Sens at Land's End

Back to back wins for the Sens this weekend — woo hoo! — but I found both wins somewhat annoying. Giving up a 3-goal lead, as they did in the Buffalo game, is never a good thing, even if you still end up winning.

As for the Tampa game, they were down 3-1 at one point. To frickin’ Tampa Bay! That’s really not cool, Sens. I watched this game on the CBC’s online feed. It’s not the best quality ever, but it’s still a good option for those of us trapped in the west and stuck with the Leafs on our TV sets every Saturday afternoon. The fans at Scotiabank Place were actually booing the team during a particularly awful stretch when they gave the Lightning some pretty good short-handed scoring chances. I probably would have been booing too, if I hadn’t been over 4,000km away, where no one would understand what I was booing.

There were definitely some good things to take from these two games, aside from the four points. For one, Dany Heatley had two goals. Not counting his empty netter against Buffalo on Boxing Day, he hadn’t had a goal since December 22 against Chicago — 5 games, which for him qualifies as a pretty horrible slump. I could tell it was coming when he couldn’t manage to get a third goal in the Chicago game despite several great chances. But it’s okay, he looks set to start scoring lots and lots of goals again now. If anyone ever asks me to explain why Heatley and Spezza — I have taken to calling them Heatzza; it just seems redundant to say “Heatley and Spezza” since you so rarely see one without the other — are meant to play with each other, I’ll just show them a clip of Heater’s goal against Tampa. The knowing exactly where the other one is! The quick pass! The quicker release! Such is the magic of Heatzza. I noticed Antoine Vermette playing a bit with the dynamic duo during this game. I wonder if that’s something we’ll see again.

Anton Volchenkov seems to be playing pretty well since his return. From what I understand, he took out one of the Sabres with one of his trademark so hard the guy sees little tweety birds flying around his head hits on Friday. I was listening to the game on the radio so I didn’t see it, but I bet it was entertaining. Also, here is a noteworthy statistic:

Goals against in the two games before Volchenkov’s return: 14 (GAA: 7.00)
Goals against in the two games since Volchenkov’s return: 6 (GAA: 3.00)

Coincidence? I hope not!

(Okay, actually, they gave up a total of 47 goals in the 15 games Volchenkov missed, which works out to a GAA of just over 3 per game. So … whatever, I’m still glad he’s back.)

Mike Fisher has also continued to play extremely well. He now has a 7-game point streak going, and his overtime goal against Tampa was a beauty. Have you noticed that Don Cherry can’t speak of Fisher without mentioning his beautiful blue eyes? He’s oddly fixated on them. Having said that, I really can’t disagree with him: Fisher does have very pretty eyes.