Leafs, Oilers, Senators, Flames: Which team’s seat is the hottest?

We’ve seen several Canadian NHL teams pick high in the draft in recent seasons.

Ottawa has built a nice core out of Brady Tkachuk, Tim Stutzle and Jake Sanderson, their three picks from within the top five in 2018 and 2020. Edmonton got Connor McDavid first overall in 2015 and Leon Draisaitl third overall the season before. Toronto picked up most of its core four high in the 2014, 2015 and 2016 drafts.

Eventually, that sort of bottoming out should lead to sustained success, which the Maple Leafs and Oilers have teased. Ottawa led many to believe it would start taking those strides this season, with many believing this could be the start of a playoff streak.

But on Nov. 8 there is some level of panic in each of those cities. The Oilers are nearly last in the league, the Senators are last in their division, and the Leafs aren’t proving to anyone that they’re built better for the playoffs today.

And even though the Calgary Flames haven’t picked in the top 10 in a while, and don’t have any of those high selections on the roster anymore, we group them in with these panicky teams because, well, they didn’t think the word “rebuild” would be getting thrown around at this point. Yet, here we are with a star player being benched, contract extension talks breaking off with everyone, and the Flames setting up to perhaps be the next Canadian team that picks high in a draft.

So how alarming are the starts in Ontario and Alberta, and what may happen next? We take a look at which seats and situations are the hottest, with three alarms being ablaze and one alarm just simmering with longer-term implications.

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OTTAWA SENATORS

Record: 4-6-0, eighth in the Atlantic Division

Concerns: Goaltending, slipping from pre-season expectations, coaching, fan angst

Alarm Level: 4

Outlook: This was the season they were supposed to be turning a corner and new owner Michael Andlauer would reasonably have been expecting to see some immediate return on his $950 million investment. To say it’s been bumpy would be an understatement, both on and off the ice. One player, Shane Pinto, has been suspended 41 games. The GM is out, partly due to the fact his handling of the Evgenii Dadonov trade cost the new boss a first-round pick as punishment. The fans are booing and calling for a new coach, prompting the captain to stand up in his defence and fire back at those fans.

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After dropping their first game of the season, the Senators reeled off three wins in a row, but now it’s been 11 days since they’ve won a game. Goalies Joonas Korpisalo (.901 save percentage) and Anton Forsberg (.863) are supplying below-average netminding and the team in front of them is 21st in the league averaging 31.4 shots against per game.

What could happen?: The most obvious is a coaching change for a few reasons. No. 1, the GM was just let go last week and president of hockey operations/interim GM Steve Staios might be cautious about quickly overreacting to this slow start with a big splash player move. No. 2 is that DJ Smith is in his fifth season with this team, and while you can’t put the blame on him for not reaching the playoffs yet, if it’s slow to come in Year 5, then replacing the coach is a fairly understandable action to take.

It would be the first chance for the new owner and front office to put their stamp on this team. Staios stood by the coach at last week’s press conference, yes, but it’ll get harder to keep going ahead with this the more losses pile up.

“The players respect D.J.,” Staios said. “They play hard. They’ve never cheated us on effort. They look organized going into games. I think if you would ask D.J. — are there areas for improvement? For sure. D.J. would tell you the same thing. So, I have confidence that this group is going to continue to move in the right direction.”

With Toronto, Vancouver and Calgary on the schedule to finish this week before the team departs for Sweden, might this be a window for potential change?

32 Thoughts Podcast quote from Monday: “It’s very hot. The thing you have to take into account here is that it’s an owner who paid a record price for a team: how much do you think he needs playoff revenue to make that make sense? A key part of your cash flow is playoff revenue,” Friedman said. “It’s the old line ‘the road to hell is paved with the best of intentions.’ Steve Staios is 100 per cent thinking this is what I’m going to do, but eventually you could get boxed into a place where you just say ‘you know what if we don’t start winning games it may not be what I want to do, it may be what I have to do.’ “

EDMONTON OILERS

Record: 2-8-1

Concerns: Team defence and the new system, goaltending, bottom-six scoring

Alarm Level: 5

Outlook: How are we even here? The Oilers were a favourite pre-season Stanley Cup pick for a reason and were right there in last season’s Round 2 series loss against the eventual champion Golden Knights in which Edmonton scored first in five of the six games and led at some point in all of them. Now they are in the same bin as the San Jose Sharks, a rebuilding outfit that is not just bad, but could be historically so. There is still plenty of time left for Edmonton to recover from a 2-8-1 start and the Oilers did win 18 of their final 21 games to wrap up last season. They can do it. But if they stay this far out, or more, by the time the quarter mark arrives in a couple of weeks, the Oilers will have to be a top team for months without any room for another extended slump.

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The goaltending is the league’s worst, with an all-situations .861 save percentage between Stuart Skinner and Jack Campbell, the latter of whom was waived on Tuesday. They need to be better, but so does the defence, which allows over 30 shots per game and is in the bottom-third of the league allowing rush chances against. If you believe the defence will get better, or that they’ll find some level of goaltending either from within or without, consider this other reason to be optimistic the Oilers will get back on track: Edmonton also has one of the league’s worst team shooting percentages, which is bound to improve. They were eighth in that stat last season.

What could happen?: Just about anything and on Tuesday we saw the first domino fall with Campbell being waived. Surely a Skinner-Calvin Pickard tandem isn’t the long-term answer here (right?) so we’d imagine GM Ken Holland is working the market for an NHL calibre goalie. But how long will that take and how much would it cost the Oilers? Only once since 1999 has a team traded for a No. 1 goalie in-season before Dec. 1.

From there eyes will turn to the coach, who has employed a new defensive system that in theory fits this group and isn’t an overly complicated one to understand, but clearly has not taken hold. Will that plan have to change at all or, if not, is a new voice the next move Holland has at his disposal?

32 Thoughts Podcast quote from Monday: “Yes I do believe the Oilers are starting to ask some serious questions internally. What is wrong? What can we do to fix it? And has it been thrown around that maybe they might have to look for another coach? Yes, I believe it has. I think you would be doing the ostrich, burying your head in the sand, if you didn’t think the Oilers were at least thinking about this.”

CALGARY FLAMES

Record: 4-7-1

Concerns: Big contract players not performing, questioning if a rebuild is necessary

Alarm Level: 4

Outlook: Hey the Flames are ahead of the Oilers, so that’s something.

Calgary’s situation is this: it seemed like they managed out of the Gaudreau-Tkachuk departures rather well, but the money they committed to incoming players Nazem Kadri, Jonathan Huberdeau and MacKenzie Weegar is quickly becoming problem contracts. Where there was hope that the next wave of UFAs — Noah Hanifin, Chris Tanev, Elias Lindholm, Nikita Zadorov — would re-sign, especially after Mikael Backlund extended for two years, there is now doubt that this roster is anything but a lottery team.

After an icy cold start, Huberdeau was benched Tuesday, a Calgary win that brought them to 4-7-1. What’s ahead now is an Eastern Canadian road trip, followed by home games against Vancouver and the Islanders, and then another four-game road trip to take them into the quarter mark. At that point, the Flames will know if they’re chasing from too far out, or still lingering in the race, and then have an idea of how to proceed.

What could happen?: All of the pending UFAs mentioned above are going to start popping up in trade rumours and Craig Conroy’s first order of business might be to tear down what Brad Treliving built, though the big money deals on the books are most likely here to stay barring major salary retention (which would say a lot itself about Calgary’s direction). The coach and GM are both brand new, so no change would come there, and most of the major surgery might have to wait for the off-season.

We’ve seen the Flames already start to incorporate more of their youth into the NHL roster, which is a departure from recent seasons, but they’re going to have to find starts for Dustin Wolf. Goalie-needy teams will pop up, meaning Dan Vladar could be an in-season trade candidate, too. Unless the Flames make a hard turn back at some point this season, they may have to start considering how to best position the franchise to compete in the first year of the new arena, which is still a few years away.

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TORONTO MAPLE LEAFS

Record: 6-4-2

Concerns: The blue line, team toughness, depth scoring

Alarm Level: 2

Outlook: For all the concerns that have been discussed about team toughness — specifically around the lack of response to Brad Marchand — worries about Ilya Samsonov, if the team can defend well enough, or if they have enough scorers outside the core, the Toronto Maple Leafs are at least finding wins at this point. If this is the worst stretch of their season, a .500 winning percentage during it isn’t the worst thing in the world.

What else is new? This is a team that traded for Jake McCabe last season, and Luke Schenn who was then lost to free agency, signed John Klingberg in the summer and is somehow still looking for blueliners today. The Maple Leafs knew they needed more depth scoring, so they signed Max Domi and Tyler Bertuzzi to fill that role for one season, but their slow starts mean the Leafs are still looking for it. The win against Tampa Bay this week was both good and bad — bad in that they fell behind 4-1, good in that they were able to come back for an overtime win. They probably won’t be turning those into wins against Andrei Vasilevskiy later in the season, however, so even though they got out with two points this game was a reminder of the consistent two-way play Toronto still needs to find.

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What could happen?: Injuries to McCabe and Timothy Liljegren have exposed how thin the blue line is, so at some point this season we’d expect GM Brad Treliving to add at least one, and maybe a couple of, defencemen. The question will be if he re-shapes any of what’s already there. Klingberg, for example, isn’t producing enough on the power play (two points) or anywhere to make up for his defensive deficiencies, so we wonder if he could be flipped in a quick re-tool of the blue line.

But, this early in the season, fourth in the division with a .583 points percentage and a number of new bodies settling in, a lot of these feel like Toronto-world problems right now. Unlike in Edmonton, Ottawa and Calgary, where it feels like something is slipping away, Toronto’s tough decisions feel further down the road. They can afford time to see if their new arrivals come around, if Joseph Woll can run with the starter’s job for a while, or call up players (like Nick Robertson this week, or maybe Bobby McMann next?) to shake the lineup. Changes will come in the new year, sure, but most of the angst in Toronto is about how their play in November wouldn’t translate to playoff success in the spring.

32 Thoughts Podcast quote from Monday: “There’s a lot of things that are concerning. First off, all the lack of response against Boston…it’s a bad sign that all the new players are really having trouble fitting in. Is it the way Toronto plays?” Friedman wondered. “The thing about the Maple Leafs is they have the opportunity this off-season to redo their team. It’s early. It’s November 6. That’s still a long way away, but if this doesn’t change I wonder if that Toronto team’s going to look very different next year.”

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