Sanderson's Minutes Were Ottawa's Margin. Right Now, Nobody Else Is Carrying Them.
The blue line problem isn't abstract. It has a specific shape: 24.5 minutes per game, distributed across 49 games last season, belonging entirely to one player. Jake Sanderson didn't just lead Ottawa's defense — he was its architecture. Artem Zub is out. Ben Hutton is in on a professional tryout, which is the organizational equivalent of duct tape. And Sanderson himself remains day-to-day as training camp opens. That's not a depth problem. That's a load-bearing wall with a crack in it.
I wrote last week about the $86 million question hanging over this roster — whether Ottawa could stay healthy enough to actually honor the ambition the Batherson extension represents. The blue line is where that question gets answered first, and the early returns are not encouraging. Zub and Foegele both sidelined before a single meaningful game has been played. Hutton brought in on a PTO. The gap between the roster Ottawa planned and the roster Ottawa has is already visible, and the calendar hasn't flipped to October yet.
What makes Sanderson's situation particularly acute is that there is no internal facsimile. Last season he logged those 24.5 minutes while posting a plus-7 rating — the only Senators defenseman in the top-ten contributors who was meaningfully in the black. Jordan Spence, signed in June to a four-year deal, is the most credible secondary option, but there is a significant distance between "capable second-pairing defenseman" and "absorb the minutes of your best player when he's unavailable." That gap doesn't close overnight, and it doesn't close with a tryout signing.
The broader context here matters. Ottawa finished 44-38 last season, missing the playoffs despite winning 20 of their final 30 games. The early-season version of this team — the one that went 6-6 in October and 6-7 in November — was the version without consistent defensive structure. That version lost 21 of 37 one-goal games. The late-season version, the one that actually looked like a playoff contender, was built on tighter defensive execution. The question of which version shows up in October is not philosophical. It is directly tied to whether Sanderson is in the lineup at full capacity.
My read is this: the Senators can survive Foegele's absence. They can absorb Ridly Greig's suspension at center and find workable combinations up front. What they cannot do is replicate Sanderson's usage from depth that currently includes a PTO defenseman. If he's not ready when the regular season opens, Ottawa will spend the first weeks of 2026-27 doing exactly what sank them last October — leaking early, digging holes, and hoping the back half of the schedule bails them out again. One late-season rally already cost this franchise a playoff spot. Betting on a second one is not a strategy. It's a habit.