should be commended (though he was a main reason for the team being in that position in the first place).
Brannstrom immediately jumps up near the top of Ottawa's defensive depth chart, and him and Chabot should make a formidable 1-2 tandem for the next decade-plus. That is, if this management group is capable of convincing them to stay long-term, which is something the Sens' brass hasn't done all that well with its other stars.
And therein lies the the main question: despite the decent pieces in place, can the dudes steering this ship avoid driving this franchise further into the ground than it already has? Is Dorion (through Melnyk) the right guy to handle the hiring of a new head coach and team president while managing the team's cap space, player assets, drafting and prospect development?
According to Dorion himself, of course he is! Asked at his year-end press conference about the direction of the team rebuild, Doirion wasn't short on confidence.
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"Next year we need to start contending for the playoffs, two years from now we need to be a playoff team."
At the very least, Sens fans may be able to find some solace in those words. Faith behind the man saying them, however, is a much different story.
And then there's Melnyk.
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