I’m going to come straight out and say it. I think this is the Ottawa Senators year to win the Stanley Cup. I know you may be laughing at this prognostication, and with probably good reason considering Ottawa’s previous track record, but I think things could be different this year.

Pressure
The Senators managed to lock up the 4th seed in the conference, doing so by flying under the radar. They’re so under the radar that TSN didn’t even include any of their players in their Stanley Cup promos. I believe most of the playoff pressure this year will be centred on the Buffalo Sabres in the East. They made an impressive run to the conference finals last season after making the playoffs with a relatively unheralded team and a rookie goaltender. This year they won the President’s Trophy and the expectation of a Cup win now rests firmly on their shoulders. Ottawa has been in that position a few times and failed to deliver as the odds on favourites. I suspect not having that light shone on them will definitely help them. I relate this team in many ways to the Super Bowl Champion Indianapolis Colts. They forever had the expectation of success heaped on them after numerous fantastic regular season performances, only to fail to live up to the expectation in the playoffs. Indy was a number 3 seed and people really didn’t expect them to win it all given their so-so(by their standards) regular season. I think Ottawa could have something very similar play out for them this year.

Adversity
I think one of the biggest differences between this year and previous years was the adversity the team faced during the season. Typically Ottawa has breezed through the regular season only to hit the wall in the playoffs. The Senators started the season pretty badly, to the point that people were calling for Bryan Murray and John Muckler to be fired and Alfreddsson traded to whoever would take him. The team rallied from their slow start and has been one of the best teams in the NHL point-wise since the start of 2007.

Goaltending
Ottawa’s achilles heel has always been their goaltending. This year they have Ray Emery, with a full year as a starter under his belt and plenty of confidence. Emery was awesome last year in the playoffs and can’t really be faulted for the teams failure to advance. He also had to contend with the whole Dominik Hasek fiasco last year, which couldn’t have helped his confidence. In the Eastern Conference there aren’t really any goalies outside of Brodeur that have lots of playoff experience, with as many as 4 goalies making their playoff debut this year.

Previous History
As much as has been made of Ottawa’s past failures the Sens are a very young team, even younger then the highly touted Pittsburgh Penguins. They don’t carry much of the baggage of the successive losses to the Leafs in the playoffs, but many of them have had that taste of playoff defeat last year. Their stars like Spezza and Heatley are maturing as players and have shown they can carry this team and take some of the load off Daniel Alfreddsson.

I think Ottawa will definitely have their hands full with the Penguins in the first round, but given their lack of playoff experience and unproven goalie situation I suspect the Sens should be able to handle them. Much of the pressure to perform will be solely on Crosby and Malkin, who have spent .