Spoiler alert: Inconsistent Sens not contenders Just when you think the Ottawa Senators have put a potential season-saving win under their belt, they turn around and get embarrassed, Ian Mendes writes.

Take a moment and try and pick out the Ottawa Senators most embarrassing game this season.

It had to be Thursday’s contest in New Jersey, where they allowed the Devils to score five times in the first period. It doesn’t get much worse than trailing 5-0 before the game is even 20 minutes old, right?

But wait.

Maybe they hit rock bottom in the game that started the road trip, getting pummelled 7-1 in Washington. The only problem is there are two other games in which the Sens have surrendered seven goals this season; one in Boston and one in Nashville. The Senators, it should be noted, are the only NHL team to allow seven goals in a game on three different occasions this season.

Let’s not forget the night where they surrendered 27 shots in the first period at the Bell Centre in Montreal. We should probably also toss in the night where Mikkel Boedker scored a hat trick against the Sens – but I’ll leave it up to you as to which one of Boedker’s hat tricks you want to choose: Oct. 24 or Nov. 28.

The truth of the matter is there are too many of these games to choose from when it comes to the 2015-16 Senators

.It’s a trend that has been with this team for the majority of this season; long stretches of inconsistent and sloppy play that are momentarily suspended by brief snippets of hope. Wins over Chicago, Dallas, St. Louis and Los Angeles were impressive and could trick you into thinking this team could compete with Western Conference powerhouses. Just when you think they’ve got a potential season-saving win under their belt, they turn around and get embarrassed, making it feel like everything is back to square one.

So let’s make one thing clear: As we sit about a month away from the Feb. 29 trade deadline, there should be no illusions that this team is a Stanley Cup contender. Are they a playoff contender? Sure, but that’s more of a function of the parity under the current system, where virtually every team is alive in the race.

There will be the temptation to make a deal at the deadline to put this into the playoffs because as some people will tell you, “Once you get into the playoffs, anything can happen.”

That line of thinking is completely flawed because no team has ever lucked their way into the Stanley Cup. Don’t listen to the fans that bring up the 2012 Los Angeles Kings who won the Stanley Cup as a No. 8 seed. That team finished two points out of winning the division and was five points clear of the next team behind them, so it’s not like they barely squeaked into the playoffs on the last weekend.

The Kings won the Stanley Cup again in 2014, further validating the 2012 Stanley Cup as something much more than a fluke or an example of “just get into the playoffs and anything can happen.”

The clock always has a way of striking midnight on Cinderella and exposing the pretenders from the contenders. No sloppy and defensively challenged team has ever suddenly got their act together and banded together for an eight-week run that resulted in a Stanley Cup championship.

Spoiler alert: it’s not going to happen this season either.

In the last 20 seasons, only one team has won a Stanley Cup in a year where they allowed seven goals against in three different games. That club was the 1995-96 Colorado Avalanche, and it should be noted that two of those seven-goal games happened before the team traded for Patrick Roy. I think we can all agree that nobody is going to confuse this year’s Senators with an Avalanche squad that featured Roy, Joe Sakic and Peter Forsberg.

Great teams are allowed to have an off night here or there. But when you’ve had as many as the Ottawa Senators have in 2015-16, the defensive breakdowns become a defining characteristic of the team as opposed to an aberration.

Sure, the Senators have some terrific pieces on their roster: the best defenceman on the planet, a collection of very talented forwards and dependable goaltending. But there are too many things absent from this roster – especially on the back end – to make you a believer in this group moving forward this season.

Are the Ottawa Senators good enough to make the playoffs in the Eastern Conference? Of course they are. They might even be able to win a round or two.

But are they good enough to win the Stanley Cup? The answer right now has to be a definitive no.

The distinction between those two questions is an important one as we move closer to the trade deadline next month.