2023-24 season: 37-41-4 7th in Atlantic Division, 14th in Eastern Conference, and 26th in the league.
The Senators started the season by ending an era that had yielded a lot of success but had also gone sideways the last few years. After Eugene Melnyk died in 2022, he left his estate to his 2 daughters, and that included the Ottawa Senators. The speculation that they would be sold didn't go away though, and longtime Montreal Canadiens minority owner Michael Andlauer bought a majority stake in the team with his business partners. He is known as a longtime Montreal Canadiens fan, so the move was a surprise to me, but he sold his minority stake in the Canadiens before the sale went through.
As lucky as Ottawa was to temporarily escape off-ice problems with Andlauer's 950 million dollar buy, it appears as if they are being run out of the league. Shane Pinto was suspended 41 games for having been connected with a 3rd party proxy bettor, but the NHL did not clearly state why he was suspended. The cruel irony of what happened to Pinto is that he played much of this season with a BET99 ad on his helmet, and the details around his contract breach as it related to gambling rules was far too ambiguous to warrant the suspension it got. They also will be losing a 1st round pick in 2025 or 2026 because when they traded Evgenii Dadonov to the Vegas Golden Knights, they failed to provide his no-trade list to the Golden Knights. They did deserve to be punished for that, but at the same time, when Chicago was found guilty of covering up Brad Aldrich's sexual assault against Kyle Beach, they actually got rewarded in a way by Stan Bowman being forced out of the league and the Florida Panthers got punished by Joel Quenneville's firing, and they got to keep all of their draft picks, and even got the 2023 1st overall choice. This is a serious problem in the league that I will dive deeper into at another time, but as it is, the league is clear on their stance that they view the Blackhawks as an institution and every other team but the Rangers as an expendable tool.
In my opinion, this season for the Senators is better remembered for what happened off the ice rather than on it, as the on-ice product was far from perfect, and the off-ice rumor mill and the happenings were far too big to be ignored. This year will be less eventful, but the team got worse in my opinion. D.J. Smith being fired was good for the team given that his replacement was Jacques Martin, but they went out and hired all the wrong people in the offseason. I say this knowing that they hired a lot of ex-Canucks coaches to coach the team, and all of them were from Vancouver's dark days or were setbacks to the team. Travis Green will not be able to coach a team with a terrible D-core like the one handed to him in Vancouver by Jim Benning. Nolan Baumgartner wasn't known for getting the best out of Vancouver's defensemen either, and Mike Yeo has never been the reason for any of his team's successes. As a former resident of Ottawa it's tough seeing how far the Senators have fallen, but I think they will fall further.
My prediction for this season is that they will finish with a record of 27-50-5, 8th in the Atlantic Division, 15th in the Eastern Conference, and 29th in the league. And with that, there are all 4 of the last place teams for each division.
They made a emoji just for this writing 💩