Playing consistently is a staple of good hockey teams, and for the Ottawa Senators, it has been an issue that has plagued them for the better parts of the season.

One minute, they resemble a tight and cohesive defensive team whose aggressiveness, stickwork and gap control choke the neutral zone, stifling offensive rushes and creating turnovers. In the defensive zone, they keep the opposition to the outside, generating a higher volume of perimeter shots.

The next minute, poor reads, anticipation, and rotations have led to opposition chances and goals.

Defending, as Nick Jensen has often alluded to, is predicated on teamwork. But, in this recent stretch of losses, the Senators have been let down by the performance of their blue line.

Although the Senators were on the right side of the five-on-five shot metrics (CF%) these past three games, they were outscored (3 to 10) and outchanced (56 to 65). In these three games, the Senators' third pairing, in particular, has taken a lot of heat. Tyler Kleven has been on the ice for half of the opposition's goals, but the numbers have been downright ugly, whether it was Jacob Bernard-Docker or Travis Hamonic flanking him.

In the 23 minutes and 03 seconds of ice time that Kleven played with Hamonic or Bernard-Docker, the Senators generated 41.03 percent of the shots (CF%), 33.33 percent of the shots on goal (SF%), zero goals (0 GF%), 12.50 expected goals (xGF%), and 18.75 percent of the scoring chances according to NaturalStatTrick's game logs.

The third pairing's performance has been abysmal, but it has only slightly been worse than what Thomas Chabot and Nick Jensen provided for the Senators over the same stretch of games.

In the 34 minutes and 20 of ice time, the Senators have generated 40.28 percent of the shots (CF%), 38.46 percent of the shots on goal (SF%), 33.33 percent of the goals for (GF%), 26.86 percent of the expected goals (xGF%), and 29.41 percent of the scoring chances (SCF%).

It is hard enough to win when one of your pairings is ineffective, let alone two. When more than half the game is spent defending in your end, it makes winning almost impossible, which is reflected by their results during the homestand.

Execution needs to improve across the roster, but everything starts with the back end. If this group cannot perform at a higher level soon, the Senators will risk digging themselves into a hole they cannot climb out of.