Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Jets Fly Into Town For First Time Since 1995

The last time the Ottawa Senators faced a team from Winnipeg at home was when they played the original Jets (now the Phoenix Coyotes) on Wednesday November 22 1995 at the old Ottawa Civic Centre at Lansdowne Park, almost two months to the day before the Senators moved permanently to the Palladium in Kanata.

And thanks to You Tube, there's a whole package of in-depth highlights from this 3-1 Jets victory in pretty good quality.

For the Senators, we get views of the doomed Dave "Sparky" Allison behind the bench along with his assistant coach Pierre McGuire (who is just as bald as he is today). We see signs that say "Dump Sexton Now", referring of course to Randy Sexton, the beleaguered GM at the time who would get replaced by Pierre "The Ghost" Gauthier not long after this game. You get to see Daniel Alfredsson in his rookie year when he was wearing that brutal helmet. You get Radek Bonk, you get Alexandre Daigle (who Greg Millen says was "sulking" under recently departed coach Rick Bowness), and you get Don Beaupre in nets. For the Jets you get Nikolai Khabibulin, Alexei Zhamnov, Dave Manson, Shane Doan and of course Teemu Selanne.





Now, here's a question. Which is the better team? The Senators from November 1995 who would go on to finish last in the NHL with 18 wins, 59 losses and 5 ties for 41 points, or this year's Senators?

Tough question.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'd pay good money to turn back the clock to those days.
That was a team without inflated salaries and egos, no-movement clauses and that just gritted it out, day in and day out.

They had no illusions about their skills and capacities but they brought it EVERY NIGHT.

Our current "team" could do well to remember that...lunchpail effort and all.

why, back in my day... said...

Hardest eyeroll at that comment. Oy vey. Yes, let's bring back the good old terrible days? Live in the nowwwwwww...contemporiiiiiize..............................................................................................MAAAAAAAAN.

Anonymous said...

We'er in the trough on the rebuild people, at the bottom.
Remember the Flyers were in this boat only 3-4 years ago.

During the season we can trade philips or alfie or spezza (assuming they waive) and grab the first pick this year (bc we wont win another game) and get great assets in return to complement a top three pick.

One thing we need to do though is remove Murray from office ASAP. We should also remove that monkey owner - I heard he's been shopping the team.

Anonymous said...

how awesome is the arena?? i remember the days watching the games on cable thinking how dark and small the place was. would never happen in todays nhl with billionaire owners, multi millionaire players and commissioner...