The Ottawa Senators’ belief in goaltender Linus Ullmark has never wavered during a turbulent second season with the team.
Ullmark, 32, struggled out of the gate, going 14-9-5 going into late December with an .881 save percentage and 2.90 goals-against average.
After a wild 7-5 loss to the Toronto Maple Leafs on Dec. 27 that saw Ullmark allow four goals on 10 shots, the 2023 Vezina Trophy winner took a leave of absence from the team for what was later announced as mental health reasons.
Ullmark missed 16 games, and the Senators had a 6-6-2 record in his absence. The team sat in last place in the Eastern Conference on Jan. 12 with the playoffs seemingly out of reach.
Upon his return, the 6-foot-4 netminder went 14-4-3 with a .904 save percentage and 2.30 GAA the rest of the season as the Senators overcame a 10-point deficit to claim the final wild-card spot in the Eastern Conference.
“I’ve said this before, and I stand by it; I would not change what I did on acquiring Linus Ullmark,” Senators president of hockey operations and general manager Steve Staios told Postmedia’s Bruce Garrioch on Thursday. “When you’re in my position, you see your group, you believe in them, you see the growth potential in them. You see it moving in the right direction.”
When the Senators acquired Ullmark from the Boston Bruins in June of 2024, it was a move to bring stability to the team’s net.
Ullmark did just that during the 2024-25 campaign, going 25-14-3 with a .910 save percentage and 2.72 GAA to lead the Senators to their first playoff appearance since the 2016-17 season.
Despite the horrid start and the lack of availability in his second season, Staios has no regrets putting his faith into Ullmark.
“You have a chance to get a top-10 NHL goaltender, to me, I wasn’t going to tiptoe around that,” said Staios. “Very rarely do you have an opportunity to go and do that for the goalie position. As we know, some of the top goaltenders didn’t have good years this year, and they tend to bounce back.”
Ullmark’s absence wasn’t the team’s only problem early in the season as the team’s depth was tested with numerous injuries to key players.
Captain Brady Tkachuk missed 20 games in the first two months of the season due to a torn ligament in his thumb, and the team was forced to use 12 defencemen from the end of February through the end of the regular season due to various injuries on the backend.
However, Ottawa was able to overcome the obstacles, going 21-6-4 in their final 31 games in order to make the playoffs.
“It was unbelievable,” said Staios. “You almost couldn’t believe it was happening. No one’s going to sympathize with injuries because it happens around the league. But for that to happen to us at that time, with the amount of injuries in one position, it was something I’ve never seen before.”
The task at hand now is finding a way to get by the Carolina Hurricanes in the first round of the playoffs.
The Hurricanes finished as the conference’s top seed with a 53-22-7 record and have been itching to take the next step towards a Stanley Cup appearance.
Carolina has made the playoffs each of the past eight seasons under head coach Rod Brind’Amour, making the Eastern Conference Finals three times without being able to advance.
“Carolina’s been there, they’ve been in the playoffs, and they’ve been a Stanley Cup-contending team for a while now, so they have that experience,” said Staios. “We believe in our group, and even when we’re looking at matchups, once we did clinch, there were three or four teams involved, we just focus on our group. Even with some of the things we talked about outside of our control, we kept it strong in the room, and we believe in how we play, and we know how we need to play to have success. It’ll be interesting.”
