It's official, the Senators are in a slump. How do you define a slump? Well it's easy, the NHL has a "L10" statistics which gives the results of the team's last 10 games. At one point in February, the Sen's L10 stat was 10-0-0. Now it has moved to 4-5-1. When you losses in your last 10 games outscore your wins, you're in a slump.

Now a slump can be a good thing or a bad thing. It all depends on what causes the slump. It's a really bad thing when it's caused by lack of talent because there's no getting out of that slump. But that's not the case for the Senators. There's a whackload of talent on the team.

The other alarm bell is when a team has stopped caring. This is obviously not the case for the Senators. They are making mistakes. Some players, of course, could care a whole lot more, and have shown that tendency in the past. Alex Kovalev and Jason Spezza are two names that come to mind immediately as underperformers who can do much more when they put their minds to it.

No, this slump is caused by a team that has lost its way. To me, it looks like the price of progress. In looking at the wins and losses over the season so far, the Senators slumps have been interspersed with winning streaks. The first slump bottom out on November 14 against the Ranger, and was followed by a winning trend, the top of which was the shoot-out win against the Ducks on December 6. The next slump was a long one, which bottomed out twice, once on December 23 with the 8-2 loss to the Penguins, and again on January 12, with the 6-1 loss to Atlanta. In between those two bottoms, the team was average.



This was, of course, followed by the near-miraculous 11-game streak which shot the Senators into the stratosphere, even though injury plagued during the first part of that run. What made the difference? The Senators played the Cory Clouston system flawlessly, relied on the depth that was only on paper until that time, the two highly paid snipers named above woke up and started scoring, the boys had fun and confidence.

The Sens have lost their edge since just before the Olympic break, and it may not be something to worry about quite yet. Statistically, the Sens are just about ready for an uptick again. They need two thing: a series of losses, and a really resounding loss. The 5-1 loss to the Canucks last night may have been it, but I don't think so.

It would be nice if the timing of the upswing coincided with the start of the post-season. Riding a streak could take the Senators pretty far into the playoffs.