The Ottawa Senators find themselves in dangerous waters these days, having lost six of their past nine game and facing a variety of concerns about their play. After their 5-1 loss to Philadelphia Flyers on Thursday, one particular issue seemed to emerge centered on starting goaltender Pascal Leclaire’s growing habit of letting in soft goals.

It’s an entirely new concern for Ottawa fans, who have grown accustomed to solid and consistent play from Senators goaltenders over the past decade.

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In case anyone out there was unable to discern my tone, I was being sarcastic. If there’s anything Ottawa Senators fans know it’s goalie controversies. From Dominik Hasek’s Olympic groin injury, to the hard-partying antics of Ray Emery, to the woes of a certain anthropomorphic piece of Swiss cheese named Martin Gerber, goaltending problems have been the dominant storyline in Ottawa for some time now.

Pascal Leclaire was supposed to represent a new beginning for the Senators in the crease, one where the skilled young Quebecois goalie could provide the solid foundation from which to rebuilt the team. Instead, we’re already starting to hear unfortunate comparisons to another Senator goalie from La Belle Province, Patrick Lalime. Leclaire’s statistics aren’t in any way the worst they could be (nor were Lalime’s, but that nagging habit of giving up deflating goals seems uncomfortably familiar. Several of the goals against him in the Flyers game would fall under this category, while the tying goal in the Edmonton game scored by Gilbert Brule was not one that an NHL goalie should be letting in.

Of course, there is always the possibility that this entire situation is merely an early season slump blown out of proportion. His statistics are not great, but they’re certainly not Vesa Toskala bad. I know this fact has been cited ad nauseum, but this is a goalie who had nine shutouts in 54 games for Columbus two seasons ago. It’s hard to imagine that a young goalie with a skill-set like Leclaire has already peaked. Hope springs eternal

On the positive side of things, a few players who had been slumping this year look to have a turned a corner of sorts in the game against the Oilers. Jonathan Cheechoo scored his first goal of the season, and against Philadelphia he played more like the Cheechoo of old, even hitting the crossbar on a nice shot in the first period. Meanwhile Ryan Shannon got his first point of the season against Edmonton on a nice behind the back pass to set up Nick Foligno on the second goal. Even Alex Kovalev looked more inspired than usual, earning a hard-working assist on Cheechoo’s goal as well as scoring a sweet goal in the shootout.

Nonetheless, the Senators are going to need a lot more than a few solid individual performances. They may not want to admit it, but it appears as though the determining factor in whether or not this team can make the playoffs or not will be goaltending. It’s up to Pascal Leclaire to prove he’s up to the task, otherwise we may have another season of Brian Elliott backstopping the Senators to another 11th place finish.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 16th, 2009 at 11:02 am and is filed under All Sports, 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.