The Senators may yet provide another late winter marvel.
Close enough to taste a wild-card position, Ottawa doesn’t need the same level of miracle finish it delivered last season with a 23-4-3 push over the final 30 games. The entire premise was so ridiculous, a masked man called The Hamburglar won 20 of those games in a 20-1-2 stretch. A year later, the deal with the devil evidently expired, Andrew Hammond has just three wins in 13 games played (3-6-1) this season.
This time around, Hammond has the best seat to view developments as starting goaltender Craig Anderson tries to backstop the Senators to a top-eight position in the Eastern Conference.