Quoting: Claesson4Norris
The defense this year has been drastically worse than last year and it's not close. The same basic roster, but outside of the big two they all got even worse
We won't agree that. I have been following and watching the NHL hardcore for 30 years and I have rarely seen team defense being as bad as the Sens were for the first 30 games last season (maybe the 95 Sharks the last time?). The amount of time and space they were constantly giving up is not something you usually see at that level.
Numbers tend to say the same
Jan 13th to Feb 1st : 4.80 GA/GP (second worst was the Sharks with 3.88 GA/GP)
Feb 2nd to March 14th : 3.64 GA/GP (second worst was the Predators with 3.60 GA/GP)
March 15th to end of season : 2.60 GA/GP (10th OA in the league)
Did you know that Artem Zub only started playing in the 9th game? Brannstrom also only integrated the lineup in the 11th game
It's after these two finally started playing that we saw improvement from the back end. The likes of Coburn, Gudbranson and Josh Brown stopped playing every game and/or played less. Mike Reilly settled in after being completely horrible. Zub and Brannstrom brought puck movement and were able to play defense unlike some of the guys named above.
I won't go deeper than that as it would take too much time but there was also a lot of changes within the forward group. Then they moved Paquette and Galchenyuk to get Dzingel, etc. Then Formenton (20 GP) and Pinto (12 GP) later on. The roster constantly improved throughout the year but was TERRIBLE at the beginning.
This below is the worst GA/GP since the 90's. Sens last season had a start that was as worse as these terrible 90's team where scoring was much higher than today. Good thing they had a very good second half because if not, they would have finished high on that list... They had 4.03 GA/GP through 30 games, which would be 9th here... lol
http://www.nhl.com/stats/teams?aggregate=0&reportType=season&seasonFrom=19911992&seasonTo=20212022&gameType=2&filter=gamesPlayed,gte,1&sort=goalsAgainstPerGame&page=0&pageSize=50
Finally, maybe you need to watch some highlights, here's last season schedule :
https://www.espn.com/nhl/team/schedule/_/name/ott/season/2021
And you can find condensed highlights in there (click on select date to go in the past) :
https://www.dtmts.com/