Senators Playoff Preview: What to Expect From the Hurricanes

It’s official, folks, the Ottawa Senators will be taking on the Carolina Hurricanes in the first round of the playoffs. That puts the Senators in the Metropolitan part of the bracket for the first two rounds, along with the Pittsburgh Penguins and Philadelphia Flyers. They are the second wild card team, putting them eighth place in the East playoff picture. This will be the Senators first playoff matchup against the Hurricanes in team history. So, what can we expect from this matchup? Let’s dive into the details.

READ MORE: The Rise of the Senators and the Fall of the Red Wings

Hurricanes Past Playoff Success

The Hurricanes have made the playoffs eight years in a row. Here are their first round results over the last seven years:

• 2019: Beat the Capitals, 4-3
• 2020: Beat the Rangers in qualifying round, 3-0 (then lost to the Bruins in the official first round, 4-1)
• 2021: Beat the Predators, 4-2
• 2022: Beat the Bruins, 4-3
• 2023: Beat the Islanders, 4-2
• 2024: Beat the Islanders, 4-1
• 2025: Beat the Devils, 4-1

The Hurricanes have surpassed 110 points in four of the last five seasons. That likely would’ve been five out of six years, except 2021 was a 56 game season (they were the top team in their division with 80 points). They have made three Conference Finals during that time. Essentially, they are a well-oiled machine. Effort is never an issue. They are as consistent a hockey team as you’ll find in the league. Their issue has mainly been a lack of star power. Time and time again, they lose to a team whose stars outperform the Hurricanes best players. In last year’s Conference Finals against the Panthers, they were outscored 21-10 in the five game series.

Hurricanes Players to Watch

Here are the guys to look out on the Hurricanes:

• Sebastian Aho is Mr. Consistency. He scored 80 points in 79 games this season. He puts up numbers like this every year.
• Andrei Svechnikov is scary when he’s on his game, but he’s not nearly as consistent. He scored 31 goals and 70 points this year. He started the year pointless in his first nine games.
• Seth Jarvis is good enough to be a Team Canada member. He scored a team high 32 goals this year. He scored the same amount last year. The year before? 33. His point total in those three years: 67, 67, 66. Clearly another consistent player.
• Nikolaj Ehlers is the new guy, in his first season with the Canes after a decade with the Jets. He was every bit as good as they could’ve hoped, scoring a career high 71 points
• Shayne Gostisbehere is their best offensive defensemen. He scored 50 points in 55 games this year. His 0.91 points per game was ninth among d-men.
• Jaccob Slavin is their shut down d-man. He helped USA win gold at the Olympics this winter. He played just 39 games this season due to injury.

In going through their stats, what’s clear is how deep this Hurricanes team is. I limited it to six players above, but there are so many more that need to be mentioned. Jackson Blake, Logan Stankoven and captain Jordan Staal all scored 20+ goals. Taylor Hall scored nearly 50 points. K’Andre Miller, Alexander Nikishin, and Sean Walker help create a deep blueline.

The weakness, outside of having no true superstar? The goaltending is a big question mark. Brandon Bussi won 31 games this season but he’s struggled lately with an .872 SV% since the beginning of February. Veteran Frederik Andersen has an .874 SV% in 35 games this season. Their third goalie, Pyotr Kochetkov, played just nine games this season due to a hip injury.

Senators & Hurricanes, by the Numbers

Let’s take a look at where the two teams rank in key catergories over the course of the season:

I once again am here to say that the Carolina Hurricanes are a well-oiled machine. They are a high level team, every which way. In fact, in watching them play, it’s obvious that Travis Green has tried to emulate their style with this Senators team. The Hurricanes dominate the shot battle almost every game, by an average of 32.2 to 23.9. The Senators are great in their own right, with an average of 28.9 to 24.4.

The Senators obvious weakness is their penalty kill. That might be a problem of the past, though. On January 24th, they made the change to Mike Yeo leading their penalty kill. Since then, they have an 83.1% success rate, the fifth best mark during that time.

Also interesting to note, in the three meetings this season, the Senators were able to win the shot battle all three times (37-19, 27-19, 31-28). Unfortunately, they only won one of the three games.

One area that the Hurricanes don’t stuff the stat sheet is hits. They averaged 19.63 per 60 minutes this season, good for 18th in the NHL. The Senators were third, at 23.59. The Hurricanes often try to steal the puck instead. Their 470 takeaways rank first in the NHL. That will be something to watch as the Senators pride themselves in winning the puck battles. They ranked fourth with 413 takeaways this season.

Final Thoughts

This is supposed to be a one versus eight matchup in the Eastern Conference. This is actually a battle between the second and ninth best teams in the NHL this season. If we look at the standing starting on January 25th, here is how well these teams have played:

• Ottawa Senators: 21-6-4, .742 point percentage (tied second best in the NHL)
• Carolina Hurricanes: 21-7-2, .733 point percentage (fourth best in the NHL)

With even average goaltending, the Senators would be higher in the standings, meaning the matchup would never happen in the first round. Instead, the Senators went through 50 games with horrible goaltending, leaving them as the second wild card team. That makes this a heavyweight first round matchup against two of the best shot suppression teams in the league, who both have tremendous depth and can score plenty of goals, too.

The Hurricanes deserve to be favoured, but the Senators are playing fantastic hockey right now. This series starts Saturday in Carolina. Here’s one last stat to end this article: Including the 2020 preliminary round,the Hurricanes have game one of their first playoff series in six straight years.

By Danny McCloskey

Danny was born and raised in Ottawa, and continues to live in the city today. He has followed the ... More about Danny McCloskey