Senators Lose Thomas Chabot for 1-2 Weeks Because Ottawa Can't Have Nice Things

The Ottawa Senators just got handed their scheduled Thomas Chabot injury update, and it is exactly as frustrating as you would expect. The veteran defenseman is officially out one to two weeks with an upper-body injury, according to Daily Faceoff.

Losing your top-pairing anchor for a fortnight is the kind of news that makes a coach stare blankly at a whiteboard. Chabot eats massive minutes, and now that workload gets dumped directly onto the shoulders of Jake Sanderson and whoever else is brave enough to hop over the boards.

"Daily Faceoff reported that Chabot is out 1-2 weeks with an upper-body injury."

Ottawa is coming off a rough 3-1 loss to the Philadelphia Flyers, and losing their defensive safety blanket right now is brutal timing. Chabot’s injury history reads like a medical textbook at this point, with a broken arm ending his season early just last spring. When he is healthy, he is a game-changer, but keeping him on the ice has become a statistical coin flip.

Relying on the Senators' blue line to stay intact is like trusting a gas station sushi roll on a road trip. You might get away with it for a little while, but eventually, you are going to pay a terrible price.

For anyone looking at the puck line, this completely changes the math. Taking a heavy-minute guy out of the rotation forces third-pairing defensemen into matchups they have no business taking, which usually translates to high-danger scoring chances for the other guys.

The Senators have to figure out their defensive pairings immediately, because the Florida Panthers are rolling into town next. If Ottawa cannot find a way to patch the massive hole Chabot leaves behind, that upcoming matchup is going to look less like a hockey game and more like a live-action horror movie.