Could Senators pull off Vegas miracle this year?

When Matt Duchene told reporters on Tuesday not to sleep on the Ottawa Senators, who he predicted “can be a lot better hockey team than people are giving us credit for,” it sounded like the kind of lip service you give to a beleaguered fan base that has been kicked far too many times when it has been down.

Playoffs? C’mon, get real. Based on how poorly the summer’s gone for them, the Senators will be lucky to win 20 games.

Then again, Duchene speaks from some unfortunate experience. It was about a year ago when so-called hockey experts were predicting the Avalanche would finish dead last after he was traded from Colorado to Ottawa in November for a package of prospects and picks.

Then the unimaginable happened. Ottawa, which also gave up Kyle Turris to Nashville in the three-team trade, went tumbling down the NHL standings and finished with just 28 wins. Meanwhile, a Colorado team that had the worst record a year earlier went on a roll and grabbed a wild-card spot.

Of course, it wasn’t just Colorado and Ottawa that the so-called experts got wrong.

While New Jersey went from finishing last in the East in 2016-17 to making the playoffs, an Edmonton team led by Art Ross Trophy winner Connor McDavid missed the post-season. The Stars also failed to qualify despite adding high-priced free agents such as goalie Ben Bishop and winger Alexander Radulov.

Instead, it was Vegas that famously went to the Stanley Cup final with an expansion roster of castoffs that the team termed “golden misfits.” And it was the Capitals who won a championship in part thanks to the offensive contributions of Devante Smith-Pelly, who ended up scoring seven playoff goals (fourth most on the team) only after getting bought out of his contract in New Jersey and signing for the league minimum in Washington.

It’s another way of saying we might want to hold off on proclaiming that the Toronto Maple Leafs won the summer just because they won the John Tavares bidding war. For all we know, the best move of the offseason might have been Edmonton signing Scottie Upshall to a professional tryout or Vancouver replacing the Sedin twins with fourth-liners Jay Beagle and Antoine Roussel.

This isn’t the NBA. You can’t buy a championship or win on star talent alone. If you could, Tampa Bay would have won a Cup after acquiring Ryan McDonagh and J.T. Miller at the deadline. And all five of the top earners (McDavid, Tavares, Patrick Kane, Jonathan Toews and Carey Price) wouldn’t have been on non-playoff teams last season.

So maybe Duchene is onto something.

From here, it sure looks like the Senators were the losers of the summer. With a week to go until training camp begins, it’s hard to argue they didn’t have one of the worst off-seasons in NHL history.

Not only did they trade away Mike Hoffman, who scored 22 goals last season, they lost assistant general manager Randy Lee after an embarrassing off-ice incident. But after months of rumours and trade speculation, they appear to be entering the season with disgruntled captain Erik Karlsson and high-priced winger Bobby Ryan still on the roster.

Considering both players probably expected to be gone at last season’s trade deadline, the idea Karlsson and Ryan could be back has the potential to make this season even worse. That is if it doesn’t have the opposite effect.

If Vegas taught us anything, it’s that a team with its back against the wall can be pretty dangerous. Especially if the team has players who are properly motivated. One way to do that is by having players on expiring contracts.

That’s what happened with the Golden Knights, where nearly every player had a career year and several were justly rewarded with a new contract this summer. William Karlsson, who came out of nowhere and scored 43 goals, signed a one-year extension worth US$5.25 million. Jonathan Marchessault (six years, $30 million) had 75 points, Colin Miller (four years, $15.5 million) led the defence with 41 points and goalie Marc-Andre Fleury signed a three-year contract extension worth an average of $7 million a year after posting very good numbers.

If the Senators can adopt a similar psyche (the “Parliamentary Passovers?”) then perhaps they can achieve similar results.

After all, with no first-round pick coming their way in 2019, the team certainly has something to prove, both as a collective and individually.

Duchene, who is five years removed from a 70-point season, is in the final year of his contract. So are Karlsson, Mark Stone, Cody Ceci, Chris Wideman, Ryan Dzingel, Tom Pyatt, Magnus Paajarvi, Max McCormick and rookie Colin White. And that’s not taking into account that the team will have the energy of fourth-overall pick Brady Tkachuk — and potentially youngsters Logan Brown, Alex Formenton and Drake Batherson — in the lineup.

A playoff spot — never mind an appearance in the conference final — still sounds crazy. But is it crazier than predicting Vegas would have made the Stanley Cup final?