The Backhander – Wild Night In Kanata Has Everyone Arguing

Let’s not call it a gong-show, but Monday night’s Sens-Bruins game was a pretty wild affair and a lot of issues came up that had people arguing into the morning. Here’s a stab at 3 of the big ones:

On Daugavins shootout attempt: Loved it. I’ve been a fan of the shootout since it was introduced in 2005 (in fact, I’d love to see it extended to 5 shooters per side) and every so often you get a memorable moment like this. It was a ridiculous save by Tuukka Rask, one of the best of the year. That puck was stopped by a skate blade on the goal line. It doesn’t get closer than that. You kind of feel for Daugavins because he knew if this crazy move didn’t work he’d be hearing about it from everyone. I’m sure the Bruins had something nice to say on his way back down the ice and Daugavins even said he felt “like a fool” in the room afterwards. He shouldn’t. He came as close as anyone to winning that hockey game and if anything, it just adds to his strange charms as a hockey player. He’s got the bark after the goals, and now he’s got this on his permanent record. Coach Maclean was laughing about it afterwards, so don’t expect any repercussions. Maclean’s answer when asked what he was thinking during the attempt – “buckle up” – was probably the funniest thing he’s said all year. And he followed it up with “but he’s Latvian, so I never know what’s going on.” The fact that Daugavins felt comfortable enough to try a move like that probably says more about the coaching staff and the great atmosphere they’ve created around this hockey club than it does about Daugavins. Half the guys in the league would love to try something like that during a shootout but their coaches would be waiting at the bench to choke them if they did. Not Maclean. Something tells me he was very happy to get that single point against the best team in the Eastern Conference. Those single points in OT losses have been vital for Ottawa this year as they struggle to keep bodies in the lineup. Take away those 5 OT points and Ottawa is tied with Winnipeg for 9th in the East.

On Neil – Kelly collision: People calling this an intentional knee by Neil don’t know what they’re talking about. This wasn’t a case of Kelly trying to avoid a hit and Neil sticking out his knee to catch him – which is what a kneeing penalty is in the first place. The two collided and Kelly’s knee buckled. It could have just as easily have been Neil lying there in pain if he wasn’t more braced for the hit than Kelly was. To hear some Senators fans vilifying their own player was pretty sickening. No one felt worse about it than Neil and you could see that on his face. It’s a tough game and people get hurt all the time. Doesn’t mean there was anything dirty about it.

On the Visor Instigator Rule: There’s a big uproar about this seemingly obscure rule because Ottawa’s been dinged twice in a row, first with Chris Phillips and now last night with Patrick Wiercioch. In both cases, the players did the right thing stepping in and fighting for a teammate. That’s what tight teams do. The fact that they didn’t stop to think that they were wearing a visor just means they acted on instinct and didn’t hesitate – another positive sign. In both cases, the Senators killed the extra two-minutes so no harm done. As for the rule itself, it does seem unfair but you have to remember that it was put in place because visors are certainly dangerous in a fight, especially if one gets cracked or if it cuts someone’s hand open. The tradition was that fighters would remove their helmets anyways because nobody wanted a broken hand, and it was a respectful thing to do in the situation. That respect level has gone by the wayside and a lot of fighters are more concerned with getting the first shot in rather than making sure it’s a fair scrap. To be honest, I don’t really know the solution to the visor rule, but something’s got to give if the league wants everyone to wear protection out there. Fewer enforcers in the league means that more non-fighters find themselves in spontaneous scraps, and a lot of those guys are wearing visors (smartly). We’re going to see more and more of this if guys like Phillips and Wiercioch have to be the ones to fight the battles. People love that enforcers are going extinct, thinking that fighting is following them out. On the contrary, it just means that other guys are doing the fighting even though they really shouldn’t be.

And finally... could you have picked two guys who needed a goal more badly than Guillaume Latendresse and Kyle Turris? Latendresse’s goal celebration was something out of primal scream therapy. That was a lot of frustration, anger and tension being exploded into the glass after that beauty deke in the first period.

Sens Rolling The Dice With Rookie Defenders

For the Ottawa Senators, it’s nice to be on the other side of controversy right now. For all the goaltending doubts, the concern over the youth on defense and the standard opening night fears, the Senators calmed their fans down considerably with a lopsided victory in Winnipeg.

For Jets fans, their handwringing has only increased. According to Hockey Hall Of Fame writer Roy MacGregor, a lot of people in the ‘Peg already feel disillusioned – and that’s in a market where the honeymoon has just begun. Even the champagne is still bubbly.

With old pal Alexei Kovalev back in town with the rising Florida Panthers, some Senators fans may be reminded of some recent bad history and feel comforted that those days now seem so distant. For the most part, they are.

Yet the path to the Senators downfall is pretty clear, even to casual observers. And it’s not the goaltending (refreshingly).

It’s the defense – a top heavy group that’s thin and inexperienced once you get past the top four. What would happen if another D-man went down to injury? Or two? That’s not an unrealistic scenario. In fact, it’s likely, especially in a compressed schedule.

When you look at teams that have traditionally had success in the playoffs, they have depth and experience on defense, with people ready to step in when injuries strike.

Los Angeles refuted that theory last season when they had two greenhorns in Alec Martinez and Vyacheslav Voynov playing all 20 games in the Kings march to the Stanley Cup. Martinez wasn’t really a rookie, having played 60 games in 2011, but the point is made.

So it can be done, but you have to think Ottawa is going to address this issue with a trade before we get into the nitty gritty of the schedule in February.

Losing Jared Cowen was a big blow but the trade for Marc Methot looks to have filled that void in the short term. Methot is stable, experienced and big enough to protect his new partner Erik Karlsson. He’ll be a big part of this defense for years, especially with Sergei Gonchar likely leaving after this season.

The next pairing of Gonchar and Chris Phillips is a coach’s dream second duo. They’re both leaders and capable of playing big minutes in all situations.

Everything after that is a crapshoot – mind you sometimes a roll of the dice pays off handsomely. And it could again. But is Ottawa really going to contend with two rookies, Patrick Wiercioch and Mark Borowiecki, along with AHL journeyman Andre Benoit when games get ramped up and they have to battle the Penguins, Bruins, Rangers and the Flyers?

I have my doubts despite Wiercioch looking like he’s ready to play some games and Borowiecki on track to be a Chris Neil clone on defense. Mike Lundin may help when his finger heals but he doesn’t exactly have the reputation of being battle hardened veteran. Those Eastern Conference playoff rounds were tough, mean and bloody and they’ll get harder with Rick Nash barreling down the wing and Sidney Crosby and Nathan Horton seemingly healthy again. Despite the Flyers losing their first two games of the season, they look dangerous and well-rounded. The Rangers and Bruins play harder than anybody and the Penguins are lethal offensively.

The Senators just can’t match that pedigree despite having the reigning Norris Trophy winner and a deep crew of forwards who can score a lot of goals. That top-four on D looks good when healthy but breaking in two rookies could soon turn into three and it may not even stop there. There just doesn’t seem to be any insurance and that’s a dangerous way to drive.

Youth on a hockey club is great and exciting for the fans, but when it gets ugly out there – and it will – you win with veterans. You win with guys who send their dentists Christmas cards and can actually grow playoff beards.

Bryan Murray, an old vet himself, surely knows this and will move when the time is right.

Experience Gap Between Bruins And Sens Not So Wide

If the Senators do end up facing the Boston Bruins in the first round, it’s a given that Ottawa will be the heavy underdogs and oddsmakers from Vegas to Venice will be picking the Bruins in their sleep. It's a bet even your grandmother would approve of (although, knowing my Granny Jean, she'd probably lay $50 on the Sens if she knew a bookie and maybe drop a few choice f-bombs at the TV if required - I've yet to know a more devoted fan than her).

In a first intermission interview on Sportsnet during Thursday night's possible first-round preview, captain Daniel Alfredsson spoke the line you'll be hearing all week from most members of the organization - "We have nothing to lose." In a way, it's Hockey Psychology 101. Going in with that mindset can take a lot of pressure off a room, especially when there's a nucleus of young guys going into their first NHL playoffs.

Except the balance of playoff experience between Ottawa and Boston is not as lopsided as one would initially think.

If you take the top 10 from each team in terms of post-season games played, the Senators suddenly don’t look so green.

Granted, the Bruins have more depth of experience throughout the lineup and a lot of it was accumulated recently, which counts for something, but Ottawa still has five players who would make it into Boston’s top 10. They also have two players, Sergei Gonchar and Alfredsson, with more post-season games than Zdeno Chara, the Bruins leader.

And if you look at that list, Ottawa’s top 10 in experience seems a little more skilled than the Bruins. Chris Neil and Shawn Thornton play a similar role but I’d take Neil in a playoff game over Thornton.

In the end, it’s just numbers on a piece of paper and if you go beyond the Top 10 on the Senators, you’ll see a lot of 0’s in the games played column. Yet a lot of those “zeroes” won a Calder Cup championship in the AHL just last season.

Maybe the gap just got a little smaller….

If somehow the Senators end up in 8th and have to play the Rangers .... well, never mind.

Ottawa – Top 10 in Post-Season Games

1. Sergei Gonchar – 118
2. Daniel Alfredsson – 107
3. Chris Phillips – 97
4. Chris Neil – 74
5. Jason Spezza – 46
6. Milan Michalek – 40
7. Filip Kuba – 24
8. Nick Foligno – 10
9. Four players tied with 6 games (Erik Karlsson, Matt Carkner, Zack Smith, Jesse Winchester)

Boston - Top 10 in Post-Season Games

1. Zdeno Chara – 100
2. Andrew Ference – 99
3. Brian Rolston – 70
4. Shawn Thornton – 62
5. Chris Kelly - 61
6. Milan Lucic - 55
7. Patrice Bergeron - 54
8. David Krejci – 52
9. Joe Corvo – 45
10. Dennis Seidenberg – 44

Sens Have Been Here Before But Date With Bruins Looks Tough

There were some sketchy, nerve-bending moments of pure fear for fans of the Ottawa Senators over the past couple of weeks. On the morning of March 17, their favourite team looked to be a lock to make the post-season but then lost ugly to the Toronto Maple Leafs just hours later. The Senators then dropped their next two games and suddenly the Washington Capitals and the Buffalo Sabres were close enough to see the air holes on the backs of their RBK sweaters.

A huge win over the Penguins one Saturday later was the start of a timely four game parade that officially put the Senators in the post-season and an almost sure date with the Boston Bruins in the first round, although there still remains a slight possibility they could rise to 6th over New Jersey or back down to 8th below Washington.

But the smart money is on a 7th place finish which would give Tim Thomas another chance to smother the Senators offense, this time when it really matters.

So, really, what are Ottawa’s chances if they have to go into Massachusetts to face the defending Stanley Cup champions and Zdeno Chara, who is, as Keith Richards once described himself, “half-man, half-horse, with a licence to shit in the street.”

If you go by their record against the Bruins this season, it doesn’t look good.

Ottawa is 1-4 with a game still on the schedule but the good news is that Ottawa won their last matchup and that just happened to be in Boston which could indicate an important breakthrough in confidence. If they end up facing the Bruins, they can at least go into Boston’s rink with the knowledge they’ve won there once already. The old cliché is that road teams in the playoffs are just looking for that one win – the split – to start the series. That task would be much harder for Ottawa if they had went 0-3 during the regular season. The two teams have never played each other in the playoffs, so there’s no Leaf-like curse hanging over the Senators heads.

The Ottawa franchise has been the 7th seed going into the playoffs 3 times in their history. Only once did they manage to knock off the 2nd place team and that was in 2002 against the Philadelphia Flyers for their second ever playoff series win. Below is a quick recap of how the Senators fared as a 7th seed:

96-97: Lost to Buffalo in 1st Round – 4-3

01-02: Beat Philadelphia in 1st Round – 4-1; Lost to Toronto in 2nd Round -4-3

07-08: Lost to Pittsburgh in 1st Round – 4-0

In the unlikely event Ottawa ends up dropping to 8th place and facing the New York Rangers, they might like the matchup a little better as they went 3-1 against the Blueshirts this season. Yet they won’t have much history to draw upon, never having played the Rangers in the playoffs and just once being the 8th seed:

97-98: Won against New Jersey in 1st Round – 4-2; Lost to Washington in 2nd Round – 4-1

A better way to look at Ottawa’s chances might be to see how many times a 7th seed knocked off a 2nd seed since the lockout. It’s happened exactly twice, most recently in 2010 when the Flyers knocked off the Devils 4-1. The Avalanche also surprised Dallas in 2006. That’s it folks.

In fact, the 8th seed has fared better in the upset category in the same time period. It’s happened 3 times, most recently in 2010 when Montreal beat Washington.

In short, the Senators are in for a hell of a fight if they want to beat the odds.

Yet that’s just what the Senators are good at. Nobody picked them to be where they are right now. So who says they can’t do it again?

Boston Curse Over ... Lehner Emerges From Bingo Purgatory ... And Lotso Game Notes

Ottawa 1 Boston 0

Wasn’t it only a few days ago that some were saying Senators management had “soured” on cocky prospect goaltender Robin Lehner? That he had already been passed on the depth chart by newly acquired Ben Bishop? The fans were buzzing about the 6 foot 7 Bishop and his part in a future tandem with a healthy Craig Anderson going into the playoffs and into next season.

If this was the fashion world, Lehner was suddenly like a pair of MC Hammer parachute pants.

His quick fall from favour made sense on paper when you saw that one-year, one-way contract extension given to Bishop, or took just a cursory glance at Lehner’s poor numbers down in Bingo. Or if you heard the whispers about Lehner’s “poor attitude”, an allusion to the intense and driven young Swede not being happy about being in the AHL when he clearly believes he’s NHL ready. In fact, this guy thought he was ready at the start of last year.

All the conjecture in the world doesn’t mean much until the guy in question starts to play actual games, and Lehner, with two straight wins in the book, including Tuesday's incredible shutout of the Stanley Cup champion Boston Bruins, has stormed back into favour with Ottawa fans. And I'm sure he's raised the eyebrows of GM Bryan Murray and coach Paul MacLean with his performance so far.

Against the Bruins, who Ottawa hadn't beaten in four tries coming into Tuesday's game, Lehner was the confident, aggressive goalie we've all heard about so much. On some saves, like a stunner he made in the third, he flashed the glove hand in the air and held it for a split second to let the Bruins know they'd been robbed. His body language bled intensity, whether it was between whistles or when the Bruins were tossing the puck around on the multiple power-plays they had late in the game.

I wouldn't describe Lehner's style as smooth in any way. It's more knife-like. When he changes position, he cuts instead of glides. When he catches a puck, he seems to stab it right out of the air. His head darts in every direction and he seems to stare holes into people, even his own defenseman.

Clearly, this is a kid who realizes the importance of these games for both his status in the organization and for the team trying to clinch a playoff spot.

It's only been two games and a few soft goals can change all this, but with Anderson down for a few more weeks at least, Lehner seems like the safest bet to win games in the short term.

But then we hear that Bishop had a big game down in Bingo at the same time, making 41 saves in a 5-1 win over St. John's.

These are problems some teams would beg for if given the chance.

Black Aces Senators 3 Stars

1. Robin Lehner
2. Erik Karlsson
3. Filip Kuba

Honourable Mentions: Kyle Turris, Chris Phillips, Sergei Gonchar, Chris Neil and Milan Michalek.

NOTES

With Matt Gilroy wearing number 97 (in honour of his late-brother), he not only becomes the first Senator to wear that number in a regular season game, he has the highest sweater number in Senators history. He beats out Stan Neckar who was the previous holder with number 94. Chances are Gilroy will remain the holder of that distinction forever unless someone takes 98 one day. We're damn sure no one is going to use 99…. It was almost strange to see Kyle Turris smiling and laughing for the Sportsnet cameras while getting ready in the locker room before the game. The guy is all business on the ice and rarely breaks character. Maybe it was the more light-hearted Zenon Konopka slinging a few jokes while tying up his skates next to him. Or maybe it’s the fact that Turris is no longer “the new guy”. That distinction now belongs to Matt Gilroy, but with the long locks and crooked grin, Gilroy seems like a character who could easily fit into any dressing room. The guy just looks like a hockey player. Brian Lee, while not a reflection of how he played, looked a little like the nice college kid who tries to sell you a laptop at Best Buy…..But just like Lee, Gilroy is one of those mouthguard chewers. There’s no grosser habit in the NHL nowadays (although Dany Heatley’s constant hoarking and spitting isn’t good for the stomach either)…. It’s nice of Sportsnet to flash the team lines at the start of the game, but they’re not much use if you happen to blink….. Not so nice of Sportsnet to accidentally switch to the Toronto/Florida game for 30 seconds while the Senators/Bruins were still in action late in the second. I wonder how that plays out in the control room? An intern reaches across the console for another donut and inadvertently flips a switch without anyone noticing?....

.... Remember the days when the Boston Bruins were terrible? When they had to trade Ray Bourque and Joe Thornton and fire about 30 coaches in 10 years. Seems like a lifetime ago. It's amazing the kind of turnaround a new GM can give an organization. Peter Chiarelli, an import from the Ottawa Senators, has done an amazing job re-building the Bruins..... Which brings us to Scott Howson. Not sure how he survives the disaster he’s ushered into Columbus. I’m not even sure how he survives day to day in his job, knowing that everything he touches turns yellow like sour piss. Putting a dull knife into the back of Rick Nash by revealing the once loyal franchise player finally asked for mercy and a ticket out of town will probably be the last significant thing Howson does as a Blue Jacket. It must be the most inept and bewildering performance as a GM since John Ferguson Jr. nearly sunk the Maple Leafs franchise back to Harold Ballard levels of incompetence. If Nash did ask for a trade, and there’s no reason to disbelieve Howson – he’s not that cunning to straight up lie to the press – then you can at least say he did it the right way. He didn’t go to the press when a trade didn’t happen right away. Through the whole ordeal, Nash made it clear that he enjoyed his time as a Blue Jacket and appreciated the fans. That’s about all you can ask for. The guy has had the patience of a monk while the Jackets wasted his talents for eight and a half seasons. Most sane men would have begged for release a few years ago but Nash, like Jarome Iginla and Daniel Alfredsson, stayed positive through the tough times and even went on a summer recruiting trip with Howson to Jeff Carter’s house to convince the pouting ex-Flyers winger that Columbus was a great place to play. Clearly, Carter wasn’t fully convinced. Even Nash could see that another rebuild was coming after they fell face first right out of the gate and there was a real possibility he wouldn’t see the playoffs for another three or four years. Now, thanks to Howson’s bitter and spiteful press conference after he couldn’t pull off a trade he’s had months to complete, Nash has to play out the string this season in an organization now openly hostile to him. While it’s not yet Eric Lindros vs. Bobby Clarke (Howson could only dream of having the Machiavellian streak Clarke once possessed), this is still headed to a place nobody could believe just months ago. Will Nash be stripped of his captaincy? Lose his parking spot? Have to pay for his muffins in the players lounge? More importantly, will he be booed by the Ohio fans? ….

…. It must have been nice for Gilroy to watch a very young Robin Lehner make 3 beauty saves to start the game after almost a full season watching a very old Dwayne Roloson letting beach balls roll slowly through his legs…. For those who thought Gilroy would be replacing Chris Phillips on the second power-play, they may have been surprised to see the Big Rig out there all night. It makes sense. He’s been great there lately, but as Denis Potvin said on the broadcast, it’s probably because Gilroy hasn’t had time to learn the power-play system MacLean uses. But don't be too surprised if Phillips keeps his spot after all.....  Daniel Alfredsson continued his quest for the Lady Byng Trophy by politely handing Tim Thomas back his goalie stick just seconds after Erik Karlsson hammered home a power-play goal with Alfie as the screen.... Brad Marchand really wanted a piece of Alfredsson near the start of the third when the captain gave him a little cross-check at the side of the Senators net. Good thing he was held back because Marchand had one of those “here comes a suspension” looks on his face. The young Marchand would probably be surprised to know Alfredsson has a bit more fight in him than a Sedin. I can’t remember them all but I do know Alfie fought both Darius Kasparitis and Doug Gilmour. He might have had to forgo the Lady Byng chase if Marchand had broken free there….

… The Bruins Adam McQuaid was an absolute wrecking ball out there in the first period. First he bulldozed Konopka with a tough hit along the boards that truly stung the Senators tough guy, and then he put Jim O’Brien flat on his back at centre ice during a rush. It's not really fair the Bruins have both him and Zdeno Chara. Now they have Greg Zanon. Man, that's a tough, tough blueline... Yet another sickening pass by Erik Karlsson in the last minute of the first period to send Milan Michalek in for a great chance that the winger blasted over the net. Karlsson makes it look easy because it probably is easy for him.... The devastating but unarguably clean hit Chris Neil delivered to Johnny Boychuk last Saturday night was truly a thing of beauty. The force of the hit was scary but awe-inspiring in its videogame-esque quality. Unfortunately Boychuck was concussed on the play but Neil couldn’t have approached it any different. It’s strange how Neil is considered a “pest” by some. Not even close. He plays the game tough but clean, and he’s having a hell of a year. He also accepted Chara's request to fight and handled himself well despite taking a couple hard shots. He even had the big man at his mercy but didn't pull the trigger. That's why there's a lot of respect for how he plays the game. It’s not hard to imagine Neil reaching the 1000 game mark in a Senators uniform. He’s currently sitting at 715 games, 4th all-time on the Senators but only has one more year on his contract before becoming a UFA. Unless he regresses badly next season, expect Bryan Murray to get his name on another contract at some point.

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Sens A Happy Group Heading Into Deadline .... Flatten Isles ... Plus Baffling Game Notes

Ottawa 6 NY Islanders 0

In today's Ottawa Citizen Senators Prediction Panel, I took what I thought was a reasonable gamble and predicted a 4-2 Islanders win.

Oooohhh. Just missed.

Okay, so I'm not The Amazing Kreskin but a few things are becoming clear that even near-sighted mouth breathers like myself can see with stunning clarity.

One, the Ottawa Senators are, indeed, far from collapsing out of playoff contention that the now distant 7-game losing streak might have suggested to those prone to outright panic. They've now racked up 9 out of their last 10 possible points and looked completely convincing in the process. People were nervously looking down to Bingo at Robin Lehner but Craig Anderson now has two shutouts in his past three games and people are starting to talk about Jason Spezza as a Hart Trophy candidate.

Two, this team, when running on the right oil, has shown that it's good enough to scare a few people if it can get into the playoffs healthy. And that statement should not be construed to mean this team is a lock for the playoffs. It's possible another team below them grinds it out to the final date on the schedule and pushes Ottawa out of the top eight by sheer will alone. But it doesn't look like the Senators are going to make it easy for anybody and in fact, they may even start taking a trip up the standings to fight for home-ice advantage if they keep getting hot at the right time. With over twenty games left to play and a whole bunch of teams promising to get better at the trade deadline, movement one way or the other is almost a guarantee.

But now we seem to know the parameters. We've seen Ottawa at their worst this season, when the defenseman can't seem to make a pass out of their zone and their goalie can't seem to make a timely save on pucks that are lobbed from the blueline. And we've seen them at their best, when the third and fourth lines step up and get important goals or when Jason Spezza, Erik Karlsson and Daniel Alfredsson decide to take over games.

When the Senators have all these things going at once, they look like world beaters. If they can get in, they'll give their first round opponents a fight they won't believe. They still don't stack up to the pulverizing Bruins or the technically perfect Rangers, but if they can avoid meeting either of those teams in the first round, they'll have a chance to further surprise some people.

But again, daydreaming about April in February is a bit of a fool's game. If so much seems to change in just a week's time, what the hell will we be looking at in over a month?

Black Aces Senators 3 Stars

1. Erik Karlsson
2. Jason Spezza
3. Sergei Gonchar

Honourable Mentions: Craig Anderson (I know, a shutout, but that was an easy one), Chris Phillips, Daniel Alfredsson, Brian Lee and Filip Kuba.

NOTES

Seeing Jason Spezza "pop" the water bottle on his beauty goal in the third period reminds you of a better time when those bottles were free to hang out on top of the net without any holder and most top-shelf goals resulted in that camera friendly pop which was a better exclamation point than any red goal-light could hope to be. Sure, those loose bottles obscured overhead camera angles on disputed goals, but who didn't love to see those things go flying into the air when Joe Sakic or Steve Yzerman roofed one from in tight?..... Can't see the Senators trading Filip Kuba or Sergei Gonchar before the deadline. Who's going to play their minutes? If you haven't noticed, after trading David Rundblad the Senators don't have a blue chipper on defense in their system right now. Unless GM Bryan Murray gets a young defenseman in return who can play this season, why does he bother? And why would another team trade a young defenseman already getting minutes for an older player like Kuba or Gonchar? None of it makes sense. Teams don't dismantle on their way to the playoffs. It just doesn't happen. What you can count on however is hockey fans throwing every possible suggestion against the wall to see if it sticks. There's a lot of undercooked spaghetti noodles sliding down that wall right now..... With that said, here's a noodle of my own. I've said it before, and I still think Niklas Hagman of the Ducks is the perfect fit at forward for this Senators team. He'd look good with Kyle Turris and Alfredsson don't you think? Or does my noodle need a little more boiling?...

.....Whenever Senators owner Eugene Melnyk goes on Toronto radio, all sorts of shit hits the fan and today he merely said that Erik Karlsson will end up being one of the greatest defenseman of all-time and that Ottawa will continue to replace older, expensive players with younger, "hungry" ones. Unsurprisingly this was all good fodder for Twitter and the oncoming mania of trade deadline day. So does this mean Kuba and Gonchar are really on the block after all? Always take Melnyk's comments with this in mind: the guy is a big kid who just happens to own a hockey team (think Adam Sandler in Mr. Deeds). He's a "big ideas" man, something that most entrepreneurs are at heart. They like to make big statements while letting other people take care of the technical details. If Bryan Murray goes in front of a microphone and says something similar, then maybe you have a big story, but until then, don't believe the hype.... But then Karlsson goes out and slams in two goals in the first period alone. Okay, believe the hype.....A lot of fans were somewhat worried knowing most teams above and below the Senators in the standings had, in some cases, four games in hand on Ottawa. When you did the math real quick you could see a lot of teams catching up or zipping by the Sens in the standings with those unplayed games. Yet, the old maxim remains true. Games in hand don't mean a thing if you can't win them. The Capitals, Panthers and the Leafs are learning that old lesson well.... There's something surreal yet comforting about listening to "Surfin' Safari" by The Beach Boys cranked to eleven in the middle of February..... Who could have guessed the Chicago Blackhawks would only be three points better than the Senators after both had played 60 games? Does that say more about Chicago or Ottawa?....

......In the much talked about NHLPA Player Poll, two ex-Senators and one current made the top 5 in the Toughest Player category. Zdeno Chara 17%, Brian McGrattan 7% and Matt Carkner 4%. Carkner is getting those numbers on rep alone because he certainly isn't playing or fighting much this season. For some reason, Carks hasn't been the same since that knee injury and now Senator-For-Life Brian Lee has surpassed him on the depth chart for the first time. To his credit, Lee is turning into the ultimate survivor. He should have been traded twenty times by now but here he is having a bit of a renaissance late in the season. Hey, next time Lee goes into the doghouse, remind me not to bury him.....While we're at it, let's not bury Carkner either. This guy made it to the NHL the hard way and will continue to scrape everything he can out of whatever opportunity he gets. He's just a couple of good games away from re-establishing himself as that dependable muscle in front of the net. The guy is all heart and should stay in the organization next season..... In the same NHLPA poll, an astounding 98% of players favour keeping fighting in the game. How will the anti-fighting crowd try to spin those numbers? You can just imagine Adam Proteau and Ken Campbell at The Hockey News office in Toronto locking themselves in a room with two pots of coffee and a chalkboard, desperately writing theories down and scratching them out, yelling at each other in frustration. "For the love of God, Adam, you wrote a friggin' book about this stuff. Don't tell me you got nothing.Throw me a bone here." Then they both slam the styrofoam coffee cups to the floor and start swinging at each other just asTHN editor Jason Kay breaks down the door to separate the two furious pencil pushers. Campbell gets the instigator and he's not happy about it.....

.....One thing Adam Proteau is 100% right about is the negative effect shot-blocking has on the game. In the Feb . 20 issue of THN, Proteau says "The game has regressed to the point where the main target (the net) cannot be reached unless there's an unpredictable deflection, a bad bounce or a player half-fans on his shot and fools the goalie with hockey's equivalent of a knuckleball." Proteau goes on to mention an idea by ex-Montreal GM Bob Gainey which would make it a penalty to block a shot with both skates off the ice in the defensive zone. That would eliminate the sliding shot-block that has proven so effective (but also extremely dangerous). Players would still be able to block a shot with one skate on the ice and one knee down. It's a win-win situation if you ask me. More shots get through to the net, less defenseman getting creamed in the head by shots. As Proteau quotes Jaromir Jagr in the article, fans want to see "six or seven goals a night". I happen to agree but a lot of people continually spout that now tired line of "I love 1-0 games if there are a lot of scoring chances". I don't buy it. Fans want more goals, more hits, more skating, more fights - all the best things the game can offer..... The question was posed by a fan to Hockey Trivia guru Liam Maguire on Twitter: Are body shots allowed under "The Code" in hockey fights, as we saw Isle Matt Martin delivering to Zack Smith in a second period bout? Liam answered yes and said Dave "Tiger" Williams was "going to the body in fights 35 years ago". I went looking for a little video but couldn't find what I was looking for. Yet, I did find this video of a Williams scrap and quite frankly, it scared the hell out of me. Williams of the Leafs and Behn Wilson of the Flyers are a little upset with each other and not even the linesman can get them to stop. I wonder what Wilson said to Williams when they were face to face there.....

......It's been a painfully slow development for Sens forward Jim O'Brien since he was drafted by the team in the first round of 2007, but it looks like that patience is going to pay off for the Senators. The guy has gone from an almost certain first-round bust to a big, strong skating forward who hounds the puck around the ice and has the wheels to actually get to it. In years past, O'Brien was more passive than anything else but now he looks mean out there, almost like a power forward. He was pretty good on the faceoffs this afternoon as well. He's a guy to watch going down the stretch here. Coach Paul Maclean obviously took a liking to an unheralded guy like Kaspars Daugavins. May the same thing be happening here with O'Brien?

Happy Family Day

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Sens vs Refs In Beantown.... Andy Still On Vacation.... And AC/DC Fuelled Game Notes

Boston 4 Ottawa 3

It was all there in coach Paul MacLean's screaming red face after the final whistle had blown.

It was there in Jason Spezza's dismissive wave to the refs just seconds before that.

The Ottawa Senators feel they are getting jobbed by the officiating, before and after the break, and they couldn't contain their disgust any longer, even if it gives the refs just more reason to punish them.

As of this writing, it's not clear how much complaining the Senators will do to the media after a game where the Senators didn't get a single power-play against the meanest, edgiest team in the league (.....please), but I'm guessing Craig Anderson's embarrassing centre-ice goal flub that handed the Bruins the game won't get the same attention it normally would.

The fans have a lot of ammo to throw out in the next few days, but the reality is that the Senators inexplicably fell flat with a 3-1 lead heading into the final minute of the second period. Sure, the refs seemed hellbent on further repaying MacLean back for that public airing of the Erik Karlsson "diver" incident before the All-Star break, but when the Bruins raised their game, the Senators didn't really have an answer. In fact, they looked intimidated for long stretches of the third period and it took a few strong shifts by captain Daniel Alfredsson late in the period to get their legs moving again.

I did my best lip reading routine on what MacLean was screaming but the only words I could make out were "bullshit", "f**k off", "f**k you" and "baloney tits". That last one makes me think I'm not that good at lip reading, but it must have been something pretty good because assistant coach Mark Reeds was trying to haul MacLean down off the bench by his elbow before he really did say something stupid.

It will be interesting to see which gets more play on Wednesday morning - the refs or Anderson's Chris Osgood moment - but the Senators have now lost 4 in a row and the poor streak goes deeper than just a bad goal or a few missed calls. No one is saying the rot has set in - the losses have come under less than ideal conditions like a long road trip and immediately after an extended break - but now they have to rack up some points during the coming homestand against a few weaker teams or else the real questions will start to pop up for which there won't be any convenient excuses like refereeing.

The good news for Ottawa fans is that Alfredsson looks like he's 30 years old coming out of his deserved weekend in the spotlight and Kyle Turris seems poised to hit another level due to the obvious chemistry he's building with the captain. That line will be fun to watch in Kanata over the next couple of weeks against the likes of the Islanders, Leafs and Oilers.

Black Aces Senators 3 Stars

1. Daniel Alfredsson
2. Kyle Turris
3. Sergei Gonchar

Honourable Mentions: Erik Karlsson and Colin Greening,

NOTES

Dean Brown certainly has a way with words. He described the Senators as coming out “hot and hard” in the first two minutes of the first. I guess that's better than "hot and heavy". Or is it?..... You have to like Zdeno Chara giving Jason Spezza a healthy shove in the back after the first whistle near the Boston net. It was his genuine way of saying the camaraderie of the All-Star Game was nice and everything, but he’s now going back to his favourite pastime of burying lanky centremen in the blue paint..... It’s strange that we’ve come to expect Erik Karlsson to regularly make the kind of plays like when he raced back and stole a scoring chance from Brad Marchand after the aggravating winger found an open seam towards the net in the first. There can’t be another player who can wheel back into his own zone like Karlsson can and catch guys without taking penalties. It’s something Sens fans will be glad to take for granted…. Sergei Gonchar, another fine skater, wasn’t so lucky when he had to haul down Marchand on a similar play just minutes later. The Big Z cranked one of those famous slappers home on the ensuing power-play for Boston's first goal. It seems Jared Cowen had certainly watched Chara break the hardest shot record at the skills competition on TV back home in Saskatchewan. If Cowen hadn’t jumped out of the way, Chara’s shot would have probably hit him in the leg and bounced into the corner (or into outer space). But can you really blame Cowen? It's entirely possible the puck would have shattered like the fake puck Patrick Kane used in his last shot of the Silly Goal Competition, and Cowen's leg might have shattered along with it.....

Has anyone seen Zack Smith lately? He's missing and there are no clues..... Two epic scraps in the first period sort of made it clear that the Bruins and the Senators are the two toughest teams in the East, if not the West as well. It’s working for the Bruins obviously and it’s working pretty well for the Senators this year as well. The difference is that no one in their sane mind takes cheap shots at Boston’s skilled players while guys like Alfredsson and Karlsson have taken a few this year. The Bruins have a reputation for not taking shit. The Senators not so much. Maybe Bruins GM Peter Chiarelli sat through those years in the Senators front office when they were getting pushed around by the Leafs and decided he’d never let that happen if he ever got control of a team. Mission accomplished….. Geez, I thought I was a fight fan but Jason York of Sportsnet was channeling his inner Ultimate Warrior when joyfully describing the series of bouts after the first period. He said he loved that the Bruins didn’t need to but “they’ll fight you anyways”…. Speaking of the Ultimate Warrior, remember how he used to run up to the ring, grab the ropes and proceed to thrash the living shit out of them in some sort of crazed heavy metal seizure? How much cocaine and steroids are needed to work yourself up into that kind of state? I'd probably need about one cocaine. That's how it's measured right?....

.....At first I thought it was sleep deprivation warping my senses and causing me to hear things that just weren’t being said, but as time wore on, I realized I wasn’t crazy - at least not yet by modern medical standards. No, in fact I was driving around the wilds of Kanata on Monday listening to the mid-morning show on the Team 1200 and fans were calling and emailing in strange ramblings that could only come from unbalanced minds on the brink of collapse and permanent damage. They were ripping players for their plus/minus in the All Star Game. They were angry at Tim Thomas for selfishly stopping a Daniel Alfredsson shot that denied him a hat trick. They were detecting weaknesses in Henrik Lundqvist’s glove hand from an exhibition game of shinny hockey. My hands gripped the steering wheel tight in fear that the repeated blunt force trauma of idiocy would cause me to lose concentration and end up at a Tim Hortons drive-thru ordering a dozen Boston Creme doughnuts and one big straw. Thankfully I was able to keep one hand on the wheel and use the other to turn radio dial off. It was a close call, my friends, and I don’t want to talk about it anymore than I have to…. Now here I go being two-faced and ripping something I don’t like about the All-Star game. The NHLPA should demand that there isn’t a “last player chosen” scenario at following player drafts. Don Cherry is right. It embarrasses the players and not just the guys picked in the last few rounds. Even nice guy Jarome Iginla called the whole process “awkward”. It’s completely unnecessary and is now just a chance for everyone on Twitter to be ultra-condescending at best, downright vicious at worst. Phil Kessel took it harder on the chin than Logan Couture but I don’t see any positives out of watching a guy be humbled in some schoolyard game of popularity that's forced on the players. Keep the player draft but throw sticks or something for the last six guys. Anything would be better than watching a proud athlete squirm. Then again, some people get their kicks out of that kind of thing. The players say they don’t care, but you know damn well they do…..

..... Still weird to see Chris Kelly wearing #23….. He’s not exactly Jonathan Cheechoo or Bill Muckalt, but Bobby Butler is colder than the concrete steps outside my front door. It’s tough to score when he can’t hit the net, even after getting a perfect pass into the slot with no Bruin near him for at least two steamboats. The shot Butler has is so deceptive when he’s confident. It’s a shame to see it go to waste right now….. Okay, now I’m officially done with the Tim Thomas controversy. I was one of the people calling him a whack job but people have come down so hard on him that it’s hard not to feel sorry for the guy. It was lame, but it doesn’t mean you have to bury the guy day after day. Some have gone so overboard in their reaction (see Jack Todd and Dave Hodge) that it makes you uncomfortable to have to side with them. What this all tells you is that there's no place for politics in the NHL. It’s escapist entertainment to the core and when you mess with the formula, whack jobs come out from every side. True, Thomas is the one who made this “political” in the first place but there’s no more fruit to pick on this story unless the Bruins decide to trade him this season, something not many can see happening. I’d almost rather talk about concussions at this point than I would Thomas and his strange Tea Party ramblings….

..... Name a song that never seem to get old at hockey games? This is a rare beast, as there are only about 20 songs in rotation in any given arena in the entire world, but AC/DC’s Back In Black still sounds as swinging as when it was recorded in 1980 and kicked people's heads off. Case in point was a grizzled Bruins fan behind the Boston bench closing his eyes in rocking meditation as those riffs kicked in. Maybe he was just stoned (almost certainly, even if it was just a food coma from the two plates of arena nachos) but it’s hard not to do the same when you hear that song count off. It's a perfectly recorded guitar album, in contrast to the ultra-compressed and brittle crap that passes for guitars in modern productions. But, by God, this is a hockey blog isn’t it?



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Hard Night In Hollywood.... O'Rourke's Revenge .... Tim Thomas Fiasco... and Coffee Stained Game Notes

Los Angeles 4 Ottawa 1

Some might be tempted to call this game "Dan O'Rourke's revenge", in response to Paul MacLean's loose lips in Anaheim on the weekend (see below). Others might wonder if the Senators are showing signs of falling back to earth after a meteoric January by losing their past two games.

Meanwhile, many others didn't even watch this one because they were sleeping like most working people in the Eastern time zone. I persevered through a somewhat dull tilt (it had its moments) by plowing through a few cups of instant coffee and reading endless tweets about the Tim Thomas gongshow (again, see below).

To me, this Senators team looks like a group of guys who are in need of a vacation. That was their 12th game of the month, the first game of what will be their 3rd back-to-back in January, and their 8th on the road in 18 days.

To say the Senators are due for a few losses is an understatement. The fact that it took until the end of this brutal stretch is the only real surprise here. They have one more on Tuesday night in Phoenix, where Kyle Turris will be putting some good money on the board to try and get the win, and then it's the much needed All-Star break where the majority of Sens will get a chance to recuperate (ie. party) before they embark on the stretch run to the playoffs.

The fact that Jason Spezza took a puck off his helmetless forehead during the warmups and had to get stitched up before he even broke a sweat should have tipped off the wise that the breaks would be hard to come by in L.A.

Nothing to see here. Keep moving.

We'll take a pass on the Senators 3 Stars for tonight because there isn't enough to fill it out. But if we had to pick one, let's take Colin Greening who led the team in hits with eight and tied for the lead in shots with four.

NOTES

With coach Paul MacLean putting the flamethrower to referee Dan O'Rourke for calling Erik Karlsson a diver, there was a bit of a free pass waiting there for Karlsson if he wanted to bury O'Rourke even further to the press. The fact that Karlsson chose not to and even had some sympathy towards the tough job referee's have just shows the kind of class #65 has. It's something you could imagine Nicklas Lidstrom or Ray Bourque saying..... With that being said, O'Rourke has been brutal. First the diving comment, and then he watches as the Kings captain Dustin Brown tries to break Karlsson's arm with a slash and keeps his whistle at his hip. My guess is O'Rourke wasn't too happy about MacLean's comments. Kind of brings you back to Cory Clouston's public plea that the refs were jobbing the Senators. Maybe Clouston was right..... Kerry Fraser seems to think that O'Rourke would probably apologize to Karlsson in person if in fact he did call him a "diver", something Fraser sheds doubt on in his TSN column..... Darryl Sutter is proof enough that redemption is always just around the corner in the NHL. This guy was called "done" more times than dinner around the league and now he's behind the reins of a Kings team that has more talent than the Flames squad he led to the Cup final in 2004..... Denis Potvin had a nice moment when he said Jonathan Quick's catching glove was like "a frying pan". In fact, I think some goalie's are using woks out there...... The collision between Colin Greening and Drew Doughty might be the most epic hit you'll see all year (with apologies to Brayden Schenn who I'll talk about later). Doughty basically exploded in mid-air and he was the aggressor in the play. Unbelievable..... Clearly, Doughty was just fine after that hit because he set up Jack Johnson's power-play goal which put the Senators to bed for the night.

....Tim Thomas is an incredible goaltender with a great story, but refusing to attend the White House event because of "political and ideological differences" seems petty and arrogant. Thomas is a hardcore Tea Party advocate, and in keeping with that party's ideological extremism, has found a way to turn what is always a mild, non-partisan event into a political cluster-f**k. Standing up for what you believe in is no offense, but if you can't even celebrate with your teammates because your adopted ideology won't allow you to shake the hand of the President of the United States, then something is truly off. A lot of people are drinking that sugary brand of Kool-Aid in America and it's not surprising to see it start to leak into areas where politics usually isn't welcome. Try not to get your feet wet..... What the hell is going in Winnipeg with Evander Kane and the fans? Sounds like Kane is getting the Ray Emery treatment - ie. rumour mongering and a local press that despises him. How does this not end with Kane asking for a trade at some point down the line here?..... One of the more bizarre calls the Senators have faced all season is Chris Phillips giving the Kings a penalty shot for allegedly covering the puck in his crease with a glove, even though the replays clearly showed he batted it towards Craig Anderson's pads, a perfectly legal and commonplace play. Of course - of course - the Kings scored on the penalty shot. Then Chris Neil takes a crosscheck in the grill from Kyle Clifford (accidental, but still a high-stick), goes down in a heap and the Sens still don't get a mercy call. Combine that with the slash on Karlsson, the non-call when Phillips had his stick axed in half right in view of the ref and various other borderline whistles that didn't go the Senators way, and you could almost imagine MacLean waving the white flag like Roger Neilson once famously did in Vancouver. But if the refs think you're a team full of divers, those whistles tend to stay pretty dry.

.....Two of the best things on Twitter: The Iron Shiek @the_ironsheik, and Don Cherry Parody @DonCherryParody. I'm pretty sure the Iron Shiek account is real (as he's as crazy as his tweets whenever he makes a public appearance) and the Cherry Parody is so spot on it hurts. Don Cherry himself would appreciate it if he even knew or cared what Twitter was, much like he appreciated the piano bit that hit You Tube not too long ago...... Lots of people had some harsh reactions to Tim Thomas on Twitter today, but as usual, one person went way too far and that person was TSN's Dave Hodge, who has a history of getting himself in hot water for various things (the flipping of the pencil being my favourite). Bringing up someone else's kids is never going to work, even if it was intended as a joke. I like Hodge a lot but I don't know how he's going to get out of this one.....It's always worth watching CBC's Ron MacLean and Don Cherry's routine on Saturday nights, even if you can't stand Cherry. You can't accuse it of being boring, but it used to be even less PC in the old days, if you can believe it and somehow louder. But the give and go has been the same and it's interesting to go back and watch a few from over the years. Here's Cherry in his prime when he had the much hated Ulf Samuelsson as a foil back in 1991 (it's funny how Cherry was calling out guys for dirty hits long before the shrill fourth estate of today). And here's Cherry coming two letters from swearing on national TV back in October 1993 and while MacLean sheepishly looks on in a cold sweat.....But that's nothing. How can anything compare to Don Cherry laying down a rap track on Rock 'Em Sock 'Em 5? This may blow your mind ("Listen, listen, never turtle, you do that they'll call you Mirtle. Let's Go!").....



.....What in incredible open-ice hit by the Flyers Brayden Schenn on the Bruins Steve Kampfer. I know that people don't like to see fights occur after clean hits like the one Schenn delivered, but the fact that Chris Kelly immediately went after Schenn and dropped the gloves shows the leadership Kelly is providing and why he's already an assistant captain for the B's after being there less than a year. While the fans and media don't like these post-clean hit fights, it's now de rigueur amongst the players and a failure to react after a teammate gets crushed is viewed as being soft. Right or wrong, that's where the game has evolved to. Kelly did the right thing in that situation. As for Kampfer, man, how do you not know to keep your head up when coming from behind your own net? Even in today's NHL?

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Goaltending Quickly Becoming An Issue In Ottawa.... What Else Is New?

Boston 5 Ottawa 2

The shots on goal total say it all here. Ottawa 49 - Boston 29.

This game came down to goaltending and as usual, Tim Thomas of the Bruins, who "likes the lighting" in the Kanata rink, dominated the Senators with 47 saves and a .959 save percentage.

On the other hand, Craig Anderson was dismal on Wednesday night and couldn't stop Patrice Bergeron on a breakaway when the Senators needed him to step up and bail them out on a tough play.

You could point to the fact that Ottawa was missing three of its better and more experienced players in Milan Michalek, Sergei Gonchar and Filip Kuba, but how much of a difference could they have made when Anderson was beat cleanly on multiple shots with no deflections?

Anderson has played in 28 games so far this season and he's had a sub .900 save percentage in 14 of those games. That's exactly half for those who didn't pass Grade 10.

But it's tough to bury Anderson when his defense is giving away pucks all night as they have throughout the season but he also hasn't made a habit of stealing games and unfortunately that's the type of goaltender Ottawa needs this year to make the playoffs.

Things won't get any easier with Pittsburgh rolling into Kanata on Friday. Last time Anderson faced the Penguins he gave up four goals on eight shots in just under ten minutes.

Black Aces Senators 3 Stars

1. Jared Cowen (team high 27 minutes of solid play)
2. Daniel Alfredsson (responded to being put back on first line)
3. Jason Spezza (dangerous late in the game and 2 points)

NOTES

Only a veteran media guy like Darren Pang could actually appear nervous when getting introduced from between the benches at the start of the game. As he kept talking throughout the first period, my wife, who doesn't pay any attention to hockey whatsoever, gave me a strange look and asked if that was some teenage kid talking. Instead of trying to explain, I just said yes. That's no knock against Panger. Not many love the game more than that guy, plus he's a good Ottawa boy (as Don Cherry would say if he was fond of talking about good ol' Ottawa boys).....One of the reasons they put media guys between the benches is so we can hear things like Pang relating how the whole Ottawa bench visibly sagged and lowered their heads when Craig Anderson let in a softie to Rich Peverly in the first period. It would be interesting if the cameras panned to the benches after goals instead of going to the "goat cam" which focuses on the guy who made the mistake (although they tend to get it wrong almost 50% of the time).......How long until the Senators make a white counterpart to their new heritage uni's and those become the home and away set with the current red the "new" third jersey? I'd give it two more years....What's the deal with this logo anyways? They've used it on some merchandise but not on an actual jersey. And we can all be thankful for that. It's pretty terrible compared to the logo they were obviously trying to "modernize"....What is it about Twitter that brings out the Dwight Schrute in everyone?.....

.......It's amazing that people still seem so surprised and outraged that NHL players actually get concussions. The fact that two recent high profile players were injured by accidental collisions with teammates has just added to the confusion. If we could all pull our heads out of our asses for one minute and use some common sense, we'd quickly realize that hockey is a physical, athletic sport which requires the participants to hit each other in various ways to retrieve the puck. This will always lead to injuries, some of them serious. You can tweak the rules and the equipment but concussions are here to stay. At some point we should probably get over it and accept it as a normal outcome of sports. As Cam Cole noted in a widely read column today: "It may turn out that the NHL, in all its misguided, deceitful stubbornness, was accidentally right all along. Maybe concussions really are just the cost of doing business, and we — and they — had better get used to losing the best players, who have the puck the most and therefore are the most vulnerable. What can you do? It’s a kind of natural selection. Charles Darwin wrote about it." And we're just realizing this now? People need to get over their bogus "spectator guilt" and accept the game for what it is at the root level. The players accept it readily. So should the fans and the media......

.....With the Big Bad Bruins in town, that gives us a flimsy excuse to look at old Bruins hockey cards. This 54-55 Topps Milt Schmidt would make a pretty nice print to hang on your wall, don't you think?

Here's a few more:  57-58 Topps Johnny Bucyk, 33-34 O Pee-Chee Eddie Shore, 71-72 O Pee-Chee Phil Esposito, 73-74 O Pee-Chee Derek Sanderson, 79-80 O Pee-Chee Peter McNab , 33-34 O Pee-Chee Tiny Thompson, 81-82 O Pee-Chee Mike Milbury, 54-55 O Pee-Chee Fern Flaman, 71-72 O Pee-Chee Bobby Orr.....

.....Scary bout between Matt Carkner and Milan Lucic in the first period. Every time I see Lucic start throwing the hammers, I expect to see his opponent lying on the ice, even when it's a heavyweight like Carkner. I'll give the scrap to Lucic on punches landed but Carkner got the last laugh - literally. I wonder what he said to crack the linesman up as he was getting escorted away.....Ex-Senators goalie Brian Elliott is having a hell of a comeback season in St. Louis. Yet, like all goalies, Elliott will hit a tough patch and it will be interesting to see how he responds. He didn't handle those down times very well in Ottawa but when things were going well, he could look unbeatable. In a way, Elliott reminds me of a guy like Brian Boucher (now in the Carolina Hurricanes organization). When Boucher got hot, it was unbelievable what he could do in a limited stretch of games. Then he'd go into the tank in a spectacular way and have to build himself back up. Maybe Elliott's career will go in a different direction and this is just the start of a natural maturation process. Think of how amazing a story it would be if he won the Vezina trophy this June. Don't laugh, it could happen.

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Sabres Learn An Old Lesson

So the Buffalo Sabres are getting it from all corners of the hockey world for failing to act on Milan Lucic’s hit that knocked out their franchise player and number one goalie Ryan Miller on Saturday. Pundits are calling the Sabres “soft”, “gutless” and a few other things that aren’t printable in your average family newspaper.

Sound familiar Sens fans?

It should, because Ottawa had a reputation for a long time of being a team that failed to protect its star players from predatory hits and cheapshots (and oh there were many over the years). That changed a little when Zdeno Chara and Brian McGrattan provided some muscle in the mid-2000’s but after a few incidents with Daniel Alfredsson in recent years (such as the Mark Bell hit and the Wojtek Wolski elbow) that were not fully addressed on the ice, either at the time or in subsequent matches, the Senators are not exactly a shining example of frontier justice anymore either. But more on that in a moment.

Miller, who is now out with a concussion, fired the first “gutless” shot at Milan Lucic himself, saying “He has 50 pounds on me and he runs me like that?... That was gutless.” Lucic, who was given a few love-taps by the Sabres on the ice immediately after the hit, fired back with “We wouldn’t accept anything like that. We would have [taken] care of business. But we’re a different team than they are.”

The reason Lucic can say that with complete confidence? He knows the Sabres won’t do anything about it. Who says intimidation doesn’t work in hockey? Boston won the game 6-2.



Perhaps the Sabres were counting on the referees to take care of them but Lucic only got a two-minute penalty for charging and the Sabres didn’t do anything with the power-play, as can often happen when a team is demoralized like that.

You can perhaps forgive the Sabres for thinking the refs would come to their rescue, just like some teams who don’t employ tough guys believe that the league will dole out the proper punishment to players taking cheap shots at their stars. But even in this era of heightened sensitivity and super-suspensions, the league is still powerless to act if they deem the hit to be a legal one.

That’s exactly what happened to the Ottawa Senators when Brendan Shanahan decided that the New York Rangers Wojtek Wolski was “bracing himself” instead of intentionally elbowing Ottawa’s own franchise player in the chops and concussing him for five games (of which they lost 4 in a row).
So right there you can quickly see a grey area where old school “vigilante justice” may still have a role in the NHL. If your star player is lying on the ice and the league sees nothing wrong with it, what are you supposed to do? Just sit back and take it?

Of course not. That’s a loser mentality. Even if your star player gets hit cleanly, it’s important for his teammates to let the other team know that’s still unacceptable. That doesn’t make sense to a lot of fans who see everybody as fair game as long as it’s within the rules but hockey players certainly don’t think like that. The proof is out there on the ice. A lot of people complain about the fights that happen after clean hits, and in a way it has gotten a little ridiculous. In the 80’s for instance, fights always happened if a star player got hit cleanly but was usually let go when a third or fourth line player got lit up at centre ice (give or take a few bench clearing brawls between the Canadiens and the Nordiques of course).

Now even those hits are ending up in fights a lot of times, but behind it all is a reasonable motivation. If teams let every clean hit go without fighting back, the league would be littered with star players (and third liners) on the sidelines. Those fights, or the threat of them, make some players think twice before really laying the body on someone (although some players just aren’t wired that way, like Patrick Kaleta). It acts as a deterrent and keeps the game from turning into a roller derby every night.

And that’s just the clean hits. If you let the dirty ones go unpunished, what does that say for your team? To count on the league to play enforcer is plain folly. Even if the guy who hit your star gets suspended, it seems like little solace in the end. Players don’t want the league to do their dirty work. They’d much rather take care of it themselves in the traditional way that hockey has always allowed, even after the instigator penalty was instituted (although to a lesser degree).

So why didn’t the Sabres respond to Ryan Miller getting knocked out of the game? Beats me. They’ll get a chance to do that later in the season but it seems like it’s already too late. They’ve been labeled and teams won’t have much fear going into that rink and maybe giving Thomas Vanek that extra shot that they know will go unpunished. On the other hand, maybe this incident serves to wake up the Sabres and they come together as a team. It can work both ways.

And why did the Senators seem to shy away from getting tough on the Rangers just weeks after Alfredsson was knocked out of commission? Maybe it had something to do with Wolski being out of the lineup for surgery but that shouldn’t have had any bearing on the situation. Brad Richards had a fairly comfortable game, as did Marian Gaborik. Zenon Konopka and Jared Cowen stepped up and took on the Rangers but it still felt like a missed opportunity to make a stand as a team. The Senators fell apart shortly after that and erased their great October with a brutal start to November with Alfie on the shelf.

In essence, it’s not the fighting that’s important, it’s the idea of coming together and making a statement to the league. They could have done that without any fights at all. All they had to do was make life miserable for the Rangers on the boards and within the rules. Winning that game on their own turf would have been enough. That didn’t happen either.

To be fair to the Senators, they have a lot of young guys trying to stay in the league. Nobody wants to be the guy who takes a stupid penalty and puts his team down a man. Nobody wants to get hammered by Shanahan. The league seems to be in a flux right now and a lot of players don’t know how to act.

But at some point for both the Sabres and the Senators, you have to come together as a team and let it be known that if you mess with one, you have to face the rest. That’s a cliché as old as hockey itself, but it’s one lesson that seems to get taught year after year after year.

Sens Go Down Scrapping As Streak Dies

Boston 5 Ottawa 3

For a while it looked like Ottawa was going to extend their six game winning streak against an obviously frustrated and struggling Bruins team, but once Boston started hitting in the second period, the Senators were just trying to hang on.

Simply put, the Senators just didn't have an answer for the size of the Bruins down low. The Senators defence were fine when they had the puck but for the first time in a while it looked like they were physically overmatched. It was a tough game for the Jason Spezza line as well, as Spezza was rocked pretty good by Zdeno Chara and didn't seem to have much steam left after that.

One player who was worth watching against the Bruins was big Jared Cowen. He is one of the only Sens defenders who can play that style all-night long and he did pretty well for himself in his own end. A game against a team like the Bruins is where you will see Cowen's true worth, and that also bodes well for any future playoffs where this type of game is more the norm. He also got his first goal of the season on a bouncer from the point that eluded Tim Thomas. Not a bad goalie to score your first one on.

The Senators were due for a loss and at least they went down fighting with Zack Smith and Zenon Konopka throwing their fists around.

Black Aces Senators 3 Stars

1. Nick Foligno

2. Stephane Da Costa

3. Chris Neil

Honourable Mentions: Craig Anderson, Jared Cowen, Zack Smith and Filip Kuba 

NOTES

Heartily agree with Shaun Van Allen who had the guts to say he actually "likes" the shootout on the Team 1200 pre-game show (Bruce Garrioch had his back as well). In fact, Van Allen thinks it should go to five shooters from three, something else Black Aces completely supports. With three shooters, you don't have enough of a chance to come back if you get down early….. I didn't see anything wrong with the Francois Beauchemin hit on Mike Fisher. Shoulder to shoulder and Fisher had the puck. Why would that be a suspendable offence? Not even close to what Wojtek Wolski did to Daniel Alfredsson. That's not me being a homer, because I'm not a homer. I sleep just fine when the Senators lose games. But to me, it's apples and oranges, even if both players were hurt.....That was one of Zenon Konopka's better fights of the season when he obliged Shawn Thornton. But as sometimes happens, the Bruins got some momentum out of it.....Which Nick Foligno promptly erased with a sickening pass between his legs to Stephane Da Costa for the Senators second goal. Foligno seemingly feels he has to put on a stickhandling exhibition every time he has the puck, to his detriment, but it sure as hell worked that time. Unbelievable pass.....What the hell is wrong with the Detroit Red Wings? A lot of people have been waiting for them to finally break down one of these years and get forced into a rebuild. Those people may feel that year is upon us, but something tells me they’ll find a way out of the wilderness yet again. Has anyone said they miss Paul MacLean yet? No? OK, let me be the first….

..... Finally getting around to reading James Duthie’s book on Brian Kilrea, “They Call Me Killer”. And it’s a hell of a read. For instance, one of Kilrea’s teammates on the Eddie Shore owned Springfield Indians, Denny Olson, relates this little piece of information: “Eddie (Shore) would say ‘I want you to skate like a Boy Scout taking a shit in the woods. You gotta position your back so you don’t shit on your heels!’” Kilrea himself talks about Shore trying to teach him this unique skating style by tying Kilrea’s elbows together behind his back with a string, taping his gloves to his stick, tying his legs together to prevent long strides and then putting a stick under his jersey and up his back to keep him straight. Sounds a little like Robin Lehner’s old man….The new alignment plans being floated out there by Elliotte Friedman (who reports it as Gary Bettman’s preferred scenario) basically makes everyone out of your division similar to how it works now between the East and West conferences – two games a year, a home and home. So that would mean Ottawa fans would only get one chance to see Alex Ovechkin, Claude Giroux, Steven Stamkos etc. Right off the bat, that doesn’t make any sense. They have a good balance going right now. Why throw it out the window just accommodate teams like the Jets, Stars and the Blue Jackets? Just switch the Jets out with one of Detroit, Nashville or Columbus and away we go (please make it Detroit)….

..... Paul Bissonnette is great for the NHL but posting a picture of a teammate in blackface is a pretty serious lack of judgment, even for professional athletes who lead a somewhat sheltered life and may not be fully aware of just how historically touchy that type of thing is. The NHL is still an old-school place where owners and executives are largely uncomfortable with players (i.e. peons) making waves outside of the rink. Just ask Ray Emery and Sean Avery. Anything that has a racist overtone, no matter how unintentional, is about the worst PR you can get. It’s also notable that Bissonnette plays for a team being run by the NHL itself. I’m not saying they would be looking to trade him, but since he’s not a superstar on the ice, his activities off of it will be tolerated that much less. He’s not Patrick Kane punching a cab driver in the face. He’s a fourth liner who inadvertently unleashed a PR nightmare for both the Coyotes and the NHL. Biz Nasty will live on, but will it be with the Coyotes for the long-term?.... How do I feel about the whole thing? It was an innocent mistake. Time to move on….Don’t you hate it when people ask themselves questions like I just did? What an asshole.

"Bad" Sens Team Wins Their 6th In A Row.... Greening A Calder Contender...Game Notes

Ottawa 3 Toronto 2

Coach Paul MacLean has been praising his veterans for leading the once beleaguered Ottawa Senators back to respectability, but they largely won their sixth game in a row tonight on the backs of the kids.

There was no Daniel Alfredsson, sitting out the game with a possible concussion sustained in a cheap shot by the Rangers Wojtek Wolski (which strangely went unpunished, but more on that later). Jason Spezza seemed a little off the mark for once and had his 6 game point streak snapped. Milan Michalek didn't have a point.

That's not a criticism, because you'll never have your top guys going every single night in an 82 game schedule. But that's when you need other players to step up, and in Ottawa's case, those other players are kids by necessity.

It's hard to imagine Colin Greening playing any better than he did tonight but, as most agree, he has only shown us a glimpse of what he's capable of. That's a frightening proposition. Think Milan Lucic with goal scorer's hands. Greening was all over the Leafs tonight, throwing his body, stealing pucks, grinding the boards into a fine white dust and scoring a game tying goal in the first period off a highlight feed from David Rundblad. If he hasn't been talked up as a rookie of the year candidate already, now is a good time to start. I wish I had the stones to predict that at the start of the season, but what the hell, I'll say it now. He might get a challenge from the guy who fed him that pass, because it looks like Rundblad is going to have a chance to put up some impressive numbers thanks to a league best power-play.

Rundblad just keeps impressing, running the play when he has the puck and even adding a few blocked shots to his arsenal. Robin Lehner made all the stops he should have for his first win of the season in an emergency call-up role for the injured Alex Auld.

Jared Cowen quietly had another great game, and he showed he has the timing to make a solo run into the offensive zone when the play requires it. That's one of the toughest things to learn as a young defenseman - when to go and when to stay. Guys like Karlsson and Rundblad have the switch permanently set to "Go" but that's because they have the wheels and skills to do it. Cowen, like Chris Phillips, has to pick his spots more carefully because he's playing a different role. You could see it when he ended up making a big hit behind the Leafs net and then getting back quickly when the play went the other way. You could see it when he stole a puck in the neutral zone and just plain outbattled a Leaf player at the red line and then carried it himself into the Leafs end.

And then you have Erik Karlsson, who is quickly becoming the best player on the hockey team if he isn't already. When he's on the ice, the play runs through him and he's the linchpin of their entire attack when they are at even strength. He's just as good on the power-play and now he's making defensive plays he seemingly wasn't capable of in his first few years in the league. His defensive game is so subtle that you don't notice it right away but lately he always has his body in the right position and he's stealing pucks in the corners with his smarts instead of his modest size.

Of course, vets like Sergei Gonchar, Chris Phillips, Filip Kuba and Chris Neil continued to be strong as they have all the way through the current winning streak.

Right now, no one knows how good this team can be, but it's clear they are better than what anybody gave them credit for in the summer.

Bad teams don't win 6 games in a row.

Like I said on my twitter feed, no need to plan a parade just yet, but it might be okay for this team to reassess their goals for the season. I'm sure the playoffs were the target from the beginning for everybody in the organization, but now that doesn't seem as laughable as that notion once was just a few short weeks ago.

Call us back in February.

Black Aces Senators 3 Stars

1. Erik Karlsson
2. Colin Greening
3. Chris Neil

Honourable Mentions: Robin Lehner, Sergei Gonchar, Jared Cowen, David Rundblad, Kaspars Daugavins and Zack Smith.

Black Aces Senators 3 Stars Season Scorecard

Here's a first look at the results of all the Black Aces 3 Stars for the year so far. 3 points for 1st Star, 2 for 2nd. 1 for 3rd Star. You get the picture.

1. Spezza – 12
2. Michalek – 10
3. Karlsson – 9
4. Alfredsson – 7
5. Neil – 6
6. Greening - 5
7. Gonchar – 3
8. Anderson - 3
9. Da Costa - 2
10. Foligno – 2


NOTES

Of course, the highlight reel plays David Rundblad is capable of, such as the pass from his own net to the other blueline that sent Colin Greening in alone to score, are the ones we'll all be talking about the next day, but it's the little plays that give you a hint of his all-around game. One thing Rundblad does so well is step up on the puck carrier at the blueline like he's about to go in for the big hit. He doesn't do it on every play but when he does, everything about his body language says he's about to throw his body instead of just trying to angle the puck carrier off to the boards. It's funny to see just how quickly the puck carrier bails on his play and gets forced into turning the puck over just to avoid the steamroller. I've seen him do it a bunch of times already and only once or twice has he actually delivered the hit. It's an effective tactic for sure, and when he does catch someone on that play, they're going to be hurting. We've all seen those highlight videos from Sweden of Rundblad exploding guys. Won't be long until we see a huge one in the NHL by #7.....Do you think Kaspars Daugavins is popular with his teammates? I haven't seen so many people as happy as when Daugavins snuck a rope shot through Jonas Gustavsson for his first career goal. I thought Erik Karlsson was going to kiss him for a moment there....Huge goalies are a problem for the NHL, but it's nice if you have one yourself. Robin Lehner is a mountain....Nice to hear Sergei Gonchar getting praised around the league instead of the usual chatter about him being a bust. But really, it makes sense that the possible Hall Of Famer is bouncing back after a tough year. Guys like that don't suddenly forget to play the game. Now Ottawa fans are getting a taste of how good he can really be. Should be a fun year on the power play Gonchar and the Swedes playing catch....

.....The Sens Heritage jersey still looks great but they have to do something about that "bib" at the back. Every team has one now but maybe because the last stripe is white, it looks pretty long on these sweaters. Maybe one day we'll see the old straight cut back....Wow. They played Fastway's song "Trick Or Treat" at the rink tonight, a completely obscure track from the equally obscure but wonderfully cornball 80's horror movie "Trick Or Treat" starring that guy who played Skippy on Family Ties. Do yourself a favour and track down this movie.......Have to say it's refreshing to listen to Zenon Konopka do an interview, especially when he comes right out and says he "hates" the Leafs. Seriously, that's fantastic. Despite all the bad blood between the two teams over the years, nobody has ever come out so directly like that. It's probably just a little show biz on Konopka's part but fans eat that kind of thing up. Makes the atmosphere around the games fun and gives us hacks something to write about....But then Konopka gets scratched for the game. Hey, we can't all be Mark Messier.....Again, we don't want to run this subject into the ground, but the only thing worse than the garbage call on Konopka during the Rangers game is the fact that some highlight shows are stating Konopka hit Artem Anisimov "from behind" or "on the numbers". Clearly, they don't know how to sit and watch a replay and make a basic observation on what happened. To a lot of people, a guy lying on the ice means that the hit was a suspendable hit, no matter what the facts are or what the video shows....Ryan Getzlaf of the Ducks has seen his fill of diving and he really lets it loose while talking to the media after the Ducks game on Saturday.....

....I'm just as surprised as everybody else that there were no consequences for Wojtek Wolski over his elbow to Alfredsson's head on Saturday afternoon. Seemed cut and dried to me, and I'm not usually the type to be screaming about suspensions for every dangerous hit. Looks like he turned into Alfredsson on purpose and plowed his head with an elbow. Anyways, you can assume that next time the Rangers and Senators meet, Wolski will be a paid a visit by one of Chris Neil, Zenon Konopka, Matt Carkner, Zack Smith, or just about anybody you can name. Accountability on the ice is at an all-time low in the age of diving, but it still exists and there are a few guys on the Sens who are good at bringing down the judge's gavel.....Watching Rob Blake narrate the video for the Daniel Carcillo suspension left this viewer with one real conclusion: Let Brendan Shanahan do the videos. Blake can do the camera.....

....With news that Sean Avery has been put on re-entry waivers, it begs the question: Wouldn't it be ironic if Avery ends up saving John Tortorella's job? If Torts can swallow his obvious dislike of the nutjob winger, he's got a real important weapon he can throw onto the ice whenever his team needs a shot of adrenaline or old fashioned batshit craziness. You'd be surprised how often you need a little batshit craziness in professional hockey.....

.....The 2nd ever issue of "The Best Of Everything In Hockey", published by The Hockey News, just hit the shelves recently. Apparently, the Ottawa Senators are "The Worst At Everything".Even a quick look tells you just how far opinion of the Senators franchise has plunged over the past few years. There is barely a mention of the team or any of its players and they barely get any votes for any category you can dream of, including Best Public Relations, Best Arena Food, Best Celebration Zone, Best Broadcasting Tandem, Best Business Savvy, Best Jersey, Best Mascot, Best Intermission, Best Development Organization and many more. Zenon Konopka got some votes for Best Interview (from his time in Long Island and Tampa presumably), Sergei Gonchar tied for 6th Best Power Play Point Man and Matt Carkner and Konopka each got votes in the Best Fighter category (both tied for 4th). Chris Neil was voted the 9th best hitter and Gonchar was tied with 13 other players for 9th best skater. No votes for Daniel Alfredsson in the best leader category or for Eugene Melnyk in the best owner list. But the organization does get credit for helping to popularize Stompin' Tom Connors iconic "Hockey Song" in an article by Bruce Garrioch. I didn't realize the Senators were the first NHL team to play this regularly at games. The Leafs followed the Senators example shortly after and now it's probably played in every arena in every league known to man. So there's that..... In the same magazine, it sort of seems crazy at first that Ray Bourque didn't make the Boston Bruins All-Time First Team but when you have legends like Bobby Orr and Eddie Shore in the same group, what are they supposed to do? Dit Clapper is with Bourque on the second team, but if they do this magazine in another ten years, you might see Zdeno Chara on that second team with Bourque.....

....Have to love Robin Lehner's goalie pads. He has two solid red bars on the outer edges of each pad, which obviously are meant to look like goal posts. I guess the idea is to trick the eye of a shooter in that split second before he unleashes his shot. A shooter will always try to put one just inside the post, no? Pretty clever.