Quoting: A_Habs_fan
How about because their D and Goaltending kinda sucks and that 2022 1st will be good
Not sure where this narrative that the Sens goaltending sucks comes from
Is it because of their putrid numbers from the start of last season? First, Marcus Hogberg and Joey Daccord are both gone. Second, it's simply because the defense to start the year was NOT NHL LEVEL
Management and coaching made several mistakes (and later DJ even admitted it). For example, it took game #10 before inserting Artem Zub who was easily the Sens 2nd best D-man last season.
There's also these 3 facts :
- Sens weren't among the 24 "playoffs teams in 2020" so they didn't play for 10+ months (covid)
- Since they are rebuilding, they had a 50% roster turnover, once again
- No preseason, couldn't test any system against real NHL competition
So based on these factors and personnel mistakes made, it took a while to implement a proper system with competent NHL players. Here's the goalies SV% since March 15th :
Matt Murray (5 GP) : 3-1-0, .954 SV%
Filip Gustavsson (10 GP) : 6-1-2, .934 SV%
Anton Forsberg (10 GP) : 4-5-1, .915 SV%
If anything, Sens goaltending has been elite in the last 25 games of these remaining 3 goalies, and the defense is still far from ideal. Jake Sanderson will make an impact right away but there's also Bernard-Docker and Kleven who also will in a not too distant future
Agreed that the defense sucks until then though because there's currently no #2 and #4 IMO (Chabot is a #1, Zub is a #3 again IMO)
Nikita Zaitsev is ideally a #5
Nick Holden, Victor Mete, Michael Del Zotto are #6
Josh Brown is a #7-8 at best
Erik Brannstrom is still young and developing but IMO will get eventually traded as he doesn't fit the team and LD is stacked (Chabot, Sanderson, Kleven)