Hopes are high in the nation’s capital that the Ottawa Senators will take the next step toward becoming a legitimate contender for the Stanley Cup. Nobody in Bytown believes the Senators will hoist the Cup next spring, but just making the playoffs as they did last season won’t be good enough this time out. As head coach Travis Green put it on the opening day of training camp on Sept. 17, “We’re here not just to make the playoffs. We’re here to do a lot more than that.”
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What exactly that means, neither Green nor president of hockey operations and general manager (GM) Steve Staios would say. Yet if they are to do more than just make the playoffs only to exit in the first round as they did last season, the Senators face a number of burning questions. Here are six of them.
Can the Senators Fix Their Goal Scoring Problem?
One of the biggest questions the Senators face is whether they can solve their scoring problem. Last season, they ranked 19th in the league in total goals scored. Worse than that, they finished 31st in the NHL in five-on-five goals. What’s more, nobody on their roster cracked the league’s list of top 20 goal-scorers.
Some argue that Staios needs to go into the market and get a top-six forward who can turn goal lamps red. An offensive blueliner wouldn’t hurt either. It’s unlikely that’s doable for Staios given what little he has to work with in cap space ($3.5 million). So, the easiest way to turn around his team’s offence is to see its offensive stars living up to the hype that surrounds them.
Can Tim Stutzle Record At Least 100 Points?
One of those stars falling short of his hype is Stutzle. For the Senators to take the next step and deliver a playoff run next spring, they’ll need the young German to start breaking into the league’s 100-point club. In 2022-23, he marked up the scoresheet for 90 points. He hasn’t matched that since.
Make no mistake, recording 100 points today in the NHL is no easy task – only six players managed it last season. Yet if he could hit 100, Stutzle would cement his reputation as a superstar.
It’s hard to argue that his 79 points last season over 82 games were a disappointment. Yet many believe he has a lot more to offer. If he delivers, it will go a long way toward solving the Senators’ goal-scoring problem.
This season, the ingredients are there for Stutzle to bust through the 100-point threshold, assuming he stays healthy (wrist and shoulder injuries have plagued him the last few years). The top centre spot is now his, and there are plenty of options for Green to consider when choosing linemates who’ll bring out his full scoring potential.
Can Brady Tkachuk Find His Mojo?
Tkachuk is another of the Senators’ young guns who has fallen short of expectations when it comes to scoring. He notched just 29 goals and 55 points last season. That was only good enough for a ranking of 50th in the league. What’s more, it represents his third consecutive season of declining point production per game. It’s a long way from the career best 83 points he recorded in 2022-23. And it’s not good enough.
Who Green selects to play with Tkachuk could help him turn his point production around. One of the more interesting combinations would be Tkachuk on Stutzle’s left side with Fabian Zetterlund on the right. It’s not out of the question that the line could notch 230 points or more, making them one of the most dangerous offensive threats in the NHL.
After all, it’s a reasonable expectation that Tkachuk could deliver north of 80 points this season – his career best was 83 in 2022-23. Zetterlund was on track to notch 50 points with the San Jose Sharks before being traded to the Senators at the trade deadline last March. With Stutzle at 100 points, the Senators would then have a line equal to the Toronto Maple Leafs’ top trio last season of Matthew Knies, Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner. Together, that line registered 238 points in the regular season.
Can Zetterlund Meet Expectations?
It’s not all up to Stutzle and Tkachuk to jack up the Senators’ point total. They’ll need help, and a big question is whether trade deadline acquisition Zetterlund can contribute meaningful numbers to Ottawa’s point tally.
Zetterlund would be a breakout star if he could return to what he was with the Sharks. With them, he put up 24 goals and 20 assists in 2023-24. Last season, he was on track to put up even better numbers. Then the Senators happened to him. In his 20 games skating in a Senators sweater, he managed just three goals and two assists. He went pointless in the playoffs.
Despite this, Staios and company believe in him, signing the 25-year-old Swede this summer to a three-year contract extension at $4.275 million per year. That’s more than Shane Pinto is earning ($3.75 million annually) and in the same ballpark as Drake Batherson’s $4.975 million per year contract. Fans will be watching closely to see if he’s worth this kind of money.
Can the Senators Get a Good Start?
In the last few seasons, the Senators played themselves out of playoff contention by November. They almost did it to themselves last season, going 8-12-1 in their first 20 games for a dismal points percentage (PTS%) of .425.
No pretender to one of three guaranteed playoff spots in the Atlantic Division can afford to get off to a poor start. For the Senators, it would mean another season spent digging themselves out of a hole, hoping they can squeak into the playoffs through a wild card spot.
How Solid Is the Senators’ Goaltending?
It looks like Leevi Merilainen will be Linus Ullmark’s understudy this season. So, the question for Senators fans is whether Merilainen is the real McCoy. It’s true that the 22-year-old netminding phenom’s stats last season put him alongside or slightly better than the likes of 2025 Vezina Trophy winner Connor Hellebuyck, two-time Vezina winner and back-to-back Stanley Cup champion Sergei Bobrovsky and the great Andrei Vasilevskiy of the Tampa Bay Lightning. Even so, 12 games do not an NHL career make. Whether he was a flash in the pan last season is something yet to be determined.
Even so, some fans will take comfort in his play in the American Hockey League (AHL) with the baby Senators. Over 37 games in Belleville last season, he recorded a save percentage (SV%) of .913 and a goals-against average (GAA) of 2.37. Yet the bridge from the AHL to the NHL is a long one, and for many, it sometimes proves too far.
It seems certain that Bytown fans will see the test of Merilainen’s mettle this season. Ullmark has never played more than 49 games. He is also injury prone, missing 22 games last season – 18 due to a back injury from late Dec. to early Feb. and four in Oct. for undisclosed reasons. So, whether Merilainen and the real McCoy are one and the same will reveal itself over the more than 30 games he’s likely to be between the pipes.
Burning Questions on Senators’ 2025-26 Season Are Many
In just over two weeks, the Senators’ season gets underway. Burning questions about the club are plentiful and, in addition to those discussed above, include line combinations, signing pending restricted free agents and whether rookie blueliner Carter Yakemchuk can crack the lineup.
How the Senators answer these questions will decide whether they meet Green’s expectation of his team doing more than simply making the playoffs this season.
