Although the weather outside doesn't necessarily make us think of winter pursuits, it's a good time to take the temperature of every NHL team. Hockey Prospectus will guide us through the leaguewide tour, spotlighting one player trending up and one player trending down for each club as well as a key statistic as we look ahead to the 2014-15 season. References will be made to goals versus threshold, a Hockey Prospectus proprietary statistic; for more on GVT, click here. All other advanced stats are courtesy of Stats.HockeyAnalysis.com.
Winning eight of their final 10 games to finish the 2013-14 season was not enough for the Ottawa Senators to climb out of an early-season hole. Ottawa's troubles on defense and in goal sank its season from almost the outset. Starting goalie Craig Anderson did not bail the Senators out as he had during the shortened 2013 season, posting a mediocre .911 save percentage, which was a huge drop from the .941 he produced in 24 games the season before.
While the Sens made a nice pickup this offseason in signing veteran David Legwand, he is hardly a replacement for star center Jason Spezza, who was traded to the Dallas Stars for prospects. The hopes of improvement on the blue line rest on the shoulders of former first-round pick Cody Ceci, as they -- somewhat surprisingly -- did not make any trades or signings to beef up on defense.
Barring their quality goaltending tandem playing out of this world, the Senators look more like a team ready to retool than compete in 2014-15.