No One In Ottawa Feeling Sorry For Leafs Woes

The latest Black Aces column is up at Faces Magazine. Read it here.

"Let’s call it an “involuntary compulsion”.

Hockey fans in Ottawa always seem to have one squinty eye on the blue and white team down the 401, a glittering city that’s four and a half hours away by car but just a quick step or two away via memory lane.

The history between the Maple Leafs and the Senators is ugly and traumatic. Ottawa was always on the wrong end of multiple playoff battles, but skirmishes have been won by both sides along the way. Just a cursory glance uncovers a seamy underbelly of drama and irrational behavior that would seem almost barbaric if it were to happen in today’s NHL of concussion spotters and civilized discourse.

Yet some things never really change....."

Read the full column here.

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.

With Melnyk As Landlord, Sens In A Haunted House With No Escape

Lebreton Flats remains Ottawa’s ultimate “haunted house”, but it's not the only one.

Not that any real haunted houses remain on the Flats anymore. They were first wiped out by a massive fire in 1900, back in the day when it was possible for entire cities to be leveled by one casually tossed cigarette. Rebuilt quickly, an even worse disaster occurred when the Diefenbaker government expropriated the entire neighbourhood in the 60’s, demolished the houses and storefronts and then promptly did nothing with it for 40 years other than using it as a snow dump.

In any other city on any planet, land that valuable in sight of Parliament Hill would be a thriving part of the inner city. In Ottawa, weary OC Transpo riders stare at it every day out dirty windows on their way to the suburbs, wondering why there’s a big empty, depressing space in the middle of the city.

There’s not even a Starbucks there. The mind reels.

Refreshingly, those riders will soon be zipping by the Flats on trains instead of buses, but that “haunted house” will remain for the foreseeable future while Ottawa’s two alpha male businessmen fight to the death for the right to make millions of dollars from the country’s most famous snow dump.

And really, that’s what we’re talking about here when you remove all the language surrounding development, city planning, and condo revenue.

It’s about two businessmen, John Ruddy and Eugene Melnyk, who can’t make a deal with each other, and have decided to go nuclear in the courts, once again razing the Flats right back down to the contaminated soil. Not with fire, not with federal expropriation, but with unbridled ego.

Better journalists than myself have gone into detail surrounding the botched partnership so there’s no need to analyze the particulars here. Maybe Melnyk has a legitimate grievance over Ruddy developing a property in direct competition with the condo developments on the Flats, as he contends in the lawsuit. The two combatants will get their weeks in court and their pound of flesh once the judgments come in long past the time anyone really cares.

For Ottawa Senators fans, the judgment came down swiftly and without mercy almost immediately after the news broke in November. A shiny steel and glass rink for a rebuilding hockey team won’t be available to take the train to anytime soon. And it feeds into the now permanent perception that Melnyk is only capable of careening from one public relations disaster to another, all the while razing this town’s beloved hockey team right down to the pavement of the empty parking lot at the CTC in Kanata.

For a metaphorical match, you could do a lot worse than comparing the history of the Flats to the history of the Senators.

Both were once thriving components of this city, both suffered disasters – the Sens didn’t burn down but former owner Rod Bryden went bankrupt and the team was sold for pennies to Melnyk in the aftermath. The government tore people’s houses down in the Flats without much worry how the occupants felt or where they would go. Melnyk tore down every superstar and fan favourite who dared to step into the limelight – Marian Hossa, Daniel Alfredsson, Kyle Turris and Erik Karlsson.

And now both entities are in an embarrassingly long and drawn out holding pattern, with absolutely no certainty of what the future holds. The Flats could take another ten years until some clever businessman puts the right deal together, with or without an arena for the Senators. The team could drift ten years in a rebuild that has no guarantee of success and in a half-full arena in Kanata nearing the end of its life cycle.

That’s almost the definition of “haunted” - stuck in a realm between life and death, unable to cross over. Can you think of a better definition for either the Sens or the Flats?

Ruddy has the hearts and minds of the city behind him, due to his success with the Redblacks and various other profitable ventures around Ottawa. Melnyk gets billboards asking him to leave on the next available bus to Toronto.

This favorable view of Ruddy means nothing in the legal world, but it means everything in the real world.

Melnyk enjoyed an extended honeymoon when he “saved” the Senators from Bryden’s bankruptcy in 2003. Keep in mind that this bankruptcy occurred in an NHL era when teams had relocated for lesser reasons than bankruptcy. The loss of Ottawa’s franchise was a very real possibility at that time. Melnyk stabilized the franchise for what was a decade of success, culminating in a trip to the 2007 Stanley Cup finals. Life was pretty good around the team for a long time.

That seems like a lifetime ago, doesn’t it?

The new arena in Lebreton Flats was Melnyk’s last chance at winning back the hearts and minds of Senators fans. It was all set up to be the ultimate Hail Mary pass with Melnyk once again pulling this team from the fire and getting that public acclaim that he so clearly desires.

He’s not Ebenezer Scrooge or some comical villain that enjoys the negativity surrounding him. In fact, it’s the opposite. He reacts with indignant fury when given a chance to defend himself or his organization (as the UBER overreaction and the Flats lawsuit will tell you), which indicates he sees a grave injustice in how he’s portrayed by the media and fans. He’s not enjoying the billboards and the columns speculating on whether he’ll sell the team or not. It probably hurts more than he’ll let on.

Melnyk likely envisions a scenario where he’s the good guy again. He might even think it’s just around the corner. He won’t sell the team because his story and his legacy are not yet complete. It’s just a matter of getting the “right message” across and convincing us to see things his way.

Now that he’s booted the Flats opportunity into outer space somewhere, there’s just no hope anymore for his public rehabilitation in Ottawa, but alpha male businessman just don’t go gently into the good night. They fight to bitter end regardless of reason or even self-preservation.

For Senators fans, you just have to hope there’s something left to salvage once the ego battle is over.

As Ryan Adams once sang “I don’t want to live in this haunted house anymore.”

The Cautionary Tale Of Matt Duchene, And The Road To Redemption

Read the latest Black Aces column over at Faces Magazine here.

"Matt Duchene has the kind of face any Mom would love.

The kind of face you’d see in the 50’s selling Wrigley’s Doublemint or Neilson’s Hot Chocolate. The Haliburton, Ontario native has the look of a kid who’d knock on your door on a winter afternoon and say “My Mom made you this apple pie. She say’s Muurrrry Christmas!” and then turn around and trod through the snow with his mittens hanging limply on a string from his sleeves.

He’s only 27 (which is close to being considered “ancient” in today’s NHL) but he doesn’t look much different than most of the 19-20 year olds who invade league rosters year after year. During interviews he likes to wear his ball-cap backwards, and he smiles politely and speaks clearly. On the ice he’s undoubtedly a superstar – or at least has the skills of a superstar – with a ridiculously short stick that allows him to control the puck in tight around the net like almost no one in the game today. I don’t know what Zdeno Chara would do with that stick. He might eat it I suppose."

Read the full column here.

Sens Odd Couple Headed For Divorce

Read the latest Black Aces at Faces Magazine.

"The planets are quickly aligning for the Ottawa Senators, but they’re not aligning for one of those miracle playoff runs that happen once a decade.

Instead, all the planetary signs are pointing to the most predictable of all Senators-related phenomena – another coach firing. Of course, this is not a certainty, and maybe GM Pierre Dorion and Head Coach Guy Boucher have a very well hidden rapport that will survive this tumultuous season, but the betting money is on the killing floor...."

A Goalie Under Siege, Craig Anderson Fights For His Legacy

Read the latest Black Aces column at Faces Magazine.


"Even a routine Sunday night in Las Vegas can be eventful.

While most Ottawa fans were curled up on a couch after the first snowy day of late October, Senators goalie Craig Anderson was in eternally sunny Vegas facing 53 shots as the Golden Knights stormed his end of the ice with ease. Anderson was incredible, turning aside 49 shots with his glove, his stick, his pads and even his head.

Somehow, it still wasn’t enough...."

The Unloved, Forgotten Game-Day Program - Ottawa Senators Score Edition

Over the years I've accumulated many of these things going to games and at one point I decided to scan the covers of the ones I still had (meaning the ones my wife didn't throw away).

They used to give them away for free, but like most NHL teams, they eventually stopped that practice. To be honest, I'm not even sure if they print game-day programs anymore. Just thought I'd share these as they can bring back a few memories and a few familiar faces.

Most people tossed these in the trash on the way out, left them in their car where snow and slush and dogs destroyed them, or just left them under their arena seats after the game. Even a deep internet search doesn't bring many of these back from the dead.

From what I can remember, the Score program was published every few months but every game-day a new insert was stapled into the center featuring that night's roster and current scoring etc.

One day I'll post scans of the much celebrated Bodycheck magazine the Sens used to print in the early days of the franchise. But for now... the much unloved and forgotten Score game-day programs for your nostalgic Sens needs.

Brady Tkachuk Is Out Of Control... And We Like It

It’s been a long time since we’ve seen a smile on Pierre Dorion’s face that didn’t look forced.

Yet the morning before his 2-2-1 Ottawa Senators faced the Dallas Stars, the GM was making the local media rounds on television and radio with a detectable skip in his step. On camera with CTV’s Henry Burris, Dorion was the picture of relief, spinning hope that just a month ago seemed all but impossible.

And who could blame him?

Even the most moderate of pundits predicted total agony for this franchise, and the fact that this young-ish Senators team wasn’t 0-5 seemed like a Hail Mary that actually came through and landed into Dorion’s outstretched hands. Although everyone is happy to remind us all that it’s too early to be gloating about anything, letting Dorion enjoy this small moment in time seems more than reasonable.

I don’t see any “gloating”. I see a sort of collective “Oh”, the kind of muted response that seems appropriate for the occasion. Nobody is saying this team is going to swagger across the finish line into the playoffs, but it doesn’t look like they’re going to drive off a cliff either.

That same night, the Sens went out and smothered the explosive offense of the Stars with a 4-1 victory in front of a small hometown crowd of about 12,500. Two of the kids, Brady Tkachuk and Max Lajoie were instrumental in the win. After the game, goalie Craig Anderson told reporters that Tkachuk and Lajoie were “the heartbeat of this team, not only on the ice, but in the room”.

Now think about that quote for a second. This is Anderson, a fairly quiet but honest veteran player, telling reporters that a 19 and 20 year old pair of rookies are the “heartbeat” of the team. I’ve never heard any player say that, at least not that I can recall.

Dorion didn’t do any post-game pressers of course, but I’m willing to bet a few dollars he tipped back a drink of his choice and had a hell of a peaceful sleep out in lovely Orleans.

After all, Dorion and Eugene Melnyk made the ultimate gamble with their fan base by trading away Erik Karlsson. And unsurprisingly, they’re losing on that front in the short-term, with attendance low and the season ticket base rumoured to be at rock bottom levels.

Yet, despite all of this negative public and media sentiment, there is more than a trickle of positivity coming back to this team. You see it in little ways. Twitter, which is ultimately the barometer for the most extreme fans, has recently been dotted with lines like “I hate that this team is making me want to like them again”.

And that really sums it up, doesn’t it?

Watching Tkachuk barrel around the ice like an out of control fire truck isn’t exactly grace-in-motion, but it’s undeniably entertaining. Last weekend, with the Senators up 5-1 on the Kings late in the 3rd period, Tkachuk was battling in front of the Kings net like his very life depended upon it. You’d laugh if it wasn’t so impressive. It’s rare that a player can skate by him without getting a quick, almost invisible slash on the arms, and when he gets back to the bench he’s always laughing or yelling about something.

Meme’s have quickly spread of Tkachuk in all sorts of strange comedic situations, like his now infamous cringe reaction to Lajoie on television or getting his helmet screwed tight on the bench like he’s in a Three Stooges skit. His baby face just seems to accentuate all this, yet it’s a bit deceiving.

He doesn’t look at all like a 19 year old rookie when he’s rambling around ice like he’s trapped in a cage. He’s scored 3 goals in 4 games which leads all Sens forwards in that category. He’s 2nd on the team in shots behind Lajoie, 3rd in power-play points, and he’s done all this after missing the first two games of the season.

Every time he scrambles over the boards, you can feel the fans pay attention in the rink. Everybody watches this guy because it’s impossible not to. Wherever he is, helmets fly off, people lose their sticks, nets come off their moorings and plexiglass sways dangerously.

In a way, he’s the anti-Karlsson. The former Senator was all sleek skill and silent speed. Tkachuk is all arms and legs and chewed-up mouthguards.

But the fans are starting to eat it up.

Even my own 8 year old son, who, horrifyingly, has shown absolutely zero interest in his father’s favourite pastime, saw a clip of Tkachuk on TV and said “Who’s that guy? He’s kinda funny and crazy.” Before this, the only interest he’s had in hockey was singing word for word Brian5or6’s “Hotsam Batcho” song… again to my horror.

Suddenly this team has a few budding stars to market and it doesn’t seem like a total reach. It helps that Thomas Chabot and Tkachuk are both comfortable in front of a camera. Chabot probably had to learn it on the fly in a second language while Tkachuk just inherited it naturally from his NHL family.

There’s still more than a few long and short-term worries however.

Logan Brown’s apparent unreadiness for the NHL this year surprised me. He’s fallen out of favour a little with prospect watchers but I easily envisioned the big centremen stepping in right away right behind Matt Duchene. Turns out he’s in the AHL, sidelined by an injury while Filip Chlapik, Rudolfs Balcers and Drake Batherson are all making their case to be the next call-up. Brown feels like a century away right now but that can all change pretty quickly.

Cody Ceci continues to struggle, both on the ice and with the fans. Two wins in a row with Ceci sitting out injured isn’t going to put this to rest anytime soon. Thankfully Chris Tierney and Dylan DeMelo, both acquired in the Karlsson deal, have been revelations in their roles, making the disappointments of Brown and Ceci seem less vital.

And yes, you can always rely on worrying about contracts for Duchene, Mark Stone and Ryan Dzingel.

But maybe it’s okay for Sens fans to just enjoy the temporary hope while they can. Maybe, if things keep going the right way, it can be more than just temporary.

Remember the defiant quotes before the season started from Duchene and Mark Borowiecki? They were polite about it, but you could tell they wanted to stuff this season down everybody’s throats if they got the chance. There were clues sitting here in front of us that this team was going to fight like hell.

It was there when coach Guy Boucher seemed to snarl his displeasure at seeing veteran Zack Smith waived. Nobody was thrown under the bus but it was easy to detect an “us vs them” mentality forming. It had been too long a summer of the coach (who quietly does not have a contract extension) and the players just hanging out there on the clothesline being pecked at by everybody.

They had no control until they could actually step on the ice and finally do something about it. Now we might just have a team worth watching here, forged by the need to prove us all wrong.

How far they're willing to go to prove that point will be the entertaining part. Just don't take your eyes off that "crazy" Tkachuk kid. You might miss a garage sale.

Some Guys Have All The Luck

It’s a tale of two cities for Thomas Chabot and Cody Ceci.

Last Saturday night in parade-expecting Toronto, in front of a national audience on Hockey Night In Canada, the 21 year old Chabot calmly dangled Leafs defenseman Igor Ozhiganov and top-shelfed a goal so pretty that even the most heartbroken of Sens fans probably felt a ragged pulse for the first time in months.

A short two days later at the Boston Garden, fellow defenseman Cody Ceci had one of those mediocre games that would go largely unnoticed in most NHL cities, but for fans watching at home in Ottawa, it was another opportunity to hit the rage button on a once highly regarded prospect turned fan punching bag.

Not many teams can stop the Bruins first line of Patrice Bergeron, Brad Marchand and David Pasternak – and Ottawa was no exception on this day – but the sight of Bergeron’s hat-trick goal bouncing in off of Ceci’s skate launched a thousand and one “I told you so” tweets.

Never mind that Ceci was (awkwardly) doing the right thing in trying to cut off a cross-crease pass. Never mind that fluke bounces factor into basically every NHL game in history.

All of that doesn’t matter. At least not to Ottawa fans and Mr. Ceci. For many, Ceci will never measure up, even though nobody really knows what that measure is supposed to be.

Analytics-minded fans say they know the measure, and it’s possession time among other stats. And they may very well be right. Ceci, miscast as a shutdown defender on a thin Senators blueline, has to face Bergeron, John Tavares, Auston Matthews, Steve Stamkos, Alex Ovechkin and other Eastern Conference stars almost every time he steps on the ice. Which means he’s skating backwards more often than handling the puck, and when he does get it on his tape, it’s probably going high off the glass and through the neutral zone so his team can make a line change. Doesn’t make for a very compelling set of numbers.

For many, he also fails the eyeball test, which is really also just a “values” test.

We watch with our eyes but we also watch with our prejudices. We want to see what we already know, which is why analytics has cut through some of the traditional views and made everybody mad on both sides of the divide. It challenges everything we think we know and therefore it’s a threat. On the other hand analytics dismisses intangibles too easily and the eyeball test probably takes too much of it into account.

But you’re not interested in that old debate are you? I’m not.

We already know a lot about Ceci and we’re not going to part with that knowledge without a good fight. We see a minor miscue and it brings to mind hundreds from the past and suddenly that bad bounce turns into the blooper that should see him traded for a draft pick (a 2nd rounder has no blemishes – they’re friggin’ perfect).

We don’t see the routine plays that a veteran makes to be in position to halt a breakout or that vital routine pass to break out of the zone. Not the home run pass to create a breakaway, but the simple chalkboard play to get out of your zone. Ceci, and most vets, make these unremarkable plays more often than not and that’s why a coach like Guy Boucher values them. Fans only see the outliers and soon those outliers distort into the norm.

But when does reputation overshadow the on-ice play so much that the team has no choice but to move on from the player?

It’s a bit reminiscent of Jason Spezza, who was well-liked by more fans than Ceci, but still took so much heat that he wanted out of town shortly after being named captain. He felt he took more than his fair share of blame. Nothing was more stark than Spezza chasing Sidney Crosby around the net during a playoff series and getting beat so badly that it came to represent all of his shortcomings as a defensive player. Never mind that it was against the best player in the world at the time. For many fans, Spezza was a sum of his mistakes, not the superstar that he actually was and continued to be for some time.

Ceci’s bad bounce in Boston is nowhere near as dramatic or important, but you can see the track this train is running on. And it’s not pulling into Party Station anytime soon.

Ceci even recently admitted that he was expecting a role change this season with Erik Karlsson suddenly in San Jose (that’s a pretty good movie title, “Suddenly In San Jose”), but, once again, luck is not with the young Ottawa native.

That role has been offloaded to even younger players like Chabot, the out-of-nowhere Max Lajoie and pending UFA Chris Wideman. If Ceci can’t get that role right now, he’s never going to get it in Ottawa.

“If it wasn’t for bad luck….”

Meanwhile, Chabot is the fan’s new golden kid. He’s already got an organic fan nickname, which almost never happens in hockey anymore. His teammates probably call him Chabby, but the fans now refer to him as Hotsam Batcho, a Brian5or6 epiphany when a few beers prompted a deep dive into the world of anagrams (and other debaucherous activities).

It’s caught on and even Hotsam himself endorsed the name by being photographed in a custom Brian5or6 shirt with the nickname on the back. Fans swooned. Shirt sales went crazy. It was a love-in.

Unfortunately there’s no such opportunity for Ceci.

It goes a bit deeper than just stats and his perceived play on the ice (which to me is nowhere near as awful as some make it out to be, but it’s not something to celebrate either). There’s long been a sentiment that Ottawa management favoured local prospects for marketing reasons over more skilled options, but in the case of Ceci, he was one of the most highly rated defensemen in his 2012 draft class. That bugaboo may apply in other cases, but it doesn’t seem to apply here.

That he hasn’t blossomed into the offensive right-shot defenseman that many thought he would be probably comes down to playing behind Erik Karlsson on the right side. Not to mention playing behind Karlsson’s personality.

Karlsson is a natural star in every way, completely comfortable in his own skin and magnetic to even casual fans. Ceci’s only crime is having a “standard” hockey personality. He’s good at saying the right things in a rinkside interview but despite being a local star with the 67’s in junior, he’s not exactly the most requested player in media scrums. There’s no winks or moustache twirls.

Like most players, he enjoys his privacy and doesn’t seem to be clamoring to be the voice of the team. He’s well liked in the locker room by all indications and seems especially close to another fan favourite, Mark Stone.

Unlike Stone, he actually had to go through his arbitration hearing this summer and expressed some thinly veiled bitterness at what he had to hear from the team. He makes good coin this season, but it comes at some unknown personal cost.

In a fair world, Ceci would probably be seen as a “fair” player, but that’s fantasy land at this point.

Chabot has won the hearts of Sens fans, as has Stone, and it probably won’t be long before Brady Tkachuk and Alex Formenton are embraced the same way.

For Cody Ceci, the intense scrutiny will continue until something breaks, either for management or the player. He probably deserves better, but on a rebuilding team, Ceci is going to continually be put in the position where his mistakes are magnified and his good plays are unrecognized. I can only imagine how tough it has to be on his psyche. Or his family and his friends. These attacks have real ramifications. Just ask Jared Cowen, or other high draft picks before him who didn’t measure up to expectations.

I don’t know the guy but I imagine his dreams of playing in the NHL were the same as thousands before him. This was supposed to feel better.

As Rod Stewart, with his rooster haircut and red leather pants once sang non-ironically, “some guys have all the luck”.

Ceci could use some of that easy living Rod Stewart luck right now.

Garbage Bag Day Roundup

Winter has struck me one last cruel blow with a head cold that’s burrowed into every last crevice of my large skull, so while I’m at home catching reports on exit interviews by the Senators, I thought I’d try to offer at least a few coherent sentences.

I’ll be updating this post as the day goes on, heavy-head allowing...

Craig Anderson – So far, he’s sounded like the most disappointed Senator, although Jason Spezza was close. He mentioned that players were too often looking for others to step up and make a difference instead of doing it themselves. Sounds about right, especially when you look at how this team performed last year when Spezza, Karlsson and many others were out. Anderson also told reporters he “100%” wanted to stay in Ottawa and later on had lots of praise for rookie defenseman Cody Ceci.

In that same interview he also made a smart distinction between number of shots against compared to bonafide scoring chances against. With the rise in the mainstream of stats like Corsi and Fenwick as barometers of team play, Anderson made it clear that it’s not necessarily the amount that bothers him as a goalie... it’s the quality. Teams keep internal stats on “scoring chances” and that may be why they’ve been notoriously resistant to more general possession stats like Corsi. When it comes to these things, I’m not loyal to either side but I’m more apt to take a goalie’s word on it than anyone else’s.

Jason Spezza – Unsurprisingly, he sounded incredibly depressed about the situation, but he’s sounded like that for at least a few weeks. When teammates were spouting positives about the team coming together to finish strong, Spezza was saying stuff like “too little, too late”. Clearly, he’s taking his first season as captain hard... and he should. A lot of the organization’s hopes rest on his sometimes unstable back but he wasn’t able to deliver this team to the playoffs like his predecessor had for many seasons. Team’s have bad years, and I don’t think you can pin much of the blame on Spezza, but as captain he’s doing the right thing by being accountable, at least to the media. Yet when asked if he wanted to return, his tone of voice took on an even darker tone and he simply retorted “I do”. It was a short answer, and didn’t do much to convince me or anyone else that he’s a happy guy right now.

To me, trading Spezza won’t do this team much good in the short or the long term. Extracting that much skill out of your lineup is never a good thing. Even if they get a first-rounder back in the trade, that player won’t be on this team and contributing regularly for 3 or 4 years. They’re not going to get back a first-line centre either. Spezza is a 220 pound point-scoring machine who’s just 30 years old. The only reason you would part with a guy like that is if he wanted out himself. I’m not sure he’s at that point yet, but it could be close. Nobody gets treated worse by the fans than #19. Alfredsson went through some tough times here with the fans and perservered. I think Spezza can do the same but this is a delicate summer for both sides. Spezza may want some assurances that GM Bryan Murray is going to either re-sign Alex Hemsky or get someone similar to play with. If I had to put money on it, I think Spezza survives here and gets another contract.

Paul MacLean – When asked, both Kyle Turris and Erik Karlsson had lots of praise for the suddenly beleaguered head coach. As Ian Mendes tweeted out, Karlsson said “Guys have a lot of respect for him and we like him.” Turris maintained MacLean’s message is still getting through to the guys in the room and you can only think that a lot of the players said this to Murray in their exit meeting when asked.

When Barry Trotz was let go this morning by Nashville, it decreased the job security of at least 10 coaches around the league, including, arguably, Paul MacLean’s. The one thing everybody has been harping on has been this team’s lack of defensive prowess, which is what Trotz instilled annually in Nashville as coach. Even Jacques Martin was quoted in the Ottawa Citizen yesterday saying that he’s looking for a head coaching job.

But come on... MacLean can’t really be in trouble here can he? One tough season after signing a contract extension shouldn’t be enough to make this guy homeless. Saying that, some major adjustments need to be made by this coaching staff going into next September. It might mean Murray makes a change with the assistant staff and brings in a defensive specialist (like Pittsburgh did by bringing in Martin, a move that worked incredibly well with key defensemen missing there), or it could just be a different approach from the existing group. I’m not sure the defense roster is going to change that much, particularly in the top four, so any changes will have to be through coaching.

This is just speculation but I’m guessing Murray and Melnyk were a little unhappy that MacLean didn’t have more patience with the Bobby Ryan and Spezza pairing. They spent a lot of money and prospects to bring Ryan in to play with #19 but instead spent most of the season looking at a hole on Spezza’s right side that not only hindered the offensive potential of their number one-centre, but also the team. Eventually they had to go out and get Ales Hemsky and now they have two expensive right-wingers to re-sign, Hemsky this summer.

Sure, the Spezza/Ryan pairing didn’t seem to click in the early going but Spezza himself admitted he wasn’t fully himself in October after back-surgery. There’s always going to be that “what if” feeling around those two, especially if an unhappy Spezza wants out this summer. MacLean exhibited a bit of stubbornness this season, and that might have hurt the team. His unending patience with Jared Cowen is another example, but if you look at it closely, keeping Cowen in the lineup to try and play through his struggles is in the best interests of the team long-term. They committed to Cowen in his new contract and MacLean didn’t take him off the ice, even when he was clearly hurting their chances. That’s the dilemma for coaches of young teams. You have to balance winning at all costs with development. MacLean was caught in that trap with Cowen and a few other players.

I could be dead wrong but I think MacLean is safe for now. If the team falters next season in the same way, it could turn into the “night of long knives”.

Erik Karlsson – With a hoarse, exhausted voice, Karlsson beamed positivity throughout his media availability today. I don’t know what it is, but even in the midst of disaster, this guy just comes across as incredibly likeable and easy-going. He always has the hint of a smile on his face, even when he’s tearing into a ref (which he did a bit too much of this season). There’s no need to go into his play on the ice – he’s the franchise. But what fascinates me lately is his ways off the ice. He’s a magnetic personality and never seems to carry around the gloom on his shoulders like some can when things are going south. Sure, there was that self-imposed exile from the media earlier in the season which was bizarre, but his explanations for it were disarming. He’s noticeably honest, like a lot of Swedish hockey players (ie. “probably not”) but you always walk away thinking “things aren’t that bad” after hearing him talk. Makes you think he has the personality to be the next captain of this hockey team when Spezza moves on, even if it means this summer.

Now, it’s easy to be like that when you’re never taking the brunt of fan criticism like Spezza has over his career, and thus has no reason to be guarded. Yet I think Karlsson just has that innate personality to block those things out more than Spezza does. We’ve heard a lot about how Spezza is a keen student of the game and keeps up with what the media is saying about him. That’s got to do some serious mental damage over time, and undoubtedly it has. Spezza sounds utterly defeated at the end of most seasons but manages to get his spirits back up by September. Karlsson seems like the kind of guy who wouldn't pay much attention to what the media is saying. Maybe I’m wrong, but his personality is just too fast and loose to get caught up in that.

If he can get a full summer of training and heal that Achilles injury, it’s frightening to think what this guy can do next year. And if that captain’s “C” happens to become available, I don’t think he’d hesitate for a second accepting it.


More to come throughout the day.... Feel free to respond on Twitter.

Who Stays... Who Goes? Diagnosing The Senators Defence

Sure, going over the forwards in the last post was easy. Scoring hasn’t been the problem with the Ottawa Senators this season as they figure to settle in the Top 10 in league offense. In goals-against, the Sens are in a category with the Oilers, Panthers, Islanders, Sabres and horror of all horrors, the Leafs at the very threshold of hell.

At the beginning of the season, this team couldn't even get the puck out of their own end. Coach Paul MacLean held a practice where all they did was breakouts over and over again. Still, the pain continued.

It didn’t help that this team couldn't get any goaltending, but the defense core aggressively underachieved this season to the point of satire. Opposing teams would break over the blueline and the Senators most highly paid, veteran defensemen would start doing something that resembled the doggy-paddle. Almost every defenseman at one point ended up on blooper reels during the long season and nothing the coaching staff came up with ended up staunching the flow of errors.

Now we get to sit and watch other teams play in the post-season. Surely there’s going to be changes on defense... but maybe not as many as you’d think (or like). Here’s my rundown on each individual defenseman who played the majority of the year here and what awaits them next season. Pray with me. (Contract values are approximate cap hits per Cap Geek)

***

Erik Karlsson- 5 years left on deal at $6.5m: The most telling thing about Karlsson’s season is that he’s still not a hundred percent healed from his Achilles injury. Yet he’s comfortably in the team lead in scoring with 72 points and 3 games to go, he broke Steve Duchesne’s team record for goals by a defenseman in a season when he notched his 20th, and is only 6 points off his Norris Trophy season total. He’s also logged the most minutes of his career in 2013-14. What can this kid do with a full-summer of training and healing? It will lash your mind with fear if you think about it too deeply. I’m not one to nitpick some of his defensive lapses because that mostly comes from always having the puck and trying to create offense. I get the sense that if Alfie was still around he would have let Karlsson know it’s not always wise to chirp at refs and visibly show your frustration by banging your stick and shaking your head. Once Karlsson cleans that up – and he will with maturity – he could win a Hart Trophy. This guy is the franchise. And his contract is a major bargain compared to what he means to the team. And let’s always remember that the Leafs chose Luke Schenn 5th overall the same year the Sens grabbed Karlsson at 15th in the first round.

Jared Cowen – 3 years left on deal at $3.1m: Here we go. No defenseman took more blasting from fans this year than Cowen. Some of the things said on Twitter about the young defenseman would have made Don Rickles wince. It was a disaster from the start, with Cowen holding out through most of training camp waiting on a deal and then looking very much like a guy who missed the season before with a wonky hip. Cowen was burned savagely game after game this year by speedy forwards and most of his physical game seemed to disappear for long stretches. The coup-de-grâce was Cowen imploding against both the Bruins (-4) and Red Wings (-3) in games right before and after the Olympic break. You could see that coach MacLean was trying to get Cowen through the rough patches by playing him regularly despite the mistakes but even MacLean had to finally admit defeat and reduce Cowen’s ice-time significantly as the season wound down. Yet, I still like the guy. One bad year doesn’t mean you give up on a high-pedigree defenseman. He has the size and mobility to be a top-4 defenseman for years and the Senators paid him with that in mind. It’s tempting to imagine at least one of Karlsson, a confident Cowen and Cody Ceci on the ice at all times for the next 5 or 6 years. That’s the plan for GM Bryan Murray and he shouldn’t waver from it just because Cowen struggled. If he gets off to a terrible start next season, then it’s really time to worry, but until then I’ll keep the faith.

Marc Methot – 1 year left on deal at $3m: Like almost everybody on the team, Methot had a tough year and even seemed to clash with MacLean earlier in the season when he was made a healthy scratch. He had his partners changed and vaulted up and down the rotation, sometimes stuck on the 3rd pairing depending on MacLean’s mood. Yet this guy comes across as accountable and likely has something to prove next season (and a new contract to play for). To me, he’s the least controversial guy on the blueline for Ottawa, and possibly on the entire team. Right now he’s even on the season in plus/minus, he’s middle of the pack if you go for possession numbers like Corsi, he’s second on the team in ice-time and plays an honest, unflashy defensive game. Coaches love having reliable defenseman like this and Methot is very similar to what Chris Phillips was in his prime. I see it as a no-brainer for the Senators to re-sign this guy, especially when they’re trying to develop up a lot of young defensemen at the same time. Methot seems like the prototypical “team guy” and could even wear the “C” down the line, depending how things turn out. Hopefully the feeling is mutual among player and management.

Cody Ceci – 2 years left on deal at $900,000: If you’re wondering why Patrick Wiercioch was a healthy scratch for so long, it’s because Ceci came out of nowhere and flat out stole his job mid-season. It helped that Ceci was a right-handed shot which made Wiercioch look even more expendable playing his wrong side, but Ceci came into the lineup, immediately scored a huge overtime goal against St. Louis, and slowly the team began to win more regularly, at least for a while. You have to remember that when Ceci got called up from Bingo, the biggest panic on the team was about not getting the puck out of the defensive zone cleanly. Ceci seemed to provide another option other than Karlsson and the team’s play improved quickly. Ottawa won 9 of Ceci’s first 15 games and Wiercioch wasn’t able to get back into the lineup regularly until the end of March. The offense never really took off for the rookie (ironically Joe Corvo, also out of a job due to Ceci, had better numbers in limited play) but he moved the puck well and was rewarded with mostly steady ice-time from MacLean, occasionally hitting the 20 minute mark. Ceci looks like a guy who could get you 15-20 power-play points a year and be that offensive right-hander to slot in behind Karlsson. He may even have take a slight step-back next season as sophomores sometimes do, but he has a long future here in Ottawa.

Patrick Wiercioch – 2 years left on deal at $2m: I’ve been pretty positive so far but here we take a turn for the worse. I’m not a fan. I love that long-bomb pass Wiercioch is capable of at times and I like his reach with that lanky body, but watching this guy just leaves me cold. I was as impressed as everyone else with the training camp and exhibition schedule Wiercioch had and fully expected him to carry that over, but as soon as I saw Ceci play I suddenly realized everything I wasn’t seeing in Wiercioch. Ceci always seemed compact and in control. Wiercioch was all arms and legs dangling, zig-zagging through the neutral zone or throwing bombs across two-lines that sometimes connected, sometimes not. Wiercioch was still getting points but he just seemed more dangerous and prone to giveaways at the offensive blueline. Yet he’s still the 3rd highest scoring defenseman on the Senators and ranks about the same in unofficial possession numbers, which led me to wonder if it was just my individual bias about the way he “looks” out there not letting me see a good hockey player. I’m still wrestling with that dilemma because my gut tells me he’s not top-six but the raw numbers says he deserves to be. Yet with Ceci entrenched on the right side and Cowen still prized by management on the left, I can see a situation where Murray tries to move Wiercioch out simply because he doesn’t fit into the current d-man puzzle on this team. They also need to make room for Mark Borowiecki, another left-handed shot, who’s on a one-way contract next season. Many of you will scream that Wiercioch deserves to play over someone like Chris Phillips – I disagree and we’ll get to that next – but that argument was basically put to bed when Murray signed Phillips to a contract extension right before the trade-deadline. To me, that sealed Wiercioch’s fate right away. But there’s also the trouble with moving Wiercioch’s contract. I think some team would take a run at him but $2m is a lot for a guy who hasn’t been able to cement a role in the top-six.

Chris Phillips – 2 years left on deal at $2.5m: Phillips has taken a ton of heat for a tough season that neatly mirrored those of his teammates, but if you look at his career, Phillips has a history of bouncing back after sub-par years. In fact, you can look at Phillips as a barometer of how the team is doing in any given season. In 2010-11, the Senators imploded under Cory Clouston and had their worst campaign since 1995-96. Coincidentally, Phillips also had his worst full-season in 10-11, scoring only 9 points and going -35 in 82 games. When MacLean replaced Clouston, the team turned around and so did Phillips’ game, getting back to familiar territory with 19 points and a +12 rating. When the Senators were on their long streak of playoff appearances, Phillips was steady both on the ice and in the stats sheet and that continued under MacLean with a slight lessening of his ice-time the older he got. Now this season, the Senators are struggling again and Phillips is having a tough year defensively and offensively. As the team goes, so does Phillips. If they can get their defensive play sorted out next year, I think you’ll see Phillips rebound like he has throughout his career. As a 36 year old, Phillips hasn’t had two bad years in a row. To me that says something about his professionalism. He’s not a game changer and has never been a guy to dictate the play, but when he’s playing inside an organized system, he’s very solid, but when the overall structure isn’t there, he struggles. That’s what I mean by him being a barometer of overall fortunes of the team. One day he’ll fade but I don’t see that happening in the next two seasons. In fact, I see him turning it around along with the team.

Eric Gryba – RFA: Quietly, Gryba has had a solid year on a bad defensive team. He fits nicely on the bottom pair as the right-handed shot and it’s a testament to his play that MacLean was rarely tempted to play Wiercioch there on his off-side just to get more offense. He takes a lot of minor penalties but most of those come from battling in front of his own net and getting too aggressive. He’s a welcome presence back there physically and is kind of a menacing bastard with that lumberjack beard and a highlight in his back pocket from when he absolutely crushed the Habs Lars Eller in the 2013 playoffs. I’d actually like to see Gryba get meaner back there and really punish guys but it’s a tricky thing with the refs in the modern NHL. Even dropping the gloves a little more might give him a bit more of an intimidating presence but he doesn’t seem to look for that kind of trouble. I’m not entirely sure of his long-term future here with Mark Borowiecki ready to come in and provide a similar type of game. They may want to play Boro with more of an offensive-minded d-man to balance out the pairings and that could make Gryba expendable, especially now that he has to negotiate a new deal. My hunch is that MacLean likes what he brings most nights and would like to have him back (providing the coach is back himself) but Gryba could be moved to create some change back there and change the dynamic. Let’s just say I’m not 100% sure where Gryba fits when the dust settles on what should be a summer of change.

Who Stays... Who Goes? Opinions On Ottawa's Forwards

Usually I wait until the Senators are eliminated from the playoffs to do a “sign or trade” compendium, but much like this cruel, sadistic winter, this season has dragged on miserably for way too long and I don’t feel that any big surprises are waiting for us in the last 6 games of the regular season that would change my opinions on anybody.

Like anyone else watching this team or freezing our asses off out there, we’re all looking for closure.

For what it’s worth, here’s my take on each individual Senators forward (we’ll do the defense and goalies next week). We’ll look at their performance this season and whether or not I think they should or will be back. As usual, there will be a lot of dissenting opinion, so if you disagree, let me know in the comments or on the Twitter machine.

When there’s a lack of success, there’s always a tidal wave of opinion. I’m no different. So here’s my rundown... (Contract values are approximate cap hits per Cap Geek)

Centres

Jason Spezza – 1 year left on deal at $7m: I love the way Spezza plays the game and would like nothing more than to see him sign an extension to stay in Ottawa, simply because I enjoy the entertainment. He’s a throwback to an 80’s style centre but that’s what gets him into trouble with a lot of the fanbase. Seeing Spezza come alive with the addition of Ales Hemsky has convinced me yet again that there’s a lot of great hockey left in that wonky back, but there has to be some concern from management. To resign Spezza will take a lot of capital and commitment and there’s a risk involved with his health. He’s still only 30 and should have about 3 or 4 strong offensive years left. Yet the Senators can’t risk losing him for nothing in 2015. They have to re-sign or trade him this summer. I’m not completely convinced that Kyle Turris or Mika Zibanejad are true number-one elite centres, either now or in the near future. Moving Spezza would hurt this team in more than just entertainment value. Here’s a more in-depth look at how I view Spezza from a few weeks ago.

Kyle Turris – 4 years left on deal at $3.5m: Right now he’s the perfect second-line centre on this team and has been, along with linemate Clarke MacArthur, the Senators most consistent player all season. There’s not much to criticize about his game except that he’s still a little scrawny. That may be the only thing holding him back from being able to go up against the other team’s top centres every night the way Spezza does (Spezza is 30 pounds heavier). Turris has a great contract as well. GM Bryan Murray absolutely stole him from Phoenix for David Rundblad, a trade I initially didn’t like. I was wrong. Big time.

Mika Zibanejad – 1 year left on deal at $900,000: Coach Paul MacLean has brought Zibanejad along very slowly which has infuriated some fans but in the end it’s probably the right thing to do. That’s the Detroit Red Wings style that MacLean brought over with him and at times it seemed Zibanejad was being held back, but I think we’re seeing that approach pay off. You can see glimpses of so much power in his game and if he eventually fills out to 220 pounds he’ll be even harder to take off the puck. If the Senators decide to deal Spezza, Zbad will get a lot more responsibility but right now he’s in a pretty good spot. If that old cliché about players breaking out in their fourth year holds true with Zibanejad, we should start to see some real offensive numbers in about two seasons.

Zack Smith – 3 years left on deal at $1.8m: Ottawa’s second best faceoff man behind Spezza, Smith has the most even-strength defensive zone starts of anyone on the team who’s played over 50 games. He kills penalties and is a welcome physical presence down the middle. He sometimes loses his temper and takes bad penalties, but according to Extra Skater, he also draws a lot of penalties on the other teams, leading the Senators in that category with 34. In the grand scheme of things, he comes out even and I’m sure MacLean can stomach a few penalties here and there if it means Smith is engaged physically and emotionally in the games. In his first few years, Smith had a tendency to disappear for stretches and look uninterested. That hasn’t been the case this year. There’s no doubt he’ll be back in the same role next season.

J.G. Pageau-1 year left on deal at $600,000: I don’t pretend to know what’s going to happen with this guy. The Sens are deep at centre at the NHL level right now so it’s hard to see Pageau there full-time next year. I guess he could play the wing with that speed of his but there are a lot of skilled guys ahead of him there too. There’s something in his game that has big-time written all over it, but I don’t know if he’s going to get the opportunity he needs here. Do the Senators really want the smallest fourth-line in the NHL? I doubt it, and that hurts Pageau’s chances right now.

Stephane Da Costa-RFA: See Pageau above. Same deal, although as an RFA, Da Costa might have hit the end of the line in Ottawa if he expects to be a full-time NHL’er. Both teams might benefit from a trade here.

Wingers

Bobby Ryan – 1 year left on deal at $5.1m: Ryan spoke to the media for the first time after his hernia surgery this week and said he “loves” playing in Ottawa and can see himself here for a long time. Hockey fans all over the city gently hugged one another and wouldn’t let go for a few awkward minutes. From day one there’s been a lingering suspicion that Ottawa was just a brief stop on his way to the Philadelphia Flyers when he becomes a free agent in 2015. It’s a bit of that small-town defeatist attitude that’s so abundant here at times, and I wasn’t immune to it myself. I just assumed that the disastrous season the Senators had would have soured Ryan’s outlook (not to mention enduring the worst winter since Big Joe Mufferaw Montferrand was prowling Bytown and fighting Irish gangs in 1829). If Ryan is genuine, and I have no reason to doubt he is, then Murray has to get this guy signed long-term come July 1st. When you have a true goal-scorer like that, just get it done. He’s going to be a big ticket but that’s the price of doing business. If for some reason they can’t negotiate a contract this summer, Ottawa has no choice but to deal him and get something back. Waiting until the deadline to move Ryan could backfire on a Thomas Vanek-like level.

Clarke MacArthur – 1 year left on deal at $3.2m: Another no-brainer for Sens management. MacArthur was the biggest surprise of the year and the most underrated UFA signing of last summer. He’s provided goals, leadership (with his blunt honesty to the media) and lots of speed. I’m not sure how much his next deal will be, but I can’t see Murray balking at a reasonable demand. MacArthur and Turris could play together for the next 4 years if the Sens play this right.

Milan Michalek-UFA: All season I’ve been convinced he was gone this summer but lately Michalek has at least given me a little reason to doubt that early verdict. Not even Spezza benefited as much from the addition of Ales Hemsky like Michalek has. Suddenly he’s scoring goals again and finding that speed we all thought he’d lost after multiple knee injuries. But a late-season surge shouldn’t cloud our judgement here. The Senators have a lot of prospects like Mark Stone, Mike Hoffman, Matt Puempel, Shane Prince and Curtis Lazar who will need a full-time roster spot in the next few seasons. If the Senators plan to bring back both Ryan and Hemsky, it will be too expensive to save Michalek. It’s one thing to gamble on Spezza’s back when he provides you with a number one centre option, it’s another to gamble on Michalek’s knees for limited production in the future. I’d let Michalek go for all those reasons.

Ales Hemsky – UFA: I’m a big fan. Maybe it’s my imagination but I sometimes see glimpses of what Ottawa used to have with Marian Hossa on the wing when Hemsky dangles in the offensive zone. Hemsky doesn’t have the power that Hossa had but that dose of high-end skill has been refreshing to see here. Not signing Hemsky just means that the search for Spezza’s winger will start all over again and nobody wants to read any more stories about that. Yet the Sens have to be careful how much money they throw around to all their other pending UFA’s like Spezza, Ryan, MacArthur, Marc Methot and Craig Anderson. Not all of them are going to be back and signing Hemsky to a big ticket will ensure that even more. Still, I find it hard to believe Murray won’t go after Hemsky hard this summer.

Chris Neil – 2 years left on deal at $1.9m: If you read Twitter, Chris Neil is the worst player who ever lived. If you sit in the stands at the rink, he’s a fan favourite. Neither viewpoint really matters much. What matters is that Neil is trusted by the organization to go out and play the same way every single night and provide the physical element that this team needs. Too many nights he’s alone in that regard but when he’s going to the net and hitting the other team’s best players, he’s effective as a third-liner. A lot of his detractors point to poor possession numbers but they often miss the point of a player like Neil. Even the best teams in the league possess the puck at just around 55% (using proxies like shot attempts), which means you’re still playing without it for almost half the game no matter how skilled you are. You need physical players who can hit and cause havoc when you don’t have the puck. Neil is not here to score goals. He’s here to terrorize the opposition. That’s his role and he does it well. Like Spezza, he’ll seemingly never win over his detractors in this town, but I see him reaching 1000 games in a Senators uniform and probably finishing his career here.

Colin Greening-3 years left on deal at $2.6m: At this point, I’d be ready to cut bait with this guy. He got the big contract in the off-season but he hasn’t gone to the next level. Just six goals so far is a huge disappointment but to me the biggest complaint with Greening is that he isn’t mean relative to his size. When he gets mad, he can be a force but too often he’s a gentle giant. The Senators have a lot of guys up front who aren’t known for being strong, so you expect that a player like Greening would make a difference. He doesn’t. Greening will be tough to move with that contract now, but you never know. If the opportunity is there to deal him, the Sens should take it and move on.

Erik Condra-1 year left on deal at $1.2m: To me, he’s a great fourth-liner who can kill penalties and has a cheap ticket. Good enough. When he’s playing with Pageau or Da Costa, you sometimes think a fourth line should be a LOT bigger, but Condra always stays in the lineup, isn’t on for many goals-against at even-strength and has good puck possession numbers for a fourth liner. That tells you a lot about how he plays the game. When I look back, I can see a lineage of similar players in the Sens system, from Shaun Van Allen to Chris Kelly to Condra. I think he’ll get an extension before his deal runs out.

Matt Kassian-UFA: I don’t think he’s needed beyond this point with the way the NHL works nowadays, but you never know with Murray and MacLean. Both subscribe to the theory that you sometimes need a nuclear weapon, even if he’s just sitting on the bench smiling at opposing players when they act tough. His only role is to fight and has trouble getting into the lineup. The Sens will likely give his spot to someone who can skate and play that much talked about “200-foot game”. But it is kind of fun to watch when he gets to his top speed and takes a run at someone on the boards. He’s also the funniest guy on the Senators, so that’s something at least. It was entertaining when Andre Roy was around in the late-90’s and Kassian brings a similar act. But I wouldn’t put money on him being back next year.

Mark Stone-1 year left on deal at $600,000: It’s been a short audition but this guy looks like he’s ready. Love his size and his hands and he’s not nearly as bad a skater as some had made him out to be. Reminds me of Scott Hartnell with that hair too. He’s a natural to replace Michalek on the top line.

Mike Hoffman-RFA: Similar to Stone, it’s been a brief watch but I like what I see out of Hoffman, particularly his speed. His hands seem a bit clunky but who cares if he’s always beating guys to pucks. I was convinced he was going to be on this team going into training camp but things went sideways. Now he looks like he belongs. If Greening goes, Hoffman is also a natural to step into that vacancy. Not sure he’s a top-sixer but they can use that speed without the puck on the third and fourth lines right now.

The Many Faces Of Chris Neil

Originally I was going to title this pic post as a play on Lon Chaney, "Man Of A Thousand Faces", but realized that Neil doesn't really have a thousand faces. He's got three, with endless permutations - Ecstatic, Grumpy and Enraged.

And for this reason, there's a motherlode of great Neil pics out there. He's never just going through the motions on the ice. He's either in the midst of a shitstorm around the net, in a mob celebration or throwing punches. How can you not take a great photograph of Chris Neil? It's impossible.

Neil isn't a very PC player to like anymore in this enlightened age of temperance, and I can guarantee you I'm the only Sens blogger who will say "he's one of my favourite players to watch on the Senators right now". Win or lose, there's always something happening with this guy. And I like seeing stuff happen. But mostly, I love the faces.