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Seravalli: John Gruden Is Potential Senators Head Coach Candidate

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The Senators are at an uncertain precipice in their years-long rebuild. As their new core of Brady Tkachuk, Tim Stützle, Thomas Chabot, Jakob Chychrun, and Jake Sanderson enters their primes, the team is no closer to securing their first playoff berth since losing in the 2017 Eastern Conference Final. That led new owner Michael Andlauer to clean house over the past few months, firing longtime general manager Pierre Dorion in November and head coach D.J. Smith earlier this week. 71-year-old Jacques Martin, the Senators’ all-time leader in games coached, took over as interim, but it’s unlikely the Senators are comfortable with him as the long-term solution behind the bench. He’s been out of coaching roles for almost three seasons and only recently re-joined the Senators in a senior advisor role earlier this month.

Smith was the fourth coach fired this season, but the Senators and the Blues are the only teams not to name a permanent successor immediately. Drew Bannister holds the interim title in St. Louis after the team fired 2019 Stanley Cup champion coach Craig Berube earlier this month. That leaves the Senators on the prowl for a permanent bench boss. Daily Faceoff’s Frank Seravalli named an intriguing candidate at number one on his list of targets: John Gruden, head coach of the AHL’s Toronto Marlies.

Some may cringe at the thought of the Senators going with a second straight first-time head coach behind the bench, but it’s a logical fit given Michael Andlauer’s modus operandi since assuming ownership. Andlauer and interim general manager Steve Staios oversaw Gruden’s tenure as head coach of the OHL’s Hamilton Bulldogs from 2016 to 2018, culminating in a league championship. Unlike Martin, Gruden has worked in NHL roles since departing the Bulldogs, serving as an assistant coach for the Islanders from 2018 to 2022 before joining the Bruins as an assistant on Jim Montgomery’s staff for last year’s record-breaking season. This year, he has the Maple Leafs’ primary minor-league affiliate rolling with a 13-7-4 record, third in the AHL’s North Division.

Behind Gruden on Seravalli’s list are two coaches looking for a new home after being fired earlier this season: former Oilers bench boss Jay Woodcroft and former Wild coach Dean Evason. Longtime NHL coach Claude Julien, who Seravalli reports is “eager to get back on the bench,” earned a fourth-place mention, while former Senators center and current Bruins assistant coach Chris Kelly rounds out his top five.

Vladimir Tarasenko Returns From Personal Leave

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  • After missing the last two games due to personal reasons, the Ottawa Senators should be welcoming back forward Vladimir Tarasenko tomorrow night as they take on the Arizona Coyotes (X Link). With some massive changes taking place in Ottawa over the last 24 hours, Tarasenko will look to improve on his already impressive start with the Senators, now in front of interim head coach, Jacques Martin.

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Senators Fire D.J. Smith, Name Jacques Martin Interim Head Coach

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The Ottawa Senators relieved head coach D.J. Smith of his duties Monday, per a team announcement. Jacques Martin will take over as the team’s interim head coach, while longtime Senators winger Daniel Alfredsson will step into an assistant coaching role on Martin’s staff. Assistant coach Davis Payne was also relieved of his duties.

The news is far from unexpected after an 11-15-0 start to the season put Ottawa on track to miss the playoffs for the seventh straight season. After beating the division rival Red Wings 5-1 on December 9, the Senators dropped four consecutive games, all in regulation, and allowed at least four goals in all those losses.

While the team has received below-average goaltending from their tandem of Joonas Korpisalo and Anton Forsberg, their possession numbers don’t suggest they should be in the playoff picture, either. The team has controlled under 50% of Corsi events, scoring chances, and high-danger chances at five-on-five – disappointing metrics for a team with a supposedly reformed top-six forward group and top-six defense core set to take them to the postseason.

However, those at the top of the lineup aren’t to blame for the Senators’ struggles. Perhaps no team in the league has had a more prominent dichotomy between the performance of their stars and the performance of their depth players this season than the Senators, who have received spectacular two-way play from players like Brady Tkachuk, Tim Stützle, Thomas Chabot (when healthy), Joshua Norris, Jake Sanderson, and Artem Zub. However, nearly all their depth skaters have been significant liabilities, and their overall defensive structure has been prone to visible, unforgivable lapses in their own zone.

So ends a disappointing tenure for Smith, who ends his first NHL head-coaching role after parts of five seasons and 317 games behind the Ottawa bench. That made him one of the longest-tenured bench bosses in the league before today’s news.

Ottawa brought on Smith in 2019 after parting ways with Guy Boucher just two seasons after the latter led them to double overtime in Game 7 of the 2017 Eastern Conference Final against the eventual Stanley Cup champion Pittsburgh Penguins. While some of his tenure was during a designed rebuild, Smith’s record isn’t pretty – 131-154-32, or a .464 points percentage, never guiding the Senators to a division finish higher than sixth place. Despite investing in acquiring talent over the past few summers, the team hasn’t shown any signs of life of becoming a playoff contender under Smith.

The 46-year-old had spent four seasons as an assistant coach for the Maple Leafs before taking the job in Ottawa. It seems likely an assistant role is what’s next for Smith if he wants to stay behind an NHL bench. He becomes the fourth head coach to be fired in-season, joining the Blues’ Craig Berube, the Wild’s Dean Evason, and the Oilers’ Jay Woodcroft.

Payne, 53, joined the Senators’ bench as an assistant along with Smith in 2019. Briefly the head coach of the Blues in the early 2010s, Payne lifted the Stanley Cup in 2014 while serving as an assistant with the Kings.

It’s both nostalgic and peculiar to see the Senators pivot back to Martin behind the bench, who previously served as their head coach from 1996 to 2004 and remains the franchise’s all-time leader in games coached. The 71-year-old last served behind an NHL bench in 2020-21 as an assistant with the Rangers and was last a head coach over a decade ago with the Canadiens in 2011-12. He rejoined the Senators organization earlier this month in a senior advisor role after holding the same position with the OHL’s Kingston Frontenacs since 2022.

When Martin was behind the bench last in Ottawa, its leading scorer was a 25-year-old Marián Hossa. Just behind him was Alfredsson, the franchise’s all-time leader in points, who will now work closely with his longtime bench boss to help quickly turn their season around.

The Senators are getting significant experience in Martin, who’s coached nearly 1,300 NHL games for the Senators, Canadiens, Blues, and Panthers. Throughout his nine seasons in Ottawa, Martin only missed the playoffs once in his first year behind the bench, guiding them to their first sustained period of success after they were brought into the league in the 1992-93 season.

This is the 51-year-old Alfredsson’s first chance to show what he can do behind an NHL bench. The team hired Alfredsson earlier this season as a development coach after Michael Andlauer assumed ownership of the team, marking his first time being employed by the Senators since serving as an advisor between 2015 and 2017. Ottawa’s captain from 1999 to 2013 remains their all-time leader in goals (426), assists (682) and points (1,108).

Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports.

Senators Recall Angus Crookshank From AHL’s Belleville

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The Ottawa Senators have recalled winger Angus Crookshank from the AHL’s Belleville Senators. Crookshank has appeared in 24 games for the minor league club this season, scoring a team-high 10 goals and 21 points. This performance comes after Crookshank managed 26 goals and 47 points in 71 AHL games last season, good for fourth on Belleville in scoring.

This is the first call-up of the 23-year-old Crookshank’s career, which began after Ottawa drafted the forward in the fifth round of the 2018 NHL Draft. Crookshank went on to play in three seasons with the University of New Hampshire, totaling 90 games and 63 points with the school. He turned pro following the conclusion of New Hampshire’s 2020-21 season, finishing the year with 16 points in 19 AHL games. But despite the hot start to his professional career, Crookshank was forced out of the entire 2021-22 season after undergoing surgery on his knee. He’s returned strong for the Belleville Senators, though, and earned his first shot at an NHL debut as a result.

Ottawa is currently facing a string of forward injuries, missing both Mathieu Joseph and Rourke Chartier for their Sunday game against the Vegas Golden Knights. The team is also uncertain when Vladimir Tarasenko will return, with the top scorer questionable for Sunday.

The Senators also recalled forward Jiri Smejkal in response to their list of injuries. Smejkal recently appeared in his first two career NHL games, going without a point in either contest. The 27-year-old is in his first NHL season after seven years in various top leagues across Europe. Ottawa will need to turn to an extra forward – likely Smejkal – with Rourke and Chartier out. But if Tarasenko also misses Sunday’s matchup, Crookshank could find himself primed for his first NHL game.

Senators Recall Jiri Smejkal

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Jiri Smejkal’s time in the minors was short-lived.  After being sent down on Wednesday, the team announced (Twitter link) that the forward was recalled from AHL Belleville.

The 27-year-old is in his first season in North America after spending last season with IK Oskarshamn of the SHL where he had 23 goals and 20 assists in 49 games.  The hope was that he would push for a full-time spot with Ottawa, giving them a bit of a boost to their bottom six.

However, things haven’t quite gone as planned.  He was cut in training camp and has spent the majority of the season in the minors.  Accordingly, a report surfaced last month that he could be returning to Oskarshamn but clearly, that didn’t come to fruition.

Smejkal has played in 19 games with Belleville this season, picking up three goals and six assists.  He made his NHL debut earlier this month, making two appearances with the big club, being held off the scoresheet while averaging a little under seven minutes a game.  The Sens now have a full 23-man roster with this roster move.

Senators Recall Jacob Larsson, Send Jiri Smejkal To AHL

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The Ottawa Senators have recalled defenseman Jacob Larsson from the AHL’s Belleville Senators and sent Jiri Smejkal to the minor leagues.

Smejkal made his NHL debut on Saturday and followed it up with an appearance in the team’s Tuesday game. He did not see any changes to his stat line between the two games, other than blocking two shots. The 27-year-old winger is in his first season in North American pros, after spending the last seven seasons between top leagues in Russia, Czechia, Finland, and Sweden. Smejkal spent three seasons in the WHL before moving to European pros, giving him some experience on North American ice.

Larsson will help the Senators make up for the missing Thomas Chabot, who is expected to miss the month of December with a leg injury. Larsson is a former first-round pick, being selected 27th overall by the Anaheim Ducks in the 2015 NHL Draft. But the 26-year-old defender has failed to live up to first-round expectations, recording a mere 172 career NHL games since making his debut in the 2016-17 season. Larsson’s career year came in 2019-20, when he scored a career-high 11 points in 60 games with the Ducks.

The Senators signed Larsson as an unrestricted free agent in 2022 and have kept him on one-year, league-minimum contracts ever since. Larsson has only appeared in seven NHL games with the Senators, going without a point and recording six penalty minutes. Other than that handful of games, he’s spent the last two seasons with the AHL’s Belleville Senators, combining for 21 points in 73 games and a -11.

Morning Notes: Kuzmenko, Pinto, Couture

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The Vancouver Canucks could be looking to move high-scoring winger Andrei Kuzmenko, according to The Fourth Period’s Dave Pagnotta. Pagnotta shares that the team has discussed trading him but that, “nothing is close”, citing his $5.5MM cap hit and modified-no-trade-clause as pieces that make a trade challenging.

Kuzmenko is off to a slower start to the season after scoring an electric 39 goals and 74 points in 81 games last season. It was Kuzmenko’s first year in the NHL, with Vancouver signing him out of the KHL, where he had previously played 315 career games and scored 200 points. The 27-year-old winger is now sporting just five goals and 16 points through 26 games this season, on pace for just 50 points in 82 games. Pagnotta shares that Vancouver could be looking for a talent-for-talent swap, attempting to bring in a new face to replace Kuzmenko’s role in the top-six. The left-winger has averaged roughly 16 minutes of ice time through his 107 career NHL games so far.

Other notes from around the league:

  • Shane Pinto is expected to resume training with the Ottawa Senators’ skills coaches soon, after doing much of his training at various colleges while serving his 41-game suspension. The Ottawa Sun’s Bruce Garrioch shared expects the forward to sign his qualifying offer, which would give Pinto a cap hit of $874K. Pinto is eligible to resume playing for either the Ottawa Senators or Belleville Senators on January 21st.
  • Logan Couture spoke with media for the first time in two months on Tuesday, shedding light on the lower-body injury that’s so far held him out of the season. Couture, 34, candidly shared that he had feared the injury could end his career, but that those fears are behind him after he began rehabbing the injury. He is now expecting to return soon, but the Sharks captain didn’t have a timeline yet, calling himself, “truly week-to-week”. Couture has spent his entire career with the San Jose Sharks, totaling 700 points in 927 games with the club.

Senators Recall Jiří Smejkal

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The Senators recalled forward Jiří Smejkal from AHL Belleville on Friday, a team release states. This is Smejkal’s first call-up after signing his first NHL contract with the Senators in May.

Smejkal, 27, had spent his entire professional career in Europe until this season. The hulking 6-foot-4 Czech winger does have some experience playing on North American ice, though, playing his final two seasons of junior hockey in the WHL with the Moose Jaw Warriors and Kamloops Blazers.

He’s played for a variety of European clubs after going unselected in multiple NHL drafts but didn’t really break out as an elite talent until the last two seasons. He produced over a point per game with Pelicans in the Finnish Liiga in 2021-22 and followed that up with 43 points in 49 games with the SHL’s IK Oskarshamn last season. Alongside three straight World Championship appearances with Czechia, he drew enough NHL interest to earn a one-year, two-way pact from Ottawa.

Although the GM who brought him to Canada, Pierre Dorion, is no longer with the team, new management has obviously liked what they’ve seen from Smejkal thus far in Belleville. He’s posted three goals and nine points in 17 AHL games after rumors swirled he would return to Europe after not cracking the Senators roster out of camp.

The Senators had the cap space to make this recall after placing defenseman Thomas Chabot on long-term injured reserve yesterday. He will miss at least four weeks with a leg injury.

Smejkal is now one of 13 healthy forwards on the Senators roster and could challenge to make his NHL debut tomorrow against the Red Wings. The natural winger could slot in for 27-year-old Zack MacEwen on the team’s fourth line. MacEwen has played ten games, registering one assist and averaging a paltry 4:45 per contest after signing a three-year, $2.325MM contract with Ottawa in free agency last summer.

Senators To Place Thomas Chabot On LTIR, Out “Minimum” Four Weeks With Leg Injury

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Senators defenseman Thomas Chabot is facing his second lengthy injury-related absence of the young season. He will miss a minimum of four weeks after undergoing MRIs and other tests to determine the severity of a leg injury, although surgery is not required, reports Darren Dreger of TSN. Further to Dreger’s report, Postmedia’s Bruce Garrioch confirms the Senators will place Chabot on long-term injured reserve.

Chabot, 26, has spent his entire career in the Canadian capital since Ottawa drafted him 18th overall in 2015. His growth into a top-pairing caliber defender hasn’t expedited the Senators’ post-Erik Karlsson rebuild as they had hoped, but that’s far from being Chabot’s fault. His eight-year, $64MM extension signed in 2019 has aged well, as he’s produced at a 0.62 points per game clip over the life of the deal and has averaged nearly 26 minutes per contest since the 2020-21 campaign began. He’s historically been a positive possession force on a team that’s struggled to control play and remains the most valuable all-around defenseman on the roster.

That’s why a second long-term absence for him this season is so demoralizing for a team that finally looked to be gaining traction, going 6-4-0 in their past ten games. Chabot had played just two games since returning from a right-hand fracture that kept him out for all of November. The Senators are still at the .500 mark and sit only ahead of the Buffalo Sabres in terms of points percentage in the Atlantic Division, and they remain squarely out of the playoff picture as the calendar shifts to December. MoneyPuck lists their playoff odds at 30.9% at the time of writing, though, and given how many games in hand they have on the rest of the league, they’re one hot streak away from putting themselves back in the postseason conversation.

It’ll be difficult without Chabot, however, as his absence creates a domino effect felt throughout the Senators’ blueline. Head coach D.J. Smith has attempted to alleviate this by spreading out the Sens’ three best remaining defenders – Jakob Chychrun, Jake Sanderson and Artem Zub – on three different pairings. That still means giving tougher assignments than desired to depth defenders like Jacob Bernard-Docker and Travis Hamonic, though, and managing his blueliners’ ice time will suddenly become a crucial part of Smith’s job – as long as he still has it. External pressure is mounting for the Senators to make a change behind the bench after an all-too-familiar sluggish start, but under new ownership and management, the Senators appear content to let Smith lead the way for a while longer.

Chabot has four assists in nine games on the season while averaging 24:22 per game.

Injury Updates On Thomas Chabot, Mark Kastelic

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The Senators have once again had a disappointing start to a season, sitting with a .500 record through 20 games and ranking seventh in the Atlantic Division points-percentage-wise. Things are about to get even tougher for them, as head coach D.J. Smith confirmed star defenseman Thomas Chabot will miss a second straight game tonight as he continues to undergo testing on a leg injury, with Postmedia’s Bruce Garrioch relaying the team expects him to once again be out long-term. Chabot had played two games after returning from a right-hand fracture before exiting the lineup once again.

  • In slightly more positive injury news for the Senators, Garrioch also reports that forward Mark Kastelic is continuing his recovery from an ankle injury and skated today in a non-contact jersey. Kastelic is listed as week-to-week and has missed 11 games with a high ankle sprain sustained on November 2 against the Kings. The 24-year-old remains on long-term injured reserve and is eligible to return anytime. He has no points in nine games this season and has averaged just 6:55 per game.

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