REBUILDING PROCESS NEVER EASY
Senators showing improvements recently, even if wins are still few and far between
When the losses start piling up, how do you adequately measure the effectiveness of a rebuilding effort?
After dropping two of three on the most recent venture away from home, including being suffocated in a 4-1 loss to the
New York Islanders in Brooklyn on Tuesday, the Senators have had 10 losses in 14 outings before meeting the Los Angeles Kings on Thursday at Canadian Tire Centre.
That’s not good, but it shouldn’t be surprising, either.
If and when the Senators finally do turn the corner, joining the Islanders and Boston Bruins of the world in being able to wear down opponents, most of the current crew in the dressing room will be long gone, replaced by the next wave of speed and youth.
The future isn’t going to feature a fourth line with Mikkel Boedker and Bobby Ryan on the wings. The defence likely won’t include current veteran mentors such as Mark Borowiecki and Ron Hainsey. And goaltender Craig Anderson could very well be retired in Florida by the time the Senators join the NHL’s elite squads.
For now, it’s all about building the foundations for long-term success with the group that is here, a group learning coach D.J. Smith’s system on the fly.
Losing stinks, but here’s a nugget of optimism: The past three-game trip, including Monday’s 6-2 win over the New York Rangers and Saturday’s
5-2 loss to Boston, was a marked improvement from the previous three-game stretch away from home, when the Senators were pretty much run over by the Vegas Golden Knights, Arizona Coyotes and Dallas Stars.
Against the Bruins, Rangers and Islanders, they had some bright moments and only fell apart in selected stretches.
“It’s not just the road trip, but we are playing much better,” Hainsey said after the loss to the Islanders.
Hainsey says the signs of improvement were evident in the 5-2 win over the San Jose Sharks that concluded the past homestand.
“We came out and competed well in Boston, competed well (against the Rangers) and competed well (against the Islanders).
“The team play ... and you can now see the players instinctually going to the places where they are supposed to go. There’s much less thinking than there was the first week and a half, two weeks of the season.
“If you’re out there thinking, it’s very, very difficult when the other team is humming along. We have continued to improve.”
Indeed, the Islanders are rolling, riding a 10-game winning streak. It’s not hard to see the influences of general manager Lou Lamoriello and coach Barry Trotz on a structure that Anderson describes as “death by patience.”
It’s not pretty, but it’s effective, serving as a handy operating manual for the Senators to follow, and quite similar to the message the Bruins delivered a few days earlier.
“We seem to have this conversation a lot, about playing 40 minutes or 50 minutes of great hockey,” Anderson said. “We’re growing in the right direction.”
But they’ve got a ways to go to find the 60-minute solution.
The bonus for Smith is he has time to put the house in order.
It’s hard not to look ahead at a potential future that could see winger Brady Tkachuk regularly playing with currently injured centre Logan Brown or one of the top selections in the 2020 draft — maybe Maxime Lafreniere or Quinton Byfield?
Where might Thomas Chabot be in a few years, after continuing to fine-tune his defensive game with experience?
It’s all a test of patience for players, as well as Senators fans.
On that front, Senators associate coach Jack Capuano, whose chief responsibility is handling the club’s defencemen, can’t help but compare the current state of the team to the former state of the Islanders.
Capuano was head coach of the Islanders from 2010-17, when a similar process was in place.
“This reminds me a lot of the Islanders,” Capuano said. “I like the rebuild. I like the teaching process. I like what D.J. has to say and we’ve got to be patient with where we are now. I like the team we have now and like the depth of the organization.”
It helps that Capuano has a talent like Chabot to work with.
“He’s going to make his mistakes, but we can’t take away his offensive abilities,” Capuano said of Chabot, who has one goal and eight assists in 14 games, but has also had his share of defensive breakdowns.
“We’ve been working with him on his gap (the room given to opposition forwards as they break out), his stick positioning and his angling. We’re not giving him 10 things, but he’s very coachable. There’s a lot of positivity with him right now.”
Naturally, Chabot wasn’t happy with allowing the Islanders to pull away in the latter stages Tuesday — he was on the power play for the back-breaking short-handed goal midway through the third period — but he also recognizes what their success is all about.
It’s about patience. kwarren@postmedia.com Twitter.com/Citizenkwarren