For the Ottawa Senators, this past week will not exactly be one they look back upon with fond memories. The irrational exuberance of the first two weeks of the season has quickly worn off, leaving Ottawa a team looking to regain its footing.

The Sens started their road trip in Florida with a win over the Panthers; however they followed it up with a sloppy loss in Tampa the next night. Frankly, the 5-2 final score was flattering, as Jarkko Ruutu and Alex Kovalev only managed to score once the game was out of reach. Upon returning home they dropped a disheartening game on Saturday afternoon against the Thrashers 3-1. Ottawa managed to out-shoot Atlanta 51-21, including a preposterous 43-8 in the final two periods, but were shut down by superstar-for-a-day Ondrej Pavelec.

Not only did they lose a pair of tough games against the Tampa Bay Lightning and the Atlanta Thrashers, teams they really should beat, but they also lost Anton Volchenkov and Jason Spezza to injuries. Both players are crucial cogs in the Senators machine, and not coincidently the team lost the past two games without them in the lineup.

While Volchenkov’s injury to his elbow doesn’t appear to be serious, and he stands to return within the next week or so, Spezza’s injury is a little more ominous. Once again, a lingering injury to his back appears to be the culprit, and the team isn’t sure when he will return. The Senators can only hope that Spezza’s back issues don’t become a long term problem for their number one center.

Meanwhile, another interesting issue came to a boil this past week related to the officiating. Coach Cory Clouston wasn’t exactly pleased with the referees after their two games against Florida and Tampa, but managed to choose his words carefully enough during the post-game interview to avoid any retribution from the league. At issue was what he thought were several missed calls in the Tampa game, not to mention the 7-1 advantage in power plays enjoyed by the home side against the Panthers.

Does the officiating in the league give short thrift to the Senators? It’s a question that I have heard come up before in regards to Ottawa, but not necessarily one that’s easily answered. Especially, I might note, without being forced to open my old stats textbooks.

In lieu of this, there a few basic things we can consider. First of all, this season the Senators stand as the 2^nd most penalized team in the league, on a per game basis. Now, the first argument against that statistic would be that it naturally includes PIMs from fighting majors, so instead we should actually look at how many short-handed situations the Sens have faced versus power-plays granted. In this case, they have faced 54 penalties versus 43 power-plays; a difference of -11. This ranks them 3^rd worst in the league in that category. It’s a good thing the Senators also have the league’s 3^rd best penalty kill, otherwise things could be a lot worse.

However, there is always the possibility that Ottawa is simply dumb when it comes to penalties. Or maybe, it’s just that they’ve been playing teams that are better able to avoid penalties. Well, let’s consider one more statistic. I looked at the games the team has played so far this season, and added up how many power plays their opponents received. Then I compared that number with the average number of power plays those teams receive in a game. It turns out Ottawa’s opponents receive less penalties than their season average in 75% of the team’s games. Just saying.

Again, without any long lost statistical formulas from my undergraduate statistics class at my disposal, none of these correlations can be considered conclusive, but it’s not worth discounting either. They can still make for some interesting conversation at the barstool.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 4th, 2009 at 2:00 pm and is filed under Hockey, NHL-East, Ottawa Senators. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.