When good teams go bad

It's Saturday night, which means Hockey Night in Canada on the good ol' CBC. Tonight it's Montreal at Ottawa. The high-flying Habs have been having a wonderful season, which only sweetens this season being the Canadiens' centennial. Ottawa, on the other hand, is not so hot this season.

So what happened to the mighty Senators? This is the team that went to the Stanley Cup finals in the 2006-07 season; sure, they lost to Anaheim in five games, but they went to the final. The following season saw them finish seventh in their conference and lose round one of the playoffs in four games, to the Pittsburgh Penguins. And now, a season and a half after that stellar Cup run, the Senators are fifth of five in their division and 13th in the Eastern Conference. They are actually doing worse than the Toronto Maple Leafs! So, again, what happened???

Over on www.tsn.ca, James Duthie offers his opinion and it seems valid: the team has lost their mojo, their spark, their drive. Okay, I can buy that but what makes a team lose their confidence? Sure, losing the Stanley Cup final to a team originally founded by Disney can take you down a few pegs but this is a team that is still stacked with stellar players (Dany Heatley, Daniel Alfredsson and Jason Spezza immediately come to mind).

What do I think happened? Why, I thought you'd never ask. It all rests with the goaltending. Ray Emery led the way in net when the Sens went to the final in 06/07 but fell from grace the following season, partly due to poor on-ice performance, partly due to off-ice antics and infighting with teammates. Since then, Ottawa hasn't been able to get a solid starting goaltender. This season, Ottawa has the goaltending tandem of Alex Auld and Martin Gerber, who are both good goalies in their own rights. But they just aren't bringing that standing-on-his-head play that seems to be needed in the NHL today to make a team a contender.

Of course, having not-as-strong goaltending doesn't break a team, but it can start them on the downward spiral, resulting in the aforementioned overall loss of mojo. Where do they go from here? Like any team that finds itself on the wrong side of playoff contention, they should rebuild. This might mean a fire sale of their talent, perhaps letting go of one of the Heatley/Alfredsson/Spezza trinity and focusing more on the younger talent. This could be good (see: Pittsburgh Penguins) or it could be bad (see: Tampa Bay Lightning) but it certainly has to be better than staying on their current course because, really, no one wants to be the team that is worse than the Leafs.