The Ottawa Senators are heading toward their season opener in Toronto with one major question still hanging over the blue line: will Jake Sanderson be ready?
Sanderson was absent from practice Wednesday, three days before Ottawa opens against the Maple Leafs. Head coach Travis Green said the defenceman skated on his own, but the team kept him out of the full session.
“He skated today on his own,” Green said of Sanderson, who left in the second period a 4-3 preseason win against the Montreal Canadiens on Saturday. “We were hoping he’d be in practice today, but it didn’t feel right. So he stayed off and we’ll see where it goes, if he’s ready for the weekend.”
That update is enough to keep Senators fans uneasy. Sanderson has already missed most of training camp because of a different issue, though Green said Monday that the latest problem is not connected to that earlier absence. With Ottawa set to face Toronto on Saturday, the uncertainty around its top defenceman looms large.
Sanderson is the engine of this blue line. He plays the most minutes, drives play at both ends, and does it in a way nobody else on the roster can match. Thomas Chabot may have been named captain on Tuesday, but Sanderson is the one who sets the standard shift after shift.
Around the league, he’s widely viewed as a top-15 defenceman. Inside the Ottawa room, his teammates talk about him like a top-five player at the position. Former Senators blueliner Brendan Bell went even further, pointing to Sanderson’s skating as a separator.
“There’s a bunch of guys in that room that I do know and that I talkto,” Bell said. “and everybody raves about how dedicated he is anddetermined to be the best. He doesn’t have many weaknesses, and, ifhe does have a weakness, he’s going to fix it really quickly. I haven’tbeen able to see those in his few years here because his developmentpath has just been straight upwards as far as I’m concerned.”
With Sanderson out of the mix at practice, Ottawa’s pairings on Wednesday looked like this:
Thomas Chabot - Jordan Spence
Tyler Kleven - Carter Yakemchuk
Nikolas Matinpalo - Cameron Crotty
Hoyt Stanley
Injured: Jake Sanderson, Artem Zub
Stanley’s usage is worth watching. He looked like the seventh defenceman in practice, but he also got a real look on Saturday against Montreal, skating the first half of the game beside Sanderson. That pairing showed well, and with Zub already considered a long shot for the start of the regular season, Stanley’s role could shift depending on Sanderson’s status.
If Sanderson is cleared, the Senators will still have to decide what comes next for Stanley. If he isn’t, Matinpalo could be pushed into a bigger role on the right side. Ottawa does not skate Thursday, so the next real checkpoint comes Friday before the team travels to Toronto.
Yakemchuk is another name worth tracking as the opener approaches. Green opened camp with him alongside Sanderson on the top pair, but quickly moved the young defenceman down beside Kleven. The logic is clear: Kleven has two full NHL seasons behind him and brings stability, while Yakemchuk is still working through defensive-zone structure and one-on-one coverage.
The two have already been through two preseason games together. The first, a 6-1 loss to the Leafs, went badly. The second, Saturday’s win over Montreal, looked much more settled.
Asked Wednesday whether he sees chemistry building between them, Green pointed to the progress both players have made.
“It’s hard to see. I thought they played a strong game last game,” Green said.
“I thought Klev’s game has really come along; I think Yak’s game has, as well. As far as chemistry, it just seems like it should be a good pairing.
“(Kleven) has grown leaps and bounds over the years. Yak has grown, though, as camp’s gone on.
I’ve seen it in different ways. His play away from the puck is getting stronger, his ability to close and shut down plays.
And we’ll see how it goes.”
It’s still early enough that Yakemchuk’s spot in the lineup is not set in stone. He has the tools to play at this level, and Ottawa even considered him for the quarterback role on the second power-play unit in the offseason. But the Senators will keep development front and center.
Bell said the learning curve for young NHL defencemen is brutal, especially because mistakes in their own end usually end up in the net.
“Getting turned around in your own zone once or twice a game isprobably going to result in a goal against,” Bell said. “In today’s NHL,that’s often the difference in winning and losing.
Teams are so close,and, like, there’s so much parity in the league now that you can’tafford to throw games away in the early stages of the season justbecause you’re trying to see whether your first-round pick is ready. Ithink they’ll realize that pretty quickly.”
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The bigger question, though, is whether the lineup has enough finishing touch to match the rest of the structure. Button suggested the Senators could still use more goal-scoring punch, even if the answer is not some towering 40-goal name, and he also leaned into the long-term promise of Jake Sanderson as the kind of defenseman who could eventually sit in the Norris Trophy conversation. For a team trying to climb, those are the kinds of details that can determine whether the ceiling is merely respectable or something higher. [Read more 🡒]