Sens at Land's End

Oilers fans, you can chalk up two points for tonight as Craig Hartsburg has decided to pre-lose the game for the Sens. Not that there was much for the Oilers to worry about anyway, I suppose. The only way this decision makes sense to me is as part of the push for Tavares.

Last night I watched Rick Nash hustle like mad to muscle his way around a Kings player to the puck and get an empty net goal, making the score 2-0 for Columbus and sealing a win for his team. I couldn’t help wondering why it is that Ottawa’s large, skilled players can’t seem to muster the same kind of effort and determination.

Watching Nash, I remembered watching the Sens during the 2007 playoffs. That was the first time I really understood what commentators meant by “winning the battles.” Hockey is all about the little things, and I just don’t see Ottawa doing them right now.

This will be the last Sens game of 2008. It really has been an awful year for the team. We’ll have to be thankful to have it end and just hope that 2009 won’t turn out to be worse.

It was interesting getting the opportunity to see the Senators in the flesh last night for the first time since May 2007. I don’t think the full extent of how bad they are has been apparent to me from just watching on TV, unfortunately. Or maybe that was fortunate, since it allowed me to maintain a sliver of optimism up to this point in the season. That is now gone, and watching the World Juniors has me officially hoping the team can get John Tavares in the draft somehow.

Playoffs? I don’t think we should be thinking about that.

Out of the Woodwork. Apparently, there are other Sens fans in Vancouver! Quite a few of them, and some even have full gladiator costumes or those foam gladiator helmets. Others have Heatley, Spezza, or Alfie jerseys or Chris Neil t-shirts (the guy sitting down the row from me had one, at any rate). I was very surprised by the number of people I saw supporting the boys in red. Sadly, most of us were left shaking our heads by the end of the game.

I Knew There Was a Reason I Erased You From My Vocabulary. That goalie. That bloody, godawful goalie! Vancouver’s third goal was absolutely unforgivable. It effectively killed the game, too: everyone knows there’s no way the Sens can come back from a 3-0 deficit. I need a countdown to the day this guy’s contract expires.

Permanent Blackout. Ugh … the power play.

What Became of the Likely Lads? I just don’t understand how this team can be so bad. Chris Phillips was totally undressed by a deke from one of the Sedins (I don’t know which … does it really matter?) at one point. It was really, really shocking. Ryan Kesler easily beat Mike Fisher to a loose puck for a shorthanded chance in the third period (demonstrating why Vermette for Kesler would have been such a good trade for Ottawa, I thought). The normally speedy Fisher was not in the play at all. Dany Heatley failed to hit the net on every chance he had. What should have been easy passes for Jason Spezza were missing their marks. And when Daniel Alfredsson didn’t score on a beautiful chance very early in the first period that would have set an entirely different tone for the game, all I could think was that the Alfie of last season would have had that one. I don’t get why or how it happened, but the fact is that this is simply not a good team anymore, and it seems obvious from the players’ body language that they know it. The entire team looks confused, frustrated, and lost. I feel quite sorry for them.

I am glad I got to see them, but in the end it was a rather depressing experience.

In keeping with the melancholy mood of this post, I now present the first reader submission we received for the “A Farce United” campaign, which comes courtesy of reader Heli, who shows amazing dedication by following the Sens from Finland. I can only imagine how her emotional state suffers from the resulting combination of missed sleep and hockey-induced frustration/depression.

Quite beautiful, isn’t it? So wonderfully sad.

Over at Battle of Ontario, Jay Jardine has also come up with an amusing contribution. It’s good to see we’re on the same train of thought regarding Tavares.

Dear Sens,

I have just gone through a really horrific few days of Christmas travel. My best experience was my flight to Regina on Christmas Eve only being delayed for 2.5 hours. (The one I was supposed to take on the 21st was cancelled after I sat in the airport for about 10 hours waiting. They even boarded the plane and still we didn’t take off.) I narrowly missed being stranded in Edmonton for three days last night, but I did eventually make it home after a trip that should have taken five hours at most took twelve.

I woke up this morning with some kind of flu, and am now sick in bed, drinking water to keep from getting dehydrated and eating crackers because they’re all I can stomach.

Today is my birthday.

It would really help me out and make all this somewhat less unbearable if you could somehow pull out a win tonight. Additionally, I have a ticket for your game in Vancouver tomorrow — it was a birthday present to myself — and if I am well enough to go, I’d love to see you win, or at least score some goals. (If I am not well enough to go, it would be great if Heatzza could come to my house and take care of me but I know you’re probably busy so I don’t expect that even though I’d do it for you.)

I know I’m hard on you sometimes, but I am really a loyal fan and I love you all (except Schubert). Various incarnations of your team have caused me a lot of mental anguish over the last 13 years or so, and you could atone for some of that while also making what has been a miserable week a little less horrible with some good efforts on this western trip.

Please, if you don’t want to do it for the points, do it for me. It would mean a lot.

Yours fondly,

Meaghan, aka Sens at Land’s End

It started off scary, then faded to boring and frustrating towards the middle, then picked up later on before reaching a pretty sucky conclusion. Kind of like that movie The Ring.

Man Down! The scary start: seeing Anton Volchenkov lying motionless on the ice after hitting the boards during the first minute of play. He eventually got up and skated off but he did not look good, nor did he return during the game. With Filip Kuba already out due to a groin injury, this was very bad news indeed.

I Thought I Told You to Leave. Why is Christoph Schubert still on this team? With Schubert in the box for hooking late in the first, the Flyers and their league-best power play went to work on the Sens, getting an amazing flurry in front of Alex Auld. It was remarkable that they didn’t score on their power play. They did, however, get a goal about five seconds after Schubert exited the box. In the second period, the Sens were on a power play when Schubert failed to keep the puck in the Flyers’ zone. This led to a Jeff Carter shorthanded break — Carter being the league leader in goals — and Schubert had to take a penalty to prevent him from scoring, negating the Sens’ power play. And Carter scored anyway on the Flyers’ power play after the four-on-four ended. Schubert, let me reiterate: GO AWAY.

Fever. Dany Heatley is apparently suffering from the flu, but he still managed to rack up three points tonight despite not really seeming to have a very good game. He had two goals, including one on a five-on-three — The Sens scored on a five-on-three! Even better, it only took them eight seconds to do so! — and one in the third period, plus an assist on Chris Phillips’ first goal of the season.

Falling Short. I was feeling pretty good about the way the Sens managed to come back in this game. They were down 4-2 until about eight minutes into the third period. Then Heatley scored his second, and three minutes later Phillips scored to tie. A win under these circumstances would have been extremely satisfying, but I guess it wasn’t meant to be. The Flyers scored the go-ahead goal with just over five minutes to play after a giveaway by Daniel Alfredsson and an unfortunate bounce off Jason Smith in the crease. They then finished things off with an empty netter. It was very deflating, and now we go into the Christmas break on a loss. I hate that.

Coming up after Christmas is the Sens’ ever so exciting Western Canada trip, which will see them hit Calgary (December 27), Vancouver (December 28), and Edmonton (December 30). As everyone is saying, this World Junior induced eight-game road trip will have a huge impact on where the team ends up this season. Will they manage to turn things around? Or will one of the stars from the World Junior tournament find himself spending a whole lot more time at Scotiabank Place in the future? Given that the team’s road record is now a woeful 3-9-2 … well …

On that note, Merry Christmas!

As you may know, I live in Vancouver. Canucks territory. People here really love their Canucks. The team has in fact sold out more than 200 consecutive games. Even so, the team’s marketing staff is relentless — presumably trying to get that one new immigrant who just moved here three days ago and has never heard of hockey to a game — and part of living here is being bombarded by the excellent We Are All Canucks ad campaign every time I take a bus or SkyTrain. The ads feature Canucks fans, all dressed up in their finest Canucks regalia, looking as though they’re having a fantastic time cheering on their team.

My fellow OBC bloggers and I were discussing this ad campaign the other day and we thought we’d do our own version of it for the Sens Army. Of course, things with our team aren’t quite as rosy as things with the Canucks these days, so our ads have a somewhat different tone:

Readers, how would you depict the experience of being a Sens fan this season? Send your submissions to sensatlandsend@gmail.com!