There are two Ottawa Senators teams this season, and only one of them is any good.

The one with Linus Ullmark in net is 7-1.

The one without him is 4-5-1.

Add them up and you get 11-6-1, first wild card in the East, and a home date with the Washington Capitals on Tuesday night at 7 p.m. ET at Canadian Tire Centre.

It looks like a contender’s record.

It isn’t.

Ullmark has allowed 10 goals in eight games. His save percentage is .945. That’s better than the .938 he posted in 2022-23, the year he won the Vezina Trophy in Boston.

Last season he finished at .891, the worst full season of his career.

A 33-year-old goalie doesn’t go from .891 to better-than-his-Vezina-year and stay there. That’s a hot streak, and hot streaks have a shelf life. This one got interrupted anyway. Ullmark strained something stretching for a save on Brady Tkachuk on Oct. 21 and missed the next eight games.

Samuel Ersson and Jonas Johansson took the net. They gave up 38 goals between them, on a combined save percentage of .875. Ottawa went 4-3-1 while Ullmark sat.

Now take the goalie out of it and look at the team in front of him.

The Senators get outshot by close to two a night, 27.3 shots against to 25.7 for. That’s 21st in the league.

The power play scores on 13.2 per cent of its chances. Only Chicago is worse.

The penalty kill is 22nd.

After 18 games, Ottawa’s goal differential is plus-four. Boston’s is plus-27. Tampa Bay sits at plus-10, Montreal at plus-eight.

Two of the 11 wins came in shootouts. And when this team loses, it tends to lose loudly. St. Louis won 7-2. San Jose won 6-2. Anaheim won 6-3.

None of that describes a team about to take the Atlantic.

The Atlantic has its own say in the matter. Boston is 13-4-1 and four points clear of Ottawa with the same number of games played. Montreal and Tampa Bay are both ahead of the Senators with a game in hand. Ottawa is fourth in its own division. The wild-card spot is a nice place to stand in November. It’s a long way from a banner.

And this roster has already been told what kind of team it is. Last spring the Senators squeezed in with 99 points as the East’s second wild card, then got swept by Carolina and scored five goals in four games.

Then the captain asked out.

“What changed was a trade request,” general manager Steve Staios said in June, when Brady Tkachuk went to Florida for the ninth and 25th picks in the 2026 draft, a conditional 2029 first-rounder and a 2027 second.

Staios promised the cap room and picks would be put to work.

“We now possess cap space and draft capital and will be actively working to improve our roster.”

The skaters who stayed haven’t been the trouble. Tim Stützle has 23 points in 18 games. Drake Batherson has 18. The top of the lineup is pulling its share.

It’s the rest of the build that is still waiting on that improvement.

Washington comes in at 9-6 with a goaltending problem of its own. Logan Thompson is at .888. Charlie Lindgren is at .881. The Capitals score 3.5 goals a game and give up 3.4, and they’ve played 11 of their 15 games at home. They are a high-event team that will shoot at whoever is in the Ottawa net.

That is where the Ottawa Senators playoff picture really gets decided, on Tuesday and every night after. The Ottawa Citizen reports Ullmark is set to return against the Capitals after coming off injured reserve Sunday.

“He’s close,” coach Travis Green said Saturday morning.

Ullmark, on the night he got hurt, kept it simple.

“I felt a lot of pain. That’s why I left.”

For anyone pricing Ottawa, Tuesday or in the standings, the record is the wrong number to start with. The goalie is the right one. With Ullmark at his best, this is a team that can beat anybody on a given night. Without him, it has played worse than the Florida and Buffalo clubs chasing it in the standings. Neither version comes with a guarantee.

So is the start real?

Real enough for a wild card. Not real enough for the Atlantic.

Contenders win when the goalie is ordinary.

Ottawa needs him to be perfect.