Sens clinch playoff spot, but not how they planned In mid-August, Guy Boucher sat down for lunch with Ottawa Senators owner Eugene Melnyk and made a bold claim.

In mid-August, Guy Boucher sat down for lunch with Ottawa Senators owner Eugene Melnyk and made a bold claim.

The new head coach – who hadn’t even run a single practice with his team – told Melnyk that he believed the 2016-17 Ottawa Senators were definitely a playoff team. And if they could avoid injuries, Boucher felt his squad could be a Stanley Cup contender.

Boucher has looked like a genius with the first part of his claim, guiding the Senators to a playoff berth after the club fell 11 points short of that goal last season. But the journey to this point was probably not how Boucher envisioned it unfolding.

In one of his first practices as a head coach, Boucher watched helplessly as veteran forward Clarke MacArthur was crushed along the boards by minor league defenseman Patrick Sieloff. MacArthur’s subsequent concussion cast a dark shadow over the rest of training camp and suddenly left Boucher without one of his top-six forward options.

Another top-six forward, Mark Stone, was also felled by a training camp concussion, while Curtis Lazar was sidelined with a case of mononucleosis. This was not the start Boucher had in mind when he proclaimed the Senators would make the playoffs.

And yet, unbeknown to most, there was still another piece of terrible news looming on the horizon.

Partway through training camp, the club announced that Craig Anderson would be leaving the team to attend to a personal situation. In November, it was publicly revealed that Anderson’s wife Nicholle had been diagnosed with cancer and the Senators were granting their No. 1 netminder the ability to leave the team as he saw fit.

For a 68-day window in the middle of the season, the Senators were without their top goalie. And so they turned to Mike Condon – who had bounced between Montreal and Pittsburgh in the fall – to essentially save their season. While Pierre Dorion has certainly made bolder and splashier trades – think Derick Brassard and Alex Burrows – his acquisition of Condon for a fifth-round draft pick from Pittsburgh will go down as his best trade to date.

Condon appeared in a franchise-record 27 consecutive games and provided No. 1 goaltending to a team that desperately needed it. He held down the fort until Anderson was ready to return in the middle of February. Naturally, Anderson posted a shutout in his first start back.

But when Anderson returned, he was playing behind a team that had bought into Boucher’s game plan. And maybe playing without Anderson forced everyone to tighten up defensively, because by the middle of February, this was no longer the loosey-goosey bunch that allowed Auston Matthews to score four goals on opening night. Instead, the Senators had transformed into an airtight defensive squad that seemed to adhere to Boucher’s system.

Boucher’s system became a favourite hashtag amongst Senators fans on social media, as they would often use #TheSystem to explain victories over more talented opponents like Pittsburgh, Chicago and Washington. Boucher’s system became this team’s identity – much like how the team used the #PeskySens moniker on Twitter a couple of years ago.

The Pesky Sens were never more evident than in 2012-13, when they played a significant portion of the lockout-shortened campaign without the likes of Erik Karlsson, Jason Spezza, Craig Anderson, Milan Michalek and Jared Cowen. They were praised for their performance in the face of adversity, but this year’s edition of the Senators has given that group a pretty good run for their money.

In addition to the early-season injuries and absences, the Senators were suddenly hit with a rash of significant injuries down the stretch of this season. Top defensemen like Cody Ceci, Marc Methot and Erik Karlsson have all missed time in the past two weeks, which suddenly put Ottawa’s playoff spot into serious jeopardy. Up front, Mark Stone missed a significant amount of time in late February with an injury and hasn’t looked 100 per cent healthy since returning. Stone is currently mired in a 14-game goalless drought, which is exceedingly rare for one of the most consistent offensive players on the roster.

But the Senators have been able to withstand offensive slumps from Stone, Bobby Ryan and Brassard down the stretch and qualify for the playoffs.

They may not have earned a nickname like the Pesky Sens, but one could certainly make an argument that this year’s club is every bit as resilient as the squad that captured everybody’s hearts four years ago. Under Boucher, the Senators never went more than two games without getting a point – a claim that no other Eastern Conference team can make. In a season of tumultuous ups and downs, the Senators were actually the epitome of calm, cool and collected.

And in what had to be a sign of the hockey gods finally smiling on the Senators, it seemed fitting that the Senators would clinch a playoff berth on Clarke MacArthur’s 32nd birthday on Thursday night – with the veteran forward in the lineup.

Just imagine telling a Senators fan a few weeks ago that the Senators would clinch a playoff spot with MacArthur in the lineup, but Karlsson out due to injury.

Nobody would have predicted that scenario unfolding a couple of weeks ago.

But once again, it’s a great example of how the 2016-17 Senators got the destination that Guy Boucher was hoping for – just not taking the route anybody expected.