Sens at Land’s End

According to the Sun, Antoine Vermette has just signed a two-year deal worth $5.525 million with the Sens. If the number is right, then that’s a pretty good looking deal for the team. I thought he’d end up with a cap hit somewhere between $3 and $3.5 million.

Arbitration narrowly avoided. Phew!

With Antoine Vermette’s arbitration hearing scheduled for tomorrow, things should become a bit clearer regarding the Sens’ future in the next few days. The arbitrator must announce his decision within 48 hours of the hearing, so Bryan Murray should have a better idea of his cap situation by Sunday, which will enable him to decide what to do with Andrej Meszaros. That is my fondest wish, at any rate.

I think many of us were hoping the team could come to an agreement with Vermette before the arbitrator had to get involved, but that is looking more and more unlikely as the hours pass by and still there’s no news of a deal. I’m no expert on the NHL Collective Bargaining Agreement, but as I understand it, the arbitrator can only award a one- or two-year deal. There are rules governing this, and they have to do with whether or not Vermette is eligible to be a UFA next year, and that is another thing I’m not sure about. But whatever the case, we can be sure that Vermette will not come out of arbitration with a contract longer than two years. If he gets a one-year deal, then no discussions regarding an extension of that contract can take place until after January 1.

And so a one-year deal probably means another stressful trade deadline for Vermette — something I can only imagine he’d like to avoid if at all possible.

If the Sens don’t like what the arbitrator awards Vermette, they can walk away. By doing so, however, they allow Vermette to become a UFA and end up losing him for nothing — something I am very sure Murray would like to avoid.

The team’s other option, of course, is to sign Vermette and trade him. (I have heard that it’s not possible to trade a player before January 1 after he’s gone to arbitration, but I wasn’t able to confirm that during my whirlwind tour of the CBA, which by the way is online here if you ever feel the sudden need to bring on that head-spinning, eyes rolling up in your head type of confusion that can only be induced by reading the most twisted form of legalese.) There is no shortage of rumours, as usual, about Vermette leaving town, and Allen Panzeri listed a few of the potential destinations being named for our Hot French Guy in an article in the Citizen this morning. The Vancouver Province had already done a piece on the Vermette to Vancouver rumours last Thursday, which suggested that Vermette could be the Canucks’ “Plan B” should Mats Sundin decide not to sign with them. With the ever increasing timeframe for Sundin’s decision getting more and more vague — he’s now gone from “around August 1″ to “sometime in August,” according to his agent, J.P. Barry — you have to wonder what this means to Vermette’s future, or at least to the Sens’ list of options for what to do with Vermette. Can a team like the Canucks afford to sit around and wait for Mats? Will his delay make them more or less eager to talk to the Sens about a trade? Is Sundin’s wishy washy behaviour in some way a passive aggressive attempt to screw the Sens over? You can just never trust a Leaf.

In the future, though, I think there could be one exception to that rule, and that exception takes the form of one Luke Schenn, or High King Luke the Magnificent, as I’ve decided to call him from now on, due to his really startling resemblance to Peter from the Narnia movies, which I have now seen up close and in person, having attended two of the Red vs. White games at the Canadian National Junior Team Development Camp at Ottawa U this week. Schenn was one of the players I thought stood out the most in the games I saw, along with Drew Doughty, John Tavares, and Nazem Kadri. I admit there’s a distinct possibility that he stood out to me mostly because of the Narnia thing and because of his mesmerizing good looks (and yes, I know it’s inappropriate for me to be checking out 18-year-old boys — whatever); however, I’m sure I was also impressed by his play. He’s big, he’s got a steady presence on the blue line, and, though he’s billed as a defensive defenceman, he seems to have a pretty good shot. I don’t know why the Leafs had to draft him. It just doesn’t seem right.

Tavares really caught my eye during the World Junior tournament last year, and he is extremely impressive in person as well. Doughty showed some fantastic skill with the puck, and if I were a Kings fan I’d be very happy indeed to have him in the system. Kadri, meanwhile, is someone I had never heard of before, but he’s very exciting to watch. After one rush he made, the people behind me were yelling “Sick!!” and the entire crowd was pretty much oohing and aahing. I also kept my eyes open for Sens prospect Louie Caporusso, who was a last minute addition to the roster. He was playing on Team White’s top line with Tavares and Kyle Turris in the first game I saw and seemed to do well. In the other game I went to, I thought he looked feisty: I noticed him in a few scrums.

Also spotted at the development camp: me, missing a stair and totally taking out my right ankle/foot/lower leg as I tried to get down to my seat on Sunday evening. With the leg in pretty severe pain all day on Monday, I emailed my friend the radiologist for advice and she told me an x-ray is probably a good idea, so I will be paying my doctor a visit tomorrow. Man, these hockey-bystander injuries are the worst.

My job at the moment basically entails going through old files, making lists of the contents, and putting the stuff in new, archivally-sound folders. Sometimes, this is tedious work. Other times, I find interesting and random things.

For instance, right now I am going through the dockets of a publishing house, and one of the files I found yesterday was named “Scoring.” I thought to myself, “I wonder if that’s anything to do with hockey. No, more likely it’s something to do with sex.” Then I flipped over one of the pages in the file and found that the full title of the book in question was Scoring: The Art of Hockey. So, to Google I went, and I found a description of the book in a listing on a rare books dealer site:

SEGAL, SEYMOUR (ILLS.) & HOOD, HUGH (TEXT). Scoring: The Art of Hockey. (SIGNED)
Oberon, 1979. 1979, 1st Edition. Hardcover. First Edition. Np. (about 60 pp.), 19 color plates, 4to, burgundy cloth with gilt titles. SIGNED by the artist and dated, Oct. ‘79. Fine text in fresh, untorn dj. Very attractive book of erotic art with a hockey theme. Not common. Dust Jacket Included. Signed by Author(s).

Needless to say, I have requested the book from the library.

I do have a more relevant post to make at some point about the actual goings-on (or lack thereof) in the world of Ottawa hockey, but that’s all for now. I just wanted to share.

Puck Lit Project Review #5: The Good Body by Bill Gaston

Plot Summary: Bob Bonaduce is an aging career minor leaguer who, upon finding out that he has multiple sclerosis, decides to enrol in the creative writing program at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton, hoping to play on the same varsity hockey team as his son Jason. In New Brunswick, he avoids dealing with his illness, tries to scrape by in school, and re-unites with his wife and son as well as making a few new friends.

Genre: Fiction

Hockey Content: Well, the book jacket specifically says that “Bonaduce’s story is not a hockey novel,” and it’s true — there isn’t a ton of actual hockey played in the book. However, when Bonaduce attempts to do his creative writing assignments he tends to write what he knows, and that’s hockey. There are some interesting and fun meditations on the game, and on playing in the minors.

Choice Quotation: “Waiting for tests, feeling better, he half-enjoyed the image of him in the corniest of scenarios. He was lying in a hospital bed, adult-diapered, limbs mobile as breakfast sausage, a professionally flirtatious nurse spooning vanilla dessert into his yop, and he asked the doctor (who’d be checking things off on his clipboard, brow furrowed, when everyone knows there’s nothing on the clipboard): Well, Doc, does this mean that’s it for the NHL?

“The doctor is a wise-ass hockey fan. He says, Hell no, Bobby — there’s always the Leafs.”

My Thoughts: Now that I’m a few books in to this hockey reading project of mine, I am starting to notice a few trends in hockey literature, one of which is that many hockey novels are really frickin’ depressing. They often have happy-sad endings — you know the kind: where something really bad happens, but something good comes out of it — but for the most part the tone in these books is one of regret and uncertainty. What is it about hockey that inspires people to write these sad, sad stories? Can’t there be an uplifting hockey novel? Maybe there is one and I just haven’t read it yet. At any rate, this one, like King Leary, could probably be described as a tragicomedy. Parts of it are very funny, but overall it’s not a happy story.

It’s also not what I would call an action-packed story, but that’s not a bad thing. Most of Bonaduce’s life involves small things like going to class or hanging around with roommates or just thinking, and Gaston writes Bonaduce’s internal life in a very entertaining way. Many of the characters in the book are memorable, and I really enjoyed the parts about Bonaduce’s schoolwork: the intersection of hockey and academia is amusing. The book pokes fun at those very irritating, pretentious people who look down on people who like sports (not that I know anyone like that) while also making use of references to Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient, which Bonaduce has to do a seminar on. I liked this: it’s a book for those who understand that you don’t have to be a drooling idiot to watch hockey, and that it is actually possible to appreciate both hockey and literature.

Rating: 4.5 pucks out of 5. I thought this book was excellent and would highly recommend it!

I guess it’s been a while since I last posted here … I was going to write something about Voldy the Goalie first signing in Russia (which totally shocked me) and then appearing on Leatherface’s TV show just to state that being late is no big deal (that part was less shocking), but then I realized that hey, he’s not our problem anymore. He’s some Russian team’s problem now. Let them write about him!

And then I could have written something about Jason III signing almost signing never actually coming close to signing being plucked out from under Bryan Murray’s nose possibly having some form of interaction with the Sens but actually I was in LeafLand last weekend so I missed the whole non-event. Instead, I went to the Hockey Hall of Fame and visited my friend Stanley, whom I previously met at the Draft. Now that we’ve met twice, he and I are totally tight. We’re like Heatzza. We’re Meaghanley. Or Steaghan. Something like that.

I could also touch on those wacky trade rumours involving Ottawa, Los Angeles, and Chicago. I might actually do that, if at some point a version of the rumour that doesn’t involve the Kings being insane and giving up Anze Kopitar surfaces.

Anyway, there have been a few notable happenings in the world of the Sens since my last post, which I will write about now that I have finished listing all the things I’m not going to write about.

For one thing, they’ve signed former Ottawa 67’s defenceman Brendan Bell to a one-year, two-way deal. It seems likely that he’ll play in Binghamton next season; still, I love to see ex-67’s coming back to Ottawa (except Mark Bell, who is no longer welcome).

24-year-old goaltender Mitchell O’Keefe, a native of the excellent town of Almonte, has also been signed to a one-year entry-level contract.

And the 2008-2009 coaching staff is now complete, as the team has brought in former Regina Pats head coach Curtis Hunt to fill the second assistant coaching slot. Hunt, who also served as Hartsburg’s assistant during the last two World Junior tournaments, is apparently not afraid of a challenge: he will work on the Sens’ defence and penalty kill, so let’s hope he’s really really good at his job. If you’d like to learn a little more about this brave soul, here’s a nice article about him from the Regina Leader-Post.

But by far the most important, most exciting, and all around best news of the week was the release of the NHL’s schedule for the 2008-2009 season this Thursday just after noon. I don’t know about you, but I was sitting at my computer at work refreshing the Sens’ official site over and over starting at noon, waiting to find out which are the 82 evenings between October and April for which I’ve already got plans.

You can find the Sens’ schedule here, but in case you are too lazy or not enough of a nerd to go through it all with a fine-toothed comb, I present some of the highlights:

• The team will open the season, as we already knew, with two games against the Penguins in Stockholm on October 4 and 5. Ottawa is the home team for the game on the 4th and the visitor for the game on the 5th. Clearly, though, the Sens will be the crowd favourites for both games, what with Alfie being by far the greatest (and only) Swedish player on either team.
• The Sens’ home opener takes place on October 11 against the Stanley Cup Champion Detroit Red Wings. This makes two seasons in a row that the Wings have visited Ottawa. Hopefully they can find it in their hearts not to break our Heater this time.
• The game against Detroit is the first game of a five-game homestand for the Sens. Ottawa’s first non-European road game is not until October 25 when they visit the Leafs. The visiting team for the last game of this homestand will be the purest form of evil known to man, the Anaheim Ducks. Scotiabank Place crew will take advantage of the Sens’ subsequent four-game road trip to perform purification rituals and fumigation in order to eliminate the foul stench left behind by Chris Pronger and hell’s other minions.
• The Sens’ longest homestand is an eight-gamer in that goes from February 24 to March 11. It’s a homestand with a high CanCon rating as the Oilers and Flames will both show up during that time, while the Leafs will visit twice.
• Ottawa’s longest road trip is also eight games long and encompasses the Christmas and New Year’s breaks in order to accommodate the World Junior Hockey Championship, which takes place in Ottawa from December 26 to January 5. The Sens play the Dallas Stars at home on December 20, and will not play at Scotiabank Place again until the New York Rangers visit on January 10. Other long road trips: one six-game trip (March 22-April 2) and one five-game trip (February 11-17).
• The new schedule format sees every team play each team in its division six times, each other team in its conference four times, and each team in the other conference once each, leaving three “at large” interconference games. The Sens’ at large games are against the three western Canadian teams, meaning that they play each of Calgary, Edmonton, and Vancouver twice this season. They will hit the western provinces for three games between Christmas and New Year’s. This is a bit of a hardship for the team — who really wants to be away from home at that time? — but I choose to look at it as a wonderful potential Christmas and birthday gift (I was a Christmastime baby) from the Sens to me, assuming I am actually in Vancouver when they visit and not away for the holidays. If I end up being away when they make the trip, then I will change perspective, and be forced to start wondering why they’re so determined to avoid being in the same city with me.
• Having visited the Pacific Division last season, the Sens now host that division this season. Anaheim (sucks), Phoenix, Dallas, Los Angeles, and San Jose will each pay a visit to Scotiabank Place.
• Last season, each team in the Central Division visited Ottawa. This season, the Sens will visit each team in that division, except, for some reason, Detroit, which as I already pointed out will visit Ottawa. Why? Payback from the NHL for losing a Crosby homedate? Random scheduling quirk? I don’t know, but I guess we can’t complain (unless they break the Heater again, in which case they will be dead to me).
• Weirdness alert: Wade Redden will make his first ever regular season appearance at Scotiabank Place as a member of the visiting team when the Rangers come to town on November 22. Personally, I hope he gets a nice big cheer.

The pre-season schedule has also been released:

September 20 – Rangers at Senators
September 22 – Senators at Rangers
September 24 – Flyers at Senators
September 26 – Senators at Canadiens
September 27 – Canadiens at Senators

The Sens will play their final pre-season game on October 2 in Alfie’s hometown of Gothenburg, Sweden, against his former team, the Frolunda Indians. Now that is a website with a truly fantastic looking splash page.

Clicking around a bit further inside the site, I have found out a few very interesting things. First, I can understand Swedish! At least I’m assuming that “klicka här för mera information” means what I think it means. Second, though Sens prospect Erik Karlsson plays for Frolunda, he plays for their under-20 team, which is not the team the Sens will be playing. Whether there’s a chance of him making the big team this season I don’t know, but he isn’t listed on their current roster. (EDIT: Actually, Karlsson finished last season with the Elite League team, and is apparently expected to be on their roster this year. My mistake!) Third, the site contains a downloadable PDF ad for the game that features a scan of a fax from Alfie. Neat!

Now all we’ve got to do is make it through the rest of the summer and hockey season will be here. I count … 62 days until that first pre-season game against the Rangers. I’m sure it’ll just fly by.