If insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, the Ottawa Senators’ penalty kill has officially gone mad.
As we hit the quarter mark of the 2025-26 season, the numbers are impossible to ignore—and frankly, they are embarrassing. Sitting second-last in the NHL with a penalty kill operating at 69.9 percent, the Senators are essentially handing opponents a free goal every night. After finishing 19th last season—a mediocre but survivable result—the bottom has completely fallen out.
Goaltender Linus Ullmark has taken heat, and the new additions like Lars Eller were supposed to stabilize the unit. But you can’t recruit your way out of a structural failure. The players aren’t the primary problem. The system is.
There is one absolute, no-brainer change head coach Travis Green must make immediately if this team wants to save its playoff hopes: Abandon the passive Diamond formation.
Diamonds Are Not Forever
For nearly two seasons, the Senators have stubbornly adhered to a Diamond penalty kill structure. In theory, the Diamond is designed to counter the modern 1-3-1 power play by challenging the point man and clogging the high slot. When executed perfectly with elite speed and aggression, it works.
But in Ottawa, it has become a stationary disaster.
The fatal flaw in Ottawa’s execution of the Diamond is passivity. The current setup has the forward at the top and the defensemen collapsing too deep, leaving massive seams through the “royal road” (the cross-ice line through the slot). Opposing power plays have figured this out. They aren’t intimidated by Ottawa’s top forward; they simply work the puck to the flanks, stretching the Diamond until it breaks.
Because the Senators’ killers are reacting rather than dictating, they are constantly a half-step behind. We’ve seen it a dozen times this month alone: the puck moves to the half-wall, the Diamond shifts late, a seam pass goes through the box, and Ullmark is left attempting a desperation save on a one-timer from ten feet out. That isn’t goaltending; that’s hanging your goalie out to dry.
Aggression Over Observation
The fix is simple: Switch to a traditional high-pressure Box or a Hybrid Wedge.
The Senators need to stop worrying about the point shot and start taking away the time and space of the playmakers on the half-walls. A traditional Box structure simplifies the assignments. It allows the four killers to stay compact, protecting the house (the slot) while pressuring the puck carrier in zones, rather than chasing the puck around the perimeter in a stretched-out shape.
Travis Green has mentioned wanting “passive-aggressive” play, but right now, the Senators are just passive. A switch to a Box or a Wedge +1 would force the players to engage. It simplifies the reads for the defensemen, who currently look paralyzed deciding whether to challenge the net-front presence or collapse on the backdoor cutter.
With veteran killers like Eller and the mobility of defensemen like Jake Sanderson, the Senators have the personnel to run a high-pressure box that suffocates entries and forces dump-ins. The Diamond requires perfect synchronization, which this group currently lacks.
It is time to stop trying to be the smartest team in the room with a complex structure and start being the hardest team to play against. The Diamond has lost its luster. Scrap it, simplify the kill, and stop the bleeding before the season slips away.
