This is getting ridiculous.
Just when the Ottawa Senators have clawed their way back within striking distance of a playoff spot, injuries have completely ravaged their blue line.
Already down three defensemen due to injury (Jake Sanderson, Nick Jensen, and Dennis Gilbert), the Senators lost both Thomas Chabot and Lassi Thomson on Monday night, which took almost all the shine off the club's 2-1 road win over the New York Rangers.
But ironically, despite finishing the game with just four defensemen, it was one of the great defensive performances in Senators' history.
Ottawa allowed just nine shots in the game, the fewest they've allowed in a game in their 34-year history. As for the Rangers, an original six team that's been around for 100 years, they've never had fewer shots in a game than they did on Monday versus Ottawa. Never.
That says a lot about the state of the Rangers and the complete team buy-in from the Senators.
James Reimer, who was probably able to catch up on some reading and answer a few texts during the game, got his fourth win in as many starts.
Shane Pinto, the Senators' lone New Yorker in their lineup, got the Sens on the board with a power play goal. In the second, Warren Foegele got his fifth goal in nine games as a Senator and it turned out to be his third game-winning goal for his new club.
Meanwhile, for the four D that remained, Jordan Spence, Tyler Kleven, Artem Zub and Nikolas Matinpalo, it was a simply a fantastic performance.
The Senators are now just two points behind the Red Wings for the second Wild Card with a game in hand. The two clubs go head to head in Detroit on Tuesday, but with all the injuries, their best four remaining defensemen exhausted, and the idle Red Wings being home and fully rested, the Sens wish they were meeting under better circumstances.
Now let's retreat to the Senators' black and blueline, which has been clobbered at exactly the wrong time.
Since Sanderson went down, Chabot has been back to logging heavy minutes, playing nearly half the game every night. But at the end of the first, he left this game in obvious pain on Monday night after taking a cross-check to the right wrist area from Rangers forward J.T. Miller, who's as nasty with lumber as anyone in the league.
While Miller's stickwork in this case was the kind you see a few times every game, it's hard to imagine why the cross-checking penalty exists if not for ones that potentially end an opponent's season.
That's only speculation, of course, but when TV cameras caught Chabot with a splint and a sling on his right arm afterward, it's fair to say that his season is in jeopardy.
Chabot has had injuries with that same wrist for parts of three seasons before he finally went under the knife. We're not in Josh Norris shoulder territory yet, but it's getting there.
As for Thomson's apparent lower-body injury, you have to feel for the former Sens first-rounder. He waited two and a half to years to get back to the NHL, at a time when there's finally all kinds of opportunity to play.
Now Thomson will need someone to fill in for him, as will Chabot.
“They’ll both be out for a while,” head coach Travis Green told the media after the game. “That’s about all I can say about it right now.”
Meanwhile, the Senators have done all they can in sheltering 2024 first-rounder Carter Yakemchuk. It's not their plan A, by any means, but they have no choice but to bring him up on Tuesday morning to make his NHL debut on Tuesday night in Detroit.
The other callup is anyone's guess.
In the AHL, Ottawa natives and righties Cam Crotty & Jorian Donovan are both injured, although Donovan, who hasn't played since March 7, is nearing a return. Left shots Samuel Bolduc and Ryan O' Rourke were both acquired after the NHL trade deadline so they're ineligible.
The good news is that Jake Sanderson might be back in the next week. But time is running out on the season, and as far as healthy players on NHL contracts go, that leaves only Yakemchuk, Tomas Hamara, and Djibril Toure left.
They also have Scott Harrington, who has over 200 games of NHL experience and has also been Yakemchuk's D partner for a lot of the season. However, he's on an AHL contract. If the Sens signed him to an NHL deal, it's believed he could play, but not in the playoffs if they get there.
And thanks to this overload of injuries on D, that's now a big if. If Travis Green can still steer this team into the playoffs under these miserable circumstances, he deserves the next two Jack Adams Trophies.
Steve Warne
The Hockey News
Matthew J. Lee/The Boston Globe via Getty Images
