Sens at Land's End

I feel the Sens and I have got ourselves in similar situations with being in rather deep holes. Myself, having two 15-20 page papers to finish by Tuesday; them, having to win four of the next five games against Pittsburgh. I am sure I will succeed, even if perhaps my papers won’t be all that good, but unfortunately I’m less sure about the Sens’ chances.

Today they were down 3-0 in the game and came back to tie 3-3, then got a penalty with less than two minutes to go and the Penguins, of course, scored, then got an empty netter and ended up winning 5-3. The penalty, a call on Martin Lapointe for high-sticking Jarkko Ruutu … yes, it should have been a penalty, but I think a definite case could be made that Ruutu also should have been called for diving, but whatever. The fact is the Sens played like crap, crap, mega-crap for a good portion of the game but I’m impressed that they managed to come back and I think they were looking a lot better in the third period. It’s just unfortunate the way it ended. They can either 1) take the positives out of it — they came back, Fleury is clearly not all that hard to beat, Gerber played very well again (49 saves!), and they played better, or 2) be crushed by the way the game ended and fold.

I’m also concerned because Spezza seemed to hurt his knee in the first period. He ended up only playing about 14 minutes, which is pretty low considering he played 24 in the first game, and was obviously uncomfortable. I hope he’s alright. They really can’t afford another injury right now, especially to Spezza.

In the end, it could be worse — the Flyers’ Patrick Thoresen took a shot to the crotch in the Philly-Washington game and I heard them say on TSN he might lose a testicle! I guess he’ll be playing balls off hockey. hahaha … I know, it’s really not funny at all, but numerous similar jokes occur to me. For example, I mention this as an example of how things could be worse for the Sens but on the other hand, maybe they lost their nuts a long time ago.