Senators storybook season continues
Exactly one year before the Ottawa Senators qualified for their first Eastern Conference final in a decade, general manager Pierre Dorion introduced Guy Boucher as the new head coach and made a surprise declaration along the way.
“One day I hope to write a book: Keys to winning in the NHL,” said Dorion on May 9, 2016. “Talent is one. Two is very good goaltending. And the third, and one of the most important is great coaching. I now feel we have all those elements in place.”
Dorion may just write have to write that storybook on the 2016-17 season – the conclusion of which is still to be determined following Ottawa’s first entry into the conference final since 2007.
Almost everything has broken right for the Senators this year, from awesome displays of talent by Erik Karlsson to terrific goaltending to Boucher’s designs taking shape. Even beyond that, there are depth additions and the surprising late season return of Clarke MacArthur.
“This is the year we’ve got to put our foot forward,” MacArthur said on the first day of training camp. “I know I get used to saying that every year, but this is the year – damn it!”
Ottawa is not the most talented team in the conference or even close to it, but they have, perhaps outside of Sidney Crosby, the most talented player in Karlsson, a steal in the 2008 draft as the seventh defender and 15th player taken (for perspective, Colten Teubert was taken two spots higher by Los Angeles).
The NHL has seen only 16 seasons of 70-plus points from a defenceman over the last 20 years and Karlsson has four of them – equal to Nicklas Lidstrom for most in that group. But it was evolution beyond goals and assists that rose the 26-year-old’s stock even higher this season.
“With what he’s done this year, the way he’s done it, I can’t imagine better,” Boucher said in mid-March.
Karlsson most notably emerged as the second-best shot blocker in the NHL, a telling embrace of Boucher’s “extremely defensive” ways. But equally helpful to Ottawa’s cause was Karlsson’s increased role and tremendous effect on the penalty kill, which rose from 29th last year to 22nd this year.
He was brilliant through the first two playoff rounds, racking up 13 points in 12 games.
The Sens as a whole made solid leaps as a defensive entity under Boucher, slicing off 31 goals and nearly three shots per-game during the regular season.
Boucher was fired less than three seasons into his first NHL coaching stop with Tampa. He tried and seemed to succeed in taking on a less-is-more approach with Ottawa.
“People ask me what I’m doing differently (from) Tampa. On the ice: nothing,” Boucher said at one point. “It’s not about hockey.”