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Senators Recall Angus Crookshank From AHL’s Belleville

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The Ottawa Senators have recalled winger Angus Crookshank from the AHL’s Belleville Senators. Crookshank has appeared in 24 games for the minor league club this season, scoring a team-high 10 goals and 21 points. This performance comes after Crookshank managed 26 goals and 47 points in 71 AHL games last season, good for fourth on Belleville in scoring.

This is the first call-up of the 23-year-old Crookshank’s career, which began after Ottawa drafted the forward in the fifth round of the 2018 NHL Draft. Crookshank went on to play in three seasons with the University of New Hampshire, totaling 90 games and 63 points with the school. He turned pro following the conclusion of New Hampshire’s 2020-21 season, finishing the year with 16 points in 19 AHL games. But despite the hot start to his professional career, Crookshank was forced out of the entire 2021-22 season after undergoing surgery on his knee. He’s returned strong for the Belleville Senators, though, and earned his first shot at an NHL debut as a result.

Ottawa is currently facing a string of forward injuries, missing both Mathieu Joseph and Rourke Chartier for their Sunday game against the Vegas Golden Knights. The team is also uncertain when Vladimir Tarasenko will return, with the top scorer questionable for Sunday.

The Senators also recalled forward Jiri Smejkal in response to their list of injuries. Smejkal recently appeared in his first two career NHL games, going without a point in either contest. The 27-year-old is in his first NHL season after seven years in various top leagues across Europe. Ottawa will need to turn to an extra forward – likely Smejkal – with Rourke and Chartier out. But if Tarasenko also misses Sunday’s matchup, Crookshank could find himself primed for his first NHL game.

Senators Recall Jiri Smejkal

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Jiri Smejkal’s time in the minors was short-lived.  After being sent down on Wednesday, the team announced (Twitter link) that the forward was recalled from AHL Belleville.

The 27-year-old is in his first season in North America after spending last season with IK Oskarshamn of the SHL where he had 23 goals and 20 assists in 49 games.  The hope was that he would push for a full-time spot with Ottawa, giving them a bit of a boost to their bottom six.

However, things haven’t quite gone as planned.  He was cut in training camp and has spent the majority of the season in the minors.  Accordingly, a report surfaced last month that he could be returning to Oskarshamn but clearly, that didn’t come to fruition.

Smejkal has played in 19 games with Belleville this season, picking up three goals and six assists.  He made his NHL debut earlier this month, making two appearances with the big club, being held off the scoresheet while averaging a little under seven minutes a game.  The Sens now have a full 23-man roster with this roster move.

Senators Recall Jacob Larsson, Send Jiri Smejkal To AHL

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The Ottawa Senators have recalled defenseman Jacob Larsson from the AHL’s Belleville Senators and sent Jiri Smejkal to the minor leagues.

Smejkal made his NHL debut on Saturday and followed it up with an appearance in the team’s Tuesday game. He did not see any changes to his stat line between the two games, other than blocking two shots. The 27-year-old winger is in his first season in North American pros, after spending the last seven seasons between top leagues in Russia, Czechia, Finland, and Sweden. Smejkal spent three seasons in the WHL before moving to European pros, giving him some experience on North American ice.

Larsson will help the Senators make up for the missing Thomas Chabot, who is expected to miss the month of December with a leg injury. Larsson is a former first-round pick, being selected 27th overall by the Anaheim Ducks in the 2015 NHL Draft. But the 26-year-old defender has failed to live up to first-round expectations, recording a mere 172 career NHL games since making his debut in the 2016-17 season. Larsson’s career year came in 2019-20, when he scored a career-high 11 points in 60 games with the Ducks.

The Senators signed Larsson as an unrestricted free agent in 2022 and have kept him on one-year, league-minimum contracts ever since. Larsson has only appeared in seven NHL games with the Senators, going without a point and recording six penalty minutes. Other than that handful of games, he’s spent the last two seasons with the AHL’s Belleville Senators, combining for 21 points in 73 games and a -11.

Morning Notes: Kuzmenko, Pinto, Couture

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The Vancouver Canucks could be looking to move high-scoring winger Andrei Kuzmenko, according to The Fourth Period’s Dave Pagnotta. Pagnotta shares that the team has discussed trading him but that, “nothing is close”, citing his $5.5MM cap hit and modified-no-trade-clause as pieces that make a trade challenging.

Kuzmenko is off to a slower start to the season after scoring an electric 39 goals and 74 points in 81 games last season. It was Kuzmenko’s first year in the NHL, with Vancouver signing him out of the KHL, where he had previously played 315 career games and scored 200 points. The 27-year-old winger is now sporting just five goals and 16 points through 26 games this season, on pace for just 50 points in 82 games. Pagnotta shares that Vancouver could be looking for a talent-for-talent swap, attempting to bring in a new face to replace Kuzmenko’s role in the top-six. The left-winger has averaged roughly 16 minutes of ice time through his 107 career NHL games so far.

Other notes from around the league:

  • Shane Pinto is expected to resume training with the Ottawa Senators’ skills coaches soon, after doing much of his training at various colleges while serving his 41-game suspension. The Ottawa Sun’s Bruce Garrioch shared expects the forward to sign his qualifying offer, which would give Pinto a cap hit of $874K. Pinto is eligible to resume playing for either the Ottawa Senators or Belleville Senators on January 21st.
  • Logan Couture spoke with media for the first time in two months on Tuesday, shedding light on the lower-body injury that’s so far held him out of the season. Couture, 34, candidly shared that he had feared the injury could end his career, but that those fears are behind him after he began rehabbing the injury. He is now expecting to return soon, but the Sharks captain didn’t have a timeline yet, calling himself, “truly week-to-week”. Couture has spent his entire career with the San Jose Sharks, totaling 700 points in 927 games with the club.

Senators Recall Jiří Smejkal

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The Senators recalled forward Jiří Smejkal from AHL Belleville on Friday, a team release states. This is Smejkal’s first call-up after signing his first NHL contract with the Senators in May.

Smejkal, 27, had spent his entire professional career in Europe until this season. The hulking 6-foot-4 Czech winger does have some experience playing on North American ice, though, playing his final two seasons of junior hockey in the WHL with the Moose Jaw Warriors and Kamloops Blazers.

He’s played for a variety of European clubs after going unselected in multiple NHL drafts but didn’t really break out as an elite talent until the last two seasons. He produced over a point per game with Pelicans in the Finnish Liiga in 2021-22 and followed that up with 43 points in 49 games with the SHL’s IK Oskarshamn last season. Alongside three straight World Championship appearances with Czechia, he drew enough NHL interest to earn a one-year, two-way pact from Ottawa.

Although the GM who brought him to Canada, Pierre Dorion, is no longer with the team, new management has obviously liked what they’ve seen from Smejkal thus far in Belleville. He’s posted three goals and nine points in 17 AHL games after rumors swirled he would return to Europe after not cracking the Senators roster out of camp.

The Senators had the cap space to make this recall after placing defenseman Thomas Chabot on long-term injured reserve yesterday. He will miss at least four weeks with a leg injury.

Smejkal is now one of 13 healthy forwards on the Senators roster and could challenge to make his NHL debut tomorrow against the Red Wings. The natural winger could slot in for 27-year-old Zack MacEwen on the team’s fourth line. MacEwen has played ten games, registering one assist and averaging a paltry 4:45 per contest after signing a three-year, $2.325MM contract with Ottawa in free agency last summer.

Senators To Place Thomas Chabot On LTIR, Out “Minimum” Four Weeks With Leg Injury

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Senators defenseman Thomas Chabot is facing his second lengthy injury-related absence of the young season. He will miss a minimum of four weeks after undergoing MRIs and other tests to determine the severity of a leg injury, although surgery is not required, reports Darren Dreger of TSN. Further to Dreger’s report, Postmedia’s Bruce Garrioch confirms the Senators will place Chabot on long-term injured reserve.

Chabot, 26, has spent his entire career in the Canadian capital since Ottawa drafted him 18th overall in 2015. His growth into a top-pairing caliber defender hasn’t expedited the Senators’ post-Erik Karlsson rebuild as they had hoped, but that’s far from being Chabot’s fault. His eight-year, $64MM extension signed in 2019 has aged well, as he’s produced at a 0.62 points per game clip over the life of the deal and has averaged nearly 26 minutes per contest since the 2020-21 campaign began. He’s historically been a positive possession force on a team that’s struggled to control play and remains the most valuable all-around defenseman on the roster.

That’s why a second long-term absence for him this season is so demoralizing for a team that finally looked to be gaining traction, going 6-4-0 in their past ten games. Chabot had played just two games since returning from a right-hand fracture that kept him out for all of November. The Senators are still at the .500 mark and sit only ahead of the Buffalo Sabres in terms of points percentage in the Atlantic Division, and they remain squarely out of the playoff picture as the calendar shifts to December. MoneyPuck lists their playoff odds at 30.9% at the time of writing, though, and given how many games in hand they have on the rest of the league, they’re one hot streak away from putting themselves back in the postseason conversation.

It’ll be difficult without Chabot, however, as his absence creates a domino effect felt throughout the Senators’ blueline. Head coach D.J. Smith has attempted to alleviate this by spreading out the Sens’ three best remaining defenders – Jakob Chychrun, Jake Sanderson and Artem Zub – on three different pairings. That still means giving tougher assignments than desired to depth defenders like Jacob Bernard-Docker and Travis Hamonic, though, and managing his blueliners’ ice time will suddenly become a crucial part of Smith’s job – as long as he still has it. External pressure is mounting for the Senators to make a change behind the bench after an all-too-familiar sluggish start, but under new ownership and management, the Senators appear content to let Smith lead the way for a while longer.

Chabot has four assists in nine games on the season while averaging 24:22 per game.

Injury Updates On Thomas Chabot, Mark Kastelic

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The Senators have once again had a disappointing start to a season, sitting with a .500 record through 20 games and ranking seventh in the Atlantic Division points-percentage-wise. Things are about to get even tougher for them, as head coach D.J. Smith confirmed star defenseman Thomas Chabot will miss a second straight game tonight as he continues to undergo testing on a leg injury, with Postmedia’s Bruce Garrioch relaying the team expects him to once again be out long-term. Chabot had played two games after returning from a right-hand fracture before exiting the lineup once again.

  • In slightly more positive injury news for the Senators, Garrioch also reports that forward Mark Kastelic is continuing his recovery from an ankle injury and skated today in a non-contact jersey. Kastelic is listed as week-to-week and has missed 11 games with a high ankle sprain sustained on November 2 against the Kings. The 24-year-old remains on long-term injured reserve and is eligible to return anytime. He has no points in nine games this season and has averaged just 6:55 per game.

Ottawa Senators Hire Jacques Martin As Senior Advisor To Coaching Staff

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The Ottawa Senators have made a change to their coaching staff — but it’s an addition, not a subtraction. They’ve turned to a familiar face, hiring Jacques Martin as a senior advisor to their coaching staff.

This move is a highly intriguing one, on multiple levels. First and foremost, the Senators are adding an extremely experienced former head coach to their staff, someone with a reputation as a strong defensive mind.

The Senators have actually surrendered the seventh-fewest goals in the entire NHL, which does not indicate an immediate need for the club to patch up its defense. That being said, the added experience definitely can’t hurt the Senators’ coaching efforts.

Experience is something Martin most definitely has, as he won a Jack Adams award all the way back in 1998-99 and first became an NHL head coach in 1986, coaching the Doug Gilmour and Bernie Federko-led St. Louis Blues.

Martin only kept that job for two seasons but he got a second chance to become a head coach when the Senators hired him in 1995-96.

Martin stayed in Ottawa until after 2003-04, embarking on a run of success that had been wholly foreign to the relatively young expansion franchise.

He reached the postseason in just his second campaign in the Canadian capital, and then eventually made it all the way to the Eastern Conference Final with star players such as Daniel Alfredsson, Jason Spezza, Marian Hossa, and Zdeno Chara.

Martin would then take charge of the Florida Panthers, and while he never managed to reach the playoffs there he kept the Panthers above a .500 points percentage in each of his campaigns in Florida.

After that, he became the head coach of the Montreal Canadiens. His well-drilled defensive side rode excellent goaltending from Jaroslav Halak to the Eastern Conference Final, taking out two heavyweight teams in the top-seeded Washington Capitals and defending champion Pittsburgh Penguins along the way.

That stint in Montreal was Martin’s most recent as a head coach, though he did go on to have success as an assistant coach. He worked on Mike Sullivan’s staff with the Penguins as the club won the 2016-17 Stanley Cup, and then spent one year assisting David Quinn and the New York Rangers.

Martin’s appointment in Ottawa appears to come with a decent bit of intrigue. On the face of it, the Senators are simply adding a familiar face to help out a club currently struggling to build momentum in the standings. But looking at it a little bit deeper, this Senators coaching staff is currently highly embattled with a significant portion of the fanbase appearing to prefer the head coach, D.J. Smith, be dismissed.

Senators management in Steve Staios and new owner Michael Andlauer have thus far resisted firing Smith, reportedly due to a desire to maintain as much stability in the organization as possible. But in a campaign where the Senators are under so much pressure to make the playoffs, one has to wonder if the Senators can afford to retain Smith much longer, considering he is in his fifth year as the team’s head coach and has only once delivered a points percentage above .500.

By hiring Martin, the Senators have now brought a highly experienced, highly respected former head coach into their organization, someone who could now theoretically step in and serve as an interim head coach on short notice. That’s not to say this hiring is some sort of sign that a Smith firing is anything certain, of course, as the Senators’ ownership appears to remain committed to supporting Smith and prioritizing stability.

But in the case that the Senators endure another run of bad results, the type of run that would make retaining their fifth-year coach completely impossible, they now have an in-house replacement ready to take over in Martin. He’s someone with not only extensive experience in Ottawa but also extensive experience bringing out the best of the talent on his roster.

Photos courtesy of USA Today Sports Images

Thomas Chabot Will Not Play Tonight, Set To Get MRI

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  • Although he had fully recovered from a hand injury and returned to action for the Ottawa Senators on December 1st, defenseman Thomas Chabot may once again miss a stretch of games for the Senators. Bruce Garrioch of TSN reports that Chabot will not play for the team tonight against the New York Rangers after experiencing some discomfort in his leg, and will have an MRI to make a more accurate diagnosis. In his return to the ice last week, Chabot averaged just over 24 minutes of ice time in two games, adding one assist on the powerplay.

    [SOURCE LINK]

Senators Still Looking To Hire A GM

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  • It has been a little over a month since the Ottawa Senators announced they would be parting ways with then-General Manager Pierre Dorion, and have yet to replace him. Speaking about that today, Eric Engels of Sportsnet reports that the Senators are still searching for a replacement, and have no timeline on the process. In the team’s preferred scenario, they would look for the position to be a part of a ’two-team operation’, meaning the next General Manager would be working closely with the President of Hockey Operations, Steve Staios.

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