The Sanderson Problem Isn't New. It's Just Finally Unavoidable.

I've written two pieces in the last two days about how Ottawa's offseason logic depends on Jake Sanderson being healthy and available. I didn't expect to be writing a third. But the injury hasn't resolved, the questions haven't quieted, and the more I sit with the roster construction, the more I think the organization has been papering over a structural problem that predates this summer entirely.

Here is the declaration: if Sanderson misses significant time in 2026-27, the Senators will not compete for a playoff spot. Not because the rest of the roster is bad, but because the entire blueprint was drawn around him as its load-bearing wall.

Consider what Sanderson actually did last season. He averaged 24.5 minutes a night — more than any other skater on this team — posted 37 points, and finished plus-7 on a roster where most players were underwater. He was, by a considerable margin, the best two-way player Ottawa iced. The newly signed Jordan Spence was brought in specifically to play alongside him, to benefit from his structure and his ice time management. That pairing only works if Sanderson is in it. Spence skating without him isn't a blue line; it's a gap.

The historical parallel that keeps coming to mind is the mid-2010s version of teams that built around a single elite defenseman and then watched the whole enterprise collapse when he went down — Tampa before their championship core solidified, Carolina in the years before they found their footing. In each case, the team had surrounded its anchor with complementary pieces that were genuinely complementary, not independently capable. Ottawa has done the same thing. Artem Zub is also sidelined. The depth behind those two is unproven at the level this team needs, and the blue line was already the roster's most fragile element heading into the offseason.

What makes this particularly dangerous is the close-game problem that defined last season. Ottawa won just 43% of one-goal games — 16 wins in 37 decisions — a rate that cost them roughly 11 points and their playoff spot. Those games are decided in the third period, in defensive zone coverage, in the ability of your best defenseman to eat a shift when the margin is one goal and the clock is running. Sanderson was that player. Without him, Ottawa will ask the same questions in close games that they couldn't answer last year, with less capacity to answer them.

Tim Stutzle scored at a point-per-game pace last season and will be expected to carry even more offensive weight if the defense falters. Claude Giroux, back on a one-year deal at 38, provides leadership and a +13 that nobody else on this roster can replicate — but he is not a solution to a broken blue line. William Eklund is an intriguing bet, not a proven commodity. The entire offseason was predicated on the idea that the defense was solved, which would free the forwards to grow into their roles. That premise is now in serious jeopardy.

My read is this: Ottawa's front office made a reasonable gamble, and the gamble is currently losing. The Tkachuk trade, the Eklund acquisition, the Spence signing — all of it was coherent if you assumed Sanderson would be on the ice in October. That assumption is no longer safe. The Senators are not a bad team when healthy. But they are a team with no margin for error, and right now they are burning through their margin before the season has even started.