Sens at Land's End

I managed to finish my paper, take it to school, and get home just in time for the game last night. Now that school is done for the semester and I have one entire glorious month off, I should be able to stop the atrophying of my blogging muscles with more regular posts.

Since I haven’t actually made a real post since before the Leafs game, here is a quick recap of everything that’s happened in Sens world in the last week:

• After 21 seasons and over 1400 career games in the NHL, Luke Richardson has retired. He will likely stay in the Ottawa organization in some kind of coaching role.
• Mike Fisher returned to the lineup last Thursday against Toronto, and has so far managed to avoid re-injuring himself. (Knock wood.)
• Dean McAmmond is ill and did not play in any of the last three games.
• Alexandre Picard hurt his wrist last Thursday and has missed the last two games.
• Shean Donovan hurt himself last Thursday. He missed Saturday’s game against the Islanders, but returned last night. (Thank goodness!)
• Ryan Shannon was given medical clearance to play, and did so in last night’s game. Today, however, he was sent back to Binghamton.
• Brian Lee made a brief appearance in the lineup, replacing Picard for Saturday’s game. He’s also gone back to Binghamton now.
• Zack Smith made his NHL debut against the Islanders on Saturday. And has gone back to Binghamton.
• Cody Bass and Brendan Bell have not gone back to Binghamton. They remain with the big Sens.
• There has been a crapload of player movement in the last week.
• Jason Spezza and his totally inexplicable status as worldwide whipping boy continued to make the news. Spezza was criticized on TSN by Bob Clarke, who complained that Spezza isn’t scary enough to play against. Spezza responded by laughing and then breaking Clarke’s ankle with his stick … okay, no he didn’t, but if he had it would have been pretty funny. Meanwhile, Roy MacGregor wrote an article for the Globe and Mail about Ottawa’s history of running creative players out of town. While I completely agree — completely — with his main point that people are overly critical of Spezza, I would make two counter-arguments to the rest of the article. First, Ottawa is far from the only place where criticizing Spezza has become a popular sport (hello there, TSN and CBC!). Second, his other examples of players lynched by the locals for their creativity are dumb. As I recall, Alexandre Daigle just plain sucked and there were plenty of good reasons why we all hated the devil Alexei Yashin, most of which had little to do with his on-ice behaviour.
• Sens fans everywhere rejoiced that Bryan Murray is not Brett Hull. This whole Sean Avery thing, especially the stuff coming from the Stars about how they all hate him and want him gone, kinda makes you appreciate Jarkko Ruutu and his classier style of pesting, doesn’t it?
• On Thursday, the Sens beat the Leafs 2-1 in a shootout on goals by Spezza (how do you like his creativity now, suckas?!) and Daniel Alfredsson. Alex Auld stopped both shooters he faced. No, you didn’t imagine it: the Sens won in a shootout. The Battle of Ontario live blog was a rousing success, and the Leafs bloggers were much less offensive than I thought they’d be.
• The horror of the season series against the Islanders continued on Saturday as they beat the Sens 4-2. Ottawa nearly made a game of it, coming back to within a goal in the third before the Islanders ended things with an empty netter. I believe I had started a game post about this one, but I never had time to finish it. Stupid schoolwork.
• The Sens continued with their moustache-growing contest. Most of them now look really, really bad, but some (Jason Smith and … uh … well, maybe just Smith) are managing to make it look kind of ironically cool. Sherry and I are hoping the team will do a moustache-themed calendar for next year and help bring laughter to Sens fans everywhere. I’d buy it.

Now, on to last night’s heroics! Yes, heroics! The Sens defeated the Atlanta Thrashers 5-1 and managed not to kill my buzz from finishing my last assignment of the term while also avoiding falling to last place in the Eastern Conference. I call that heroic. They actually kind of looked like the good version of the team that I swear used to exist sometime last year. Ah, flashbacks.

Pizza’s Hot! The big three were quite simply on fire last night. Each of them scored in the first period. Dany Heatley had a goal and two pretty spectacular looking assists — I can’t narrow it down to a single Moment of Awesomeness and will just have to point to the whole game as one extended moment — while Alfie made the Thrashers look quite silly with some extra brilliant puckhandling on the penalty kill in the second period. The line also produced two goals against the Rangers, two in the shootout against the Leafs, and two more against the Islanders so, all in all, I’m feeling pretty confident that they’re getting back on track, and I hope this will spark the rest of the offense.

Barber Pole Style. Former Ottawa 67’s Brendan Bell and Shean Donovan both contributed goals last night. Bell seems to be fitting in well with the big team. Hopefully he can stick around. Donovan had a truly great game, and I thought he totally deserved to score one last night. The fact that he did it in such pretty fashion was just a nice bonus. This was only the third time this season the team has scored more than four goals. People in Ottawa are clearly starved for free pizza — they were chanting “Pizza! Pizza!” near the end of the game — and I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the Sens can deliver some for them (haha, deliver) very soon.

Jesse Winchester: Float Like a Butterfly, Sting Like a Bee. Kid Winch got into his first NHL fight last night. Then, for good measure, he got into his second NHL fight last night. It’s fair to say he didn’t acquit himself overly well in either one, but you’ve got to love the feistiness. He’s quickly becoming one of my favourite players.

We Laugh in the Face of Your “Rules.” The Senators don’t just kill penalties. They hit them over the head, stab them, shoot them five times, and then cut off their heads and set them on fire just to make sure they’re really, really dead. Minute and a half five-on-three? No problem. Oh, you’d like to follow that with a further 30 seconds of five-on-three time and make it so we’re shorthanded for over four consecutive minutes total? Go ahead! It doesn’t bother us at all!! It certainly doesn’t bother Alex Auld, even when he’s got his back to the play and is making saves on shots he can’t see. Know why? Our penalty kill is running at 87.6% on the season. That’s good for third in the NHL, behind only Minnesota and the New York Rangers. Auld, by the way, is back in the top five in the league in goals against average, and still in the top ten in save percentage.

Magically Delicious! Black jerseys: 3-0-0. OBC live blogs: 3-0-0. Coincidence? Perhaps. But I bet you’re still glad to know that Saturday is a home game and DHS is planning another live blog.

Speaking of Saturday, next up: a Saturday matinee against the Pittsburgh Penguins. A combination of factors (Sidney Crosby, the fact that it’s the only early game of the day, and Sidney Crosby) means that the game will be televised nationally on CBC. This should be an interesting game: it will obviously be more of a test for the Sens than the Thrashers were. The Penguins have been playing pretty well lately and Ottawa have to look up, up, waaaaaaaaaaaay up in the standings to see them. On the other hand, the Sens haven’t been playing so badly lately themselves, and I’d say the second game of the season in Sweden was one of their best games so far. Here’s hoping they can repeat it.