Fabian Zetterlund will fill out the top line along with Tim Stutzle and Brady Tkachuk ahead of the 2025-26 season. He has the experience and, perhaps more importantly, the speed to keep up with the team’s best young forwards. Considering his 17-goal and 36-point breakout season with the San Jose Sharks, the 26-year-old appears to be on the verge of reaching the next level.
However, that hasn’t happened this season. Sixteen games into the season, Zetterlund has just one goal and two assists, but that’s not for lack of trying. He’s spent time with nearly every forward and every defensive line on the Senators roster. Ottawa is doing everything it can to help him, but to no avail.
Something isn’t going well for Ottawa’s Zetlund. No matter where he plays, he can’t seem to find the scoring touch he had a year ago. Even though it’s still early in the season, the Senators are running out of options to help their young sniper find his place on the team.
Zetlund doesn’t work on top line
The theory behind starting Zetterlund with Stutzle was sound. There are few players faster than the 26-year-old Swede, but Stutzler is one of them. Having someone who can keep up with him and make lightning-quick decisions seems to be a recipe for success. Combined with Tkachuk on the other side, he has the potential to be a 24-goal scorer and help dismantle the Senators’ impressive 5-on-5 offense.
Early trials in late 2024-25 appear promising. Although Zetlund only scored 2 goals in 20 games, the lineup of Stutzler and Claude Giroud scored one goal, averaging 22 shots per 60 minutes, and Corsi also had a high shooting rate. The trio is also strong defensively, averaging 1.71 goals per 60 minutes (GA/60). With Stutzler and Tkachuk in the mix, things were even more encouraging, with the team averaging 4 goals per 60 minutes and not conceding a goal in the 30 minutes they played together.
“I thought he created a lot of chances last year,” Senators coach Travis Green told reporters in September. “I thought he was good last year. He’s still improving. (He) looks a little lighter this year, a little faster… I think the goal scorers know how to score, and they do it in different ways. But you’ve got to score, that’s for sure.”
But the 2025-26 target has not yet been achieved. Zetlund’s top line managed 18 shots on goal in 25 minutes, with a shot rate of 6%, which is an average of just 2.6 goals per 60 minutes (GF/60). Tkachuk’s injury didn’t help as the Senators tried to give him and Stutzle time to figure it out, but Zetlund still only had a 1.78 expected goals against rating (xGF) at five-on-five. Meanwhile, Ottawa ranks eighth in the NHL in goals scored this season, averaging 3.35 goals per game and fourth in five-on-five play. Despite Zetterlund’s poor performance, the Senators kept going and he was left behind.
Zetlund cannot stay on the fourth line
If Zetlund can’t play on the top line, then maybe he can have some success on the fourth line. While he’s a strong goal scorer, he’s also a solid defender and if he doesn’t score, maybe he can stop the puck and regain his confidence and do what he does best.
So far, the results have been positive. After 17 games, Zetterlund has an expected goals against rating of 9.81 (xGA) in 219 minutes of action, or approximately 2.7 expected goals per 60 minutes (xGA/60). He averaged about 13 minutes at even strength, meaning he scored in every other game. In practice, he’s even better than that, averaging just 2.5 goals per 60 minutes (GA/60), which is better than Lars Eller, David Perron and Drake Batherson.
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However, the biggest problem is that Zetlund still has not scored and has hardly created scoring opportunities. While the third line of Giroux, Michael Amadio and Sean Pinto has been one of the Senators’ best this season, Zetterlund’s defense was unable to score on the few opportunities they created despite limited ice time. The Senators’ three most-used fourth lines combined with Zetlund to score 16 times in 58 minutes. If Ottawa wants to help Zetlund rediscover his scoring touch, he can’t stay on the fourth line because that obviously won’t help.
Where does Zetlund fit in?
Most recently, Zetterlund returned to the second line alongside Dylan Cozens and Ridly Greig. The trio has had some success all season, scoring one goal on six shots in 18 minutes. But it’s also one of the least effective places the Senators are right now, probably because they’re least familiar with each other. With the exception of Hayden Hodgson, who was recently drafted into the fourth line, the rest of the defense created more scoring chances. Without enough scoring opportunities, a sniper cannot succeed.
That’s the problem. As long as Zetlund struggles individually, he will continue to be an outsider, preventing him from developing better chemistry with teammates and limiting his scoring opportunities. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy: Zetlund struggled to score, so he moved to a new defensive line, where he continued to struggle because he was less familiar with his teammates than anyone else in the front nine.
It was only a matter of time before he made his move again. Even if Zetlund rediscovers his scoring touch with Cozens and Gregg, that will change when Tkachuk returns. Basson now looks like a first-team fixture, which means Perron will return to the second line, where he has the most experience this season. The Senators won’t break up the third line, so Zetterlund will likely be back on the fourth line and his production may stagnate.
That’s not the treatment a player worth $4.275 million deserves, but the Senators don’t have a better option right now. That’s not to say Zetterlund isn’t a good fit for Ottawa; He has been an important addition to the team since joining last season. He’s a speedy winger with the potential to play the first six minutes, which is what the Senators want, and combined with his defensive skills, he helps Ottawa get better.
But Ottawa cannot remain patient forever. The Senators need to make the playoffs, so they need to work with productive players, making it difficult for Zetterlund to break out of this slump. However, this may end up costing them in the long run, as Zetterlund certainly doesn’t want to waste the next three years playing lower-level hockey.
All statistics and metrics taken from Natural Stat Trick, Hockey-Reference and Dobber’s Frozen Tools
