Senators’ Linus Ullmark has found his groove – and that’s bad news for the Leafs
Along with the growing seed of doubt in Leafland, the confidence is rising within the Ottawa Senators, especially with their goaltender starting to step up when it matters most.
While many have been pointing fingers at the Toronto Maple Leafs‘ inefficiency while trying to eliminate the Ottawa Senators, one of the more overlooked aspects of the Senators’ turnaround has been the play of goaltender Linus Ullmark.
After playing relatively poorly in the three losses to the Maple Leafs earlier in the series, Ullmark has started to look like the netminder that was a big part of the Ottawa heading to the Stanley Cup Playoffs for the first time in eight years. After playing well in Game 4, the Swedish netminder posted a 29-save shutout on Tuesday night to push the series to a sixth game on Thursday.
On Wednesday’s edition of Daily Faceoff LIVE, former NHL goaltender Carter Hutton, a former teammate of Ullmark, explained what has been working for him in these last two games of The Battle of Ontario.
Carter Hutton: When I watched Linus in that first couple games, he just looked so locked in. Especially Game 2, where there’s a few plays where Morgan Rielly scored backdoor where he’s already down. He’s already kind of locked in his edges. He doesn’t have any lateral movement to his play. Then I watched him last night – it looks like the Linus Ullmark we’ve come to know.
He has a little bit of flow to his game. What Linus likes to categorize is recoil in his game. So, as the puck is traveling at him, he’s creating a little bit of momentum, a little bit of flow back toward the goal line. So, then, when the puck does travel east-west on him, he has movement instead of being so locked in and dialed in on his edges. So, last night was a great example of…the confidence, just the swagger that he has. He made it look so easy last night. And I think that’s a scary thing for Toronto. You look at a team that hasn’t been able to finish. Their record 0-for-30 on the power play in elimination games and not getting points from their big dogs. Now, with Linus Ullmark starting to play good…there is a lot of confidence and a lot of good things going Ottawa’s way heading into Game 6.
You can watch the full segment and entire episode here…