Sens Enter Their "Lovable Losers" Era On The Way To Contention

“It’s deja-vu all over again.” – Yogi Berra

We’ve been here before, I think.

And I’m not talking about waiting excitedly for a new, probably ill-advised Bill & Ted movie.

I’m talking about watching an Ottawa Senators team drastically trying to switch their identity from out of control train-wreck to lovable losers to, eventually… Stanley Cup contender.

As this season of modest expectations kicks off, the Senators are likely entering their “lovable losers” stage, which is much preferable to the last two seasons where they involuntarily entered the American mainstream pop culture.

The Simpson’s show landed a joke so cutting about the franchise that it made even Leafs and Habs fans feel sorry for the Senators, at least for a day or two. The last time people were laughing so much at this franchise was back in 1993 when ESPN gleefully showed a clip of Sens winger Andrew McBain leaving the Chicago Stadium ice and going ass over teakettle down the stairs to the dressing room.

When McBain lost his footing that night, the Senators record was 9 wins, 56 losses and 4 ties. They wound up losing 14 more times that season, a record that is still hard to understand right now. For their efforts, they were awarded the luxury of drafting Alexandre Daigle, who would go on to fall down many more flights of stairs than McBain ever did, metaphorically speaking.

You’ve heard most of the stories before… holdouts, robberies, bomb threats, bankruptcies, divorce, road rage, trade demands, mascot injuries, fires, line dancing and bad karaoke.

Sens fans have lived through every imaginable horror in their short existence, but only once have they lived through what happened in April 1997.

That’s the month when the jokes stopped. A perennial last-place team full of castaway vets and promising draft picks finally came together and won a meaningful game that clearly altered the course of the franchise.

Let’s go back there for just a moment. Last game of the season. Win and you’re in the playoffs for the first time in team history. The only thing in the way is the Buffalo Sabres, the world’s best goalie in Dominik Hasek and the Senators own history which seemed to preclude anything good happening to nice people.

Unsurprisingly, nobody could score. The Senators are tighter than they’ve looked in weeks, after huge victories against Detroit and Montreal that put them in this position to win in the first place. This was all a new feeling for a lot of us watching at home. Local fans weren’t used to having anything important on the line, other than a $2 Pro-Line ticket.

Sudden alcoholism ran rampant across the city. Bathroom cabinets were raided for available pills. Dogs ran around chasing their tails for hours, feeling the electric stress of their masters.

In the last 5 minutes of the 3^rd period, Alexei Yashin deked out Sabres defenseman Gary Galley, and curled back to the blueline to send a saucer pass to a pinching Steve Duchesne. The ensuing shot was weird to watch, like Duchesne was reaching for a lost tennis ball under the couch with a broom handle. He just sort of flung it out of there and it skipped by Hasek for the eventual clincher.

People snapped. Mentally and physically.

Play-by-play man Dave Schreiber shredded his vocal cords screaming “Yashin across to Duchesne… he…. DU DU DU DU DUCHESNE!”

Sworn enemies embraced on the sodden floors of bars like The Prescott and The Dominion Tavern. Grown men and women wept openly in front of their frightened children. Yashin, not known to smile often, almost swallowed Duchesne’s head in the ensuing celebration.

I watched it in a bar across the country in Vancouver. Drunk old men stared at me as I let out a primal welp that I tried to conceal as best as possible so as not to look like a complete madman. I ran to a payphone to call my family in Ottawa and when the other end picked up all I heard was screaming.

My little brother jumped so high off the couch that he pulled a piston in his back and it hasn’t been right to this day. You know it’s an important game when you walk away with a permanent life-altering injury, player and fan-alike.

You might ask what’s the point of the trip down memory lane? Maybe there’s a chance the people who weren’t around in ‘97 will get lucky a few years from now to witness a team, derided and written-off, to catch a little taste of glory when they weren’t supposed to.

That Senators team went on to lose a 7-game first round series to those very Sabres a couple of weeks later, but from that point on, the team quickly morphed into a contender that suffered a series of devastating playoff losses when expectations were high.

It’s a different feeling to be a front-runner and lose than it is to be an underdog and prove the critics wrong (and still eventually lose). It’s a necessary step on the way to becoming a contender, and the window is brief, but it proves to be some of the most rewarding moments for both die-hard and casual fans.

When you look at the 2019 Ottawa Senators, you might see a last-place team full of kids and veterans on their last tours of the NHL. I see the seeds of a team that’s heading down the same path those early Senators did on their way to that defining ’97 moment.

When Daniel Alfredsson came to this city in 1995, people were openly wondering if the franchise was on its way out of town after just two years in the league. Rumours swirled of coach Dave “Sparky” Allison holding a séance in the Civic Centre to rid the team of bad mojo. If he ever did, it certainly didn’t work while he was still around.

Brady Tkachuk arrived with the team in similar dire circumstances, with star players being dealt and fans sitting on their wallets on the way to a last place finish. Luckily for Alfredsson, management stocked the team with vital draft picks like Marian Hossa, Martin Havlat and timely trades for Wade Redden and Zdeno Chara.

Tkachuk must look around the room and see the likes of Thomas Chabot, Erik Brannstrom, Drake Batherson and trade acquisitions like Anthony Duclair and Nikita Zaitsev and wonder if the worst is finally over. There’s something eerily similar here to what led to that near decade of Stanley Cup contention starting in the late 90’s.

No one’s saying this year’s edition is going to get a chance to clinch a playoff spot on the last day of the season. They might be trying to clinch the 1^st overall draft pick instead where a phenom out of the Quebec League is predicted to be the next consensus franchise player. This time his name is not Alexandre Daigle, but Alexis Lafrenière. And yes, that is a scary coincidence.

All I know is I’m stocking a strong supply of alcohol, pills and at least a pair of Amazon’s most recommended back braces, just in case this thing turns around quicker than we expected.

“Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” – Someone smart probably.

Black Aces Vintage: Alexei Yashin's First Hat-Trick

It was November 3, 1993 in Alexei Yashin's rookie season. It was the 11th game of the season and the Senators only had 2 wins at this point (and Sens fans think they suffer now?) but Yashin already had 6 goals and 4 assists. That was a surprise to many because Yashin wasn't yet the star of the team or the darling of the city. Breaking in the same year was first overall pick Alexandre Daigle, and before the Edmonton game he had matched Yashin's 6 goals and added 8 assists for the team scoring lead.

Then Yash took over. Here's some great footage from that game, including all three of Yashin's goals (he added two assists for a five point night). Yashin also added 4 assists two nights later in Winnipeg against the Jets and finished the year with 79 points. That included 10 more goals and 28 more points than the highly touted Daigle, and Yashin took over the Senators for the next 5 years as the team's superstar while Daigle faded badly and was dealt to the Philadelphia Flyers in 1998 for Vaclav Prospal and Pat Falloon.

This footage is notable because it's in relatively good shape, and there's not much out there of the early Senators years. Fascinating stuff if you ask me. Love the old CJOH logo as well.

Ye Olde Bodycheck Magazine

I wouldn't say I'm a candidate for that Hoarders show just yet, but my wife keeps telling me I have way too much crap, and occasionally I'll pretend to sort it all out which basically consists of me opening a box and finding incredible stuff I haven't looked at in ten years and vowing to never throw it out while my wife drops f-bomb after f-bomb on me as I cower in the basement.

And recently I came across a small bundle of those old Bodycheck magazines, which was the official publication of the Ottawa Senators in the early years published by Jim Steel and had local trivia whiz Liam Maguire as one of their main writers. I believe at one point it was distributed by the Ottawa Citizen but was discontinued sometime in the mid to late 90's only to be resurrected some years later as a playoff-only magazine. To be honest, it's near impossible to find much info about it but if someone can fill me in on the history I'd like to hear it. (You can view a complete 2008 version here).

With the Senators about to embark on their 20th NHL season and planning a series of heritage events (including a jersey that they cruelly did not reveal at today's press conference), here's a quick look back at some of the more garish and dated highlights of the Bodycheck mag that filled the gaps in our Senators knowledge before the internet made us all a bunch of jaded know-it-all's.

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A cover from Alexei Yashin's rookie season in 93-94 which shows Mark Messier about to spear him in the groin. True story: I used to collect Yashin hockey cards almost exclusively and during the late 90's I lived in Toronto for a few years and became a regular at Legends memorabilia shop on King Street. I became pals with the guys working there but they used to tease me mercilessly for being a Yashin collector but I remained defiant, saying Yash was going to be one of the best players of his generation. Now those cards are completely worthless and I wonder if those guys still think back and have a good laugh at how much money I dropped on those damn things.

How many of you actually remember Dave Hannan? He played only 34 games for the Sens in 97 but was a bit of a big deal in town for a while because he won a Cup with Colorado the year before. The designer got a little cheeky there with the crooked K.

Before the Team 1200 (and its predecessor OSR), the games were on CFRA. Very strange to see the Expos and Rough Riders logos here. This town used to be a hardcore Expos/Rough Riders zone.

Back in those days the big prize among players was getting involved with a car dealership (as this beauty Mario Lemieux ad can attest). In fact, it's still a big thing today too.

Jacques Martin knew a hell of a lot about golf in his days with the playoff challenged Senators. That joke was super-lame and way too easy. I apologize.

Dave McLlwain deep into the early 90's Garth Brooks inspired look. He actually had a great season in Ottawa when he scored 43 points in 66 games in the 93-94 season and was one of only a handful of players to play for both the Leafs and the Sens (try and name the others). He ended up playing pro hockey until 2009 when he finished up in Europe. Not a bad career at all.

Bodycheck always had the full page posters which were on the walls of many a kid in the mid-90's. Can you believe how young Wade Redden looks here?

Bodycheck was not known for its wit but this pic gives a cool view of what it was like to play NHL hockey in the Civic Centre with that big half-wall on one side of the rink. I'm sure guys like Jeremy Roenick just loved to play against someone like Daigle. Total bloodbath.

Even Peter Sidorkiewicz had endorsements in this town. It's hard to explain just how excited this town was in 1992 to have an actual NHL hockey team again. Sylvain Turgeon was treated like a Hall of Famer wherever he went.

More Yash. Someday the Sens will wear a version of this sweater again. Mark it down.

And finally, the obligatory photo spread of the fans. Guess which photo should have been left on the cutting room floor? Or at least had a bra photoshopped in. Seriously, that's nasty.

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Senators Core Group Starting To Fade

Note: It's been quiet this week on Black Aces but I'll be posting regularly again very soon. First Christmas with a baby has been much more chaotic than even I could have imagined. For now, here's an article I wrote just before the Senators rang off a couple of wins. The pessimistic tone may seem a little out of place at the moment, but a couple of wins doesn't really change the overall outlook here.

Happy Holidays to all my readers and I'll be back soon with regular columns.

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Sometimes it takes a while for it to really sink in, but soon enough, the signs are there for all to see.

When it’s over, it’s really over.

Maybe, just maybe, that’s what a core group of these Ottawa Senators who have grown up together in better times are starting to think right now. If they aren’t, then at least a lot of others are as they watch the 2010-2011 season slowly slip away for the Senators.

And that’s how it usually happens – slowly. Almost imperceptibly, a gradual weakening of the identity and team spirit through attrition and by letting important personalities leave, and soon enough three and a half seasons have gone by and the good times seem like ancient history for the Senators.

Yet it wasn’t always this way for a key group of Ottawa players who were once the darlings of this city.

For a full ten seasons, from 1997 to 2007, the Ottawa Senators were always on their way up, building towards a Stanley Cup that Daniel Alfredsson once famously said was not a matter of if, but when.

Starting from that foundation year in 1997, the Senators quickly turned into a powerhouse club, winning at first with defensive determination and character under Jacques Martin, and later, as a team that could score at will. It was a fine stretch of hockey, albeit with a few major playoff disappointments to the Toronto Maple Leafs .

Ten years of winning, exciting hockey. Not many teams outside of Detroit, New Jersey and Colorado could boast of similar consistency during most of that era.

And a lot of that consistency came from a small group of players the Senators drafted who became their heart and soul over the years, a tight-knit group of friends who were close on and off the ice. It maybe wasn’t the “Boys On The Bus” mystique of the 80’s Oilers, but there was a while there when Ottawa’s young and talented core was the envy of the league. They were the guys that were going to put it all together and win the Stanley Cup.

Daniel Alfredsson, Alexei Yashin, Wade Redden, Chris Phillips, Marian Hossa, Martin Havlat, Mike Fisher, Chris Neil, Zdeno Chara, Ray Emery, Jason Spezza and Dany Heatley.

They came and went, most notably the swapping of Heatley with Hossa, and that trade nearly put the Senators over the top with Heatley and Spezza starting the second wave of youngsters to compliment the established guys like Alfredsson and Redden.

But of that core group, only Marian Hossa has a Stanley Cup ring and three finals appearances to his name. And of course, he did it in another uniform, four teams removed from his Ottawa days.

And if the remaining group of Senators from that era want that same ring, and you know they desperately do, they might also have to leave the only organization they’ve ever known to do it.

For many, the time may be near.

Alfredsson, whose presence on the team naturally coincided with the rise of the organization, looks like a player who has run out of miracles. During the previous decade, he was sometimes able to will his team to wins when they didn’t have any gas left in the tank. He could drive to the net and protect the puck with those tree-trunk legs whenever he felt like it. He was the real captain, the “people’s choice”, even when Alexei Yashin wore the “C” on his sagging chest.

Now Alfredsson, while still a great player, doesn’t seem to be able to do it all on his own anymore. And no one is begrudging him that. On a team headed nowhere fast, he remains its best player. But will the constant losing make him rethink playing out the last years of his contract? Or even, dare we say it, accept a move to a contending team, something he has never completely ruled out when asked in the past?

As the season starts to tick away to oblivion, you can bet he is going to be asked those questions. And we may be surprised by the answer we eventually hear.

Then you have Chris Phillips, battling through a tough year, playing big minutes with different partners and doing it all without a contract for the next season. You can bet uncertain thoughts are running through his mind right now. For a player who has given everything to his team and to his community, he unfairly dangles in the wind most likely because General Manager Bryan Murray doesn’t even know if he’ll be back to manage the team next season. Like Phillips, Murray is waiting on a contract as well, one that might never materialize, depending on Eugene Melnyk’s frame of mind when the smoke has cleared after this season.

Phillips has already seen his best defensive partner of the past decade, Anton Volchenkov, leave town during free-agency and walk right into the disaster that is the New Jersey Devils, a team that is going through much of the same problems as the Senators after a fall from grace. Phillips may be looking at that situation and thinking the grass isn’t greener, but he may not even be offered a contract when it’s all said and done.

Mike Fisher has been in Ottawa almost as long as the others but he continues to struggle with injuries and inconsistent play. With a lot of good years still left in him, it would be inconceivable that he would be moved but if a shakeup of the core was deemed necessary, he’s the obvious candidate to offer up to the rest of the league once his full no movement clause expires after this season.

Jason Spezza is the tweener, just starting to round out his game as the franchise begins to decline. He’s too young and talented to consider moving but too old to be the basis for a complete rebuild. Spezza is also a player who needs a sniper on his wing to utilize his full talents but the Senators are incapable of providing that for him right now, and likely won’t be able to until they draft one. Don’t hold your breath.

For the most part, the remaining core players on this team have played well, even through the last three mediocre seasons, but they are also getting less and less support as the losses pile up. Moves made by Bryan Murray to bring in Alexei Kovalev and Sergei Gonchar have the feel of desperation about them, as if he is running out of fingers to plug holes in the dam that has started to leak like a sieve. Kovalev and Gonchar were important, key players on the teams they were plucked from, but the transplant didn’t take and the Senators are left with a bunch of spare parts that no longer seem to work together.

These moves, especially the Kovalev signing, don’t look good in hindsight, but it should also be remembered that Murray took over a team that already had its best years and he was presented with a host of problems that cropped up after losing the Stanley Cup final in 2007, this current team’s last gasp at greatness.

He inherited a lot of expiring contracts and a few swelled heads who quickly got bent out of shape when their roles were reduced by various coaches Murray brought in.

Murray will ultimately wear the failure of this team, but you could say they were headed this way anyways because of the difficulty of keeping teams intact during the salary cap era. Murray has, at least, shored up the farm club and because of him, there are a slew of good prospects in the pipeline and one or two skating with team right now.

And none more so than Erik Karlsson, the player who truly represents the future of this franchise.

Murray will likely be long gone by the time Karlsson realizes his full potential, but as the familiar names of Alfredsson, Phillips, Fisher and Spezza start to fade or are sent away, there is at least one player who carries that same sort of promise with him, in the way he skates, in the way he can change the pace of the game, in the way he competes when it means the most.

That promise of good times ahead may be carried by a skinny 20 year old, but at least someone is carrying the torch, as dark as the present may be.

Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous - Comrie Gets Some

First Mike Comrie is spotted in Ottawa's Hy's Steakhouse cutting into a medium rare rib-eye with none other than Jack Bauer's daughter Elisha Cuthbert during the Sens run to the Cup finals. Apparently they were just friends as Cuthbert was dating Sean "The Ratfucker" Avery at the time.








Undaunted, Comrie moved down the list of talentless blondes and came up with ... Hilary Duff. Ottawa players have dated celebrities before - Yash with C-lister Carol Alt (check out her acting chops in the made for TV movie Swarmed. Not since Bambi on her first sheet of ice has anyone looked so clueless) , Daigle who pretended to date Pamela Anderson (she couldn't stop laughing when a reporter asked her about the "romance") but ex-Sen Comrie seems to be the man on the move these days.

Too bad Comrie didn't re-sign in Ottawa because then we might have gotten to spot Hilary in the organic section of Hartmans grocery store on Bank Street. Oh, we would have screamed ...

Canadian Kids "Gone Wild"

Canada’s newest royal family, the Staal’s from Thunder Bay, Ontario, have gotten into a little trouble it seems. Eric from the Carolina Hurricanes and younger brother Jordan from the Pittsburgh Penguins were thrown in the clink for a “bachelor party gone awry”. In short, they were just acting on their inner Canadian impulses which is to drink enough beer to kill a mule and then assume that everyone they see wants to party as well, including motorists going by on the highway. When the cops showed up, half of them ran into the forest which is funny enough in itself. Even the cops were having a laugh over it, one of them saying that they were just “Canadian kids gone wild!” Fair enough. It’s not like they were engaging in a dog fighting ring or anything. They’ll get a soft kick in the ass from the authorities and everyone will have a good story to tell down the road. But the Staal brothers are not the only Canadian kids to have gone “wild” in the past. Let’s refresh our memories:

Koo Koo Bananas. That’s the name of the bar in Oshawa where a young Eric Lindros was arrested for pouring a beer over a womans head who resisted his advances in 1993. At the time, Eric was the golden boy (well not in Quebec) and the public was shocked that he was giving golden showers to their young women in sleazy dives. Eric survived this “wild” episode and went on to be the most dominant player of the 90’s until Canadian kid gone steamroller, Scott Stevens, relocated Lindros’ head in the 2000 playoffs. They’re still looking for Eric’s career.

When Chris Pronger was at the mature age of 19 and playing for the struggling Hartford Whalers, he quickly gained a reputation as a hell-cat by beating the living shit out of a few people in a full fledged barroom brawl and then getting charged with drunk driving not long afterwards. Then Mike Keenan brought him to the St. Louis Blues and beat the living shit out him until he was a star player. Only problem is, Keenan threw down a few golden pops himself and got into a moving tin can back in 1990 and got nailed by the fuzz.

I don’t even want to get into the antics of Theo Fleury.

Getting off the drunk topic and onto the just plain stupid, how about Alexandre Daigle. Now he was a beauty. Gifted, funny, charming and pleasant, he was a complete mess in Ottawa. He actually wasn’t too bad on the ice, better than people give him credit for, but off the ice he kept stepping in shit everywhere he turned. First mistake was going number one in the draft and then saying that no one will remember who goes number two. Unfortunately number two was Chris Pronger who was so mad at the slight that he destroyed a barroom and then went on to win the Hart Trophy and the Stanley Cup. Then Daigle posed in a nurses outfit for a trading card company. What’s the big deal right? For some reason, management was pissed. Then the coupe de grace: Daigle openly jokes in a full airplane about planting a bomb in his suitcase. Not funny Alex. He got yanked off the flight and into the headlines. Then he gloated about dating Pamela Anderson. She said they had a cup of coffee. Then he said that he didn’t enjoy hockey anymore. For a Canadian kid, that’s really going “wild”.