What Do the Senators Need Shane Pinto to Do Better?

There is a funny thing about building a hockey team. Everybody notices the stars. The 40-goal scorers get the attention, the big contracts make the headlines, and the young prospects get everybody excited about the future. But when you get into the playoffs, you usually discover that you need a few other things, too.

You need players you can trust when the game gets difficult. That may be where Shane Pinto becomes particularly important to the Ottawa Senators.

Pinto may not be the Senators’ offensive star, but he matters.

Pinto isn't likely to become the biggest offensive star on this team. With Tim Stützle and Dylan Cozens ahead of him down the middle, he's probably going to settle into a different kind of role. And honestly, that may be perfectly fine. Last season, Pinto scored 23 goals and 46 points in 72 games. Over 84 games, that's roughly a 54-point pace. That's pretty good production for a player who isn't necessarily going to get the best offensive opportunities every night.

But the points are only part of the story. Pinto started just 32.9 percent of his shifts in the offensive zone, which tells you that Ottawa was already trusting him with some of the less glamorous work. And then there was the Selke voting. Pinto finished sixth.

The Senators should get excited about Pinto’s potential.

He wasn't just hanging around the bottom of the voting. He received more first-place votes than several players who finished ahead of him. That suggests the people watching the defensive side of the game closely are starting to notice what Pinto is doing. And he's only 25. That's an important part of this story.

If Pinto were 31, you might look at his defensive reputation and say, "Well, that's what he is." But at 25, there is still room for the offensive game to catch up with the defensive one. Maybe that's the next step. If he gives them 25 goals and 50-plus points while becoming one of the league's better defensive centres, that's a pretty valuable player. And probably a very useful player in April.

That's the reason Pinto could become so important to the Senators’ future.

Ottawa has now made the playoffs in consecutive seasons. The next challenge isn't simply getting there again. It's figuring out how to win when the games get tighter, the best players are checking each other, and every mistake seems to matter twice as much.

That's where a player like Pinto becomes important. You can put him on the penalty kill. You can trust him defensively. You can put him against good players. And if he can give you 20 to 25 goals at the other end, suddenly he isn't just a useful middle-six centre. He's a playoff piece. The $7.5-million contract indicates Ottawa believes more is coming.

Pinto just needs to become better at what he already does.

The interesting thing is that Pinto doesn't necessarily have to become something completely different to justify it. He just has to become a little better at everything he already does.

And if that happens, Ottawa may discover it has something almost as valuable as another star: a centre who can help win the games that stars alone can't win.