OTTAWA — Rest can be a weapon in professional hockey, but the wound to the Ottawa Senators on Tuesday was self-inflicted. 

Linus Ullmark was coming off four days of rest to prepare for a monumental game in Sunrise, Fla. But within eight seconds, an outrageously bad play set the tone for his team.

It was tied for the quickest goal the Senators had ever allowed to begin a game. 

The Senators would go on to be shellacked 6-3 on Tuesday by the host Florida Panthers; it was a quick but painful death. 

But it was a goal that simply cannot be allowed by Ullmark in a game of that magnitude. 

On the weekend, Ullmark didn’t play in a pivotal game due to fatigue.

“I want to play Linus every night. He needed a rest, and he wasn’t available to start tonight,” said Senators head coach Travis Green at the time. 

Ullmark gave up two goals 1:06 into the game, ultimately allowing five goals on 16 shots before a mercy pull. In the Senators’ biggest game of the season — which every game is, at this point — their netminder let them down and they let their netminder down. 

There was a moment in the beginning when the Senators almost escaped the onslaught, but another awful goal allowed by Ullmark at the end of a five-on-three penalty-kill sequence made it 3-0.

The Senators lost the plot because of the shell shock of not getting a save early. Most teams deflate when their goalie does. Senators’ fans have a Ph.D. in watching bad goaltending.

“Disappointing,” said Green, post-game. “We talked about the importance of a start in this building, and that was the opposite. Take three penalties in the first five or six minutes, give up two power-play goals. It’s 3-0 five minutes into the game and 5-0, 14 minutes in.”

You wonder if the two days of much-needed rest for the remainder of the team, basking in the Florida sun, distracted the team too. Brady Tkachuk did an autograph signing with his brother on Monday. That’s fun, unlike the performance on Tuesday.  There is a metaphor in there about signing off for the season, but we digress. 

Brother Matthew had four points in the Tkachuk bowl. He was the better Tkachuk. 

“We just looked flat, to be honest,” said Green. “I thought we looked flat. Didn’t have a lot of energy. Yeah, that’s about the best way I could put it.”

The Senators have lost three in a row and have looked worse each time. 

Implosion as a byproduct of a lack of saves is an over-explored muscle in Senators franchise history. They sit last in team save percentage, as they have done through much of the season. Only one team in the last decade has made the playoffs with the league’s worst goaltending. It’s hard to win when a team’s backbone is breaking down. 

The Florida game might provide the lasting imprint of Ullmark’s career as an Ottawa Senator. After allowing the fifth goal, he seemed to laugh it off. 

It wasn’t a laughing matter but maybe it was the “mind of a goldfish,” a phrase Ullmark has used in the past. 

A necessary caveat: Everyone hopes Ullmark is in a better spot mentally after taking a leave of absence for his mental health earlier this season. At the same time, his availability, productivity and future in Ottawa feels more uncertain than ever. He’s paid a lot of money to be excellent and available. 

Ullmark entered the season with a “terrible showing” — his words, not ours — to begin training camp.

“I have a pretty high standard, and I don’t think I’m getting up to that standard as of yet,” he said at the start of training camp. He later vowed to change his summer routines to better prepare for next season. 

For a few games after the Olympic break, it seemed as though Ullmark had regained his confidence: before Tuesday night’s game, he’d lost twice in regulation in his last 19 games and had a .904 save percentage with a plus-6.89 goals saved above expected since his return from personal leave on Jan. 31, according to Natural Stat Trick. In that span, he also had some poor play that cost Ottawa points, but arguably his best two games of the season came in his previous two appearances against, Detroit and Pittsburgh. Then he was too tired to play.

The Linus Ullmark experience has been a roller-coaster. Big highs and low troughs, and you never know what’s going to happen next. It makes you think about why both Buffalo and Boston gave up on him after his excellent play for both franchises. 

There are still eight games to write the story of the 2025-26 Senators, but you have to wonder if Ullmark will be part of the 2026-27 version.

That said, don’t put it all on the netminder. The players were awful too: they wilted.

“We just weren’t good enough tonight. Flat out, we had a lot of players that weren’t good enough,” said Green.

The Senators had a chance late in the game to get back in with a five-on-three and a full five-minute major power play near the end of the third period due to a late hit from Noah Gregor on rookie Carter Yakemchuk. In yet another bout of bad luck, Yakemchuk looked dizzy after taking the hit and did not return. Green provided no update on the 20-year-old’s injury status after the game. 

Nevertheless, without Yakemchuk, Jake Sanderson or Thomas Chabot, all injured, the power play was listless. The Senators miss their horses: they are running at 16 per cent since Chabot went down. They were 0-for-5 on Tuesday night. If they even went 2-for-5, it would be a different story in Florida. The effects of missing four defencemen and potentially a fifth, if Yakemchuk is down, are ominous. The Senators simply cannot defend and create offence like they have all season. Their recent three-game losing streak came as injuries piled up.

What’s crazy is that despite an awful loss, the Senators still control their own destiny, because Columbus, the New York Islanders, Detroit and Philadelphia all lost in regulation Tuesday. On a day when they couldn’t withstand another awful out-of-town scoreboard, they were blessed with faint hope. Combine that with Sanderson closing in on a return, maybe Tuesday was just a bump in the road.  Sanderson could ultimately be the Senators’ saviour. 

And yet once again the Senators are back in a goaltending crisis. Who starts on Thursday? Who rests? Who’s the better goaltender right now? The Senators’ choice is between a wobbly Ullmark or playing backup James Reimer on Thursday and for the rest of the season. 

Regardless, the optics are terrible. 

All we know is the team and its No. 1 goaltender are struggling, not a recipe to sneak into the playoffs.