Ticket Contest... Plus... Avery Mania

We got another ticket contest folks.

This time we are giving away a Subway Savings Pack (priced as low as $99), which includes 4 tickets and 4 six-inch subs from Subway, a pretty good package if you want to bring the family to the game or a few buddies.

The package we are giving away today is for the Monday, November 22 game at Scotiabank Place against the Los Angeles Kings (there's three more games you can get this deal for - the Thrashers on Dec. 13, the Ducks on Jan. 18, and the Islanders on Feb. 15).

In order to win this package for the Kings tilt, just be the 4th person to email me at jeremymilks@hotmail.com with the correct answer to this question:

Name This Former Ottawa Senators Player: He finished his Senators career with 142 goals and went on to play two seasons with the Atlanta Thrashers. Hint: He also briefly played for the Los Angeles Kings in his career.

Send me the name of the player and your full name (so you can pick up the tickets at Scotiabank Place) and the 4-ticket package is yours. I'll email you by end of day Thursday at the latest if you've won the tickets.

Good luck

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A few quick thoughts for your Wednesday morning:

1. Count me in the group that puts some of the blame on the Oilers Ladislav Smid for not being prepared for Sean Avery's "sucker punch" on Sunday night. Everyone knows Avery's penchant for doing the unexpected, and Smid should have had his guard up after asking Avery to dance and getting declined. I've heard two different stories - one is that Avery flat out said no to the fight request from Avery, the other that he kept telling Smid "wait, wait, wait". Whichever one is true, Smid was facing Avery at the time and even tried to get away from the punch. Sure, it was greasy, but Smid left himself open to a blow the moment he challenged Avery to a fight. It may not have been the honourable sort of fight that we are used to seeing with the heavyweights who tend to schedule the scraps before a faceoff, but to call it a sucker punch is stretching the truth a little. What Todd Bertuzzi did to Steve Moore was a suckerpunch. This incident was more like bad manners.

2. Sean Avery is hated by many for good reason, but some people in the media get way too riled up and over reactive when it comes to his antics. People should remember guys like Dave "Tiger" Williams, who was every bit as controversial on the ice as Avery, yet people look back on his antics rather fondly. Even though Williams won't admit it, and there's no video footage of it, it's commonly accepted that he was the Vancouver Canuck who skated by the Buffalo Sabres bench in a 1980 playoff game and hit Sabres coach Scotty Bowman over the head with his stick, knocking the legendary coach (with a sensitive metal plate in his head) to the ground behind the players who were involved in a bench area scrum, unaware that Williams was about to go head hunting for some of the biggest game in NHL history. Now imagine for a moment the response if Avery did that? Whoa Nelly!

3. Gotta love this version of events relayed by the Hockey News Ken Campbell about the hapless Islanders announcing the termination of coach Scott Gordon on Monday:

The New York Islanders held a conference call Monday morning to officially announce Scott Gordon’s firing as coach and the promotion of Jack Capuano to replace him and, in true Islander form, it turned into a comedy of errors. At one point it was announced GM Garth Snow had joined the conference call, followed about five seconds later by an announcement he had left the conference call. Later on in the call, all you could hear was play-by-play of a soccer game, then Bad Romance by Lady Gaga.

4. Why isn't Chris Phillips signed yet? Bryan Murray should just get this done right now. Phillips is the kind of guy, on and off the ice, that you want in your organization for life. If they both wanted to, it's not far fetched to think of Phillips and Daniel Alfredsson one day having a hand in running this team. It was tough to see Anton Volchenkov leave, but losing Phillips would hurt even more.

5. There's a lot of guys who battle hard for the Senators, but overall, not many exert more brute effort than Jesse Winchester. This guy always has his head down, ready to grind out whatever space he can and he takes more abuse than almost anyone on this team. Winchester doesn't get any headlines, and precious few points, but he's a great fourth line player for this Senators team right now.

And finally, our thoughts are with the Richardson family on the day when they celebrate the life of their daughter Daron.