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!