Sens at Land’s End

Judging by the selection of post titles I’ve seen from my fellow Sens bloggers, which range in tone from sad to … let’s go with colourful, I am the only one who enjoyed that game. Both the Jackets and the Sens obviously took my words to heart when I said I hated to see my teams give up a lot of goals. The Jackets clearly deserved the win tonight, but I didn’t think the Sens looked too bad. Well … okay, they were actually pretty bad, but that was partly awful luck (anyone else cursing Mike Fisher’s stick?) and at least they didn’t embarrass themselves on the scoresheet. On the plus side, I thought Alex Auld played well. The penalty kill also looked decent, though it’s likely that can mostly be attributed to the Jackets’ terrible power play. All in all, while it wasn’t what you’d call a thrilling game, it wasn’t horrible either.

Fine, I clearly like the Blue Jackets a little too much. But how can I resist little Stevie Mason, even if he is thwarting the awesomeness of Dany Heatley and totally denying the Sens?

Hello, readers. Can you believe we’re past the All-Star Break already? Another NHL season, more than half done. Time flies when you’re having … um … watching hockey. I know I haven’t been posting much lately; that is part school-related busyness and part lack of things to say other than “I was wrong. A puck-moving defenceman really should have been the number one priority.”

Perhaps you recall that just before the season started, I made a post looking at the other teams I intended to keep an eye on this season. Well, it hasn’t exactly worked out as I planned — while I have been watching quite a lot of hockey, I have not been following most of those other teams with any regularity. The Coyotes? Turns out I’m not really interested. The Oilers? I give them a look once in a while. The Blackhawks? I’ve somehow lost track of most of their games. The Canucks? They’re definitely just as inevitable as I thought they’d be. They’re also bringing back some unpleasant memories I’ve been trying to repress.

But there is one team (other than the Sens) I’ve been following pretty closely. I try to watch their games whenever they don’t conflict with Ottawa’s. I read news stories and blogs about them. I even went to see them in person when they visited the Canucks earlier this month, and took an unreasonable number of photos of them while they warmed up.

Yes, it’s the Columbus Blue Jackets. My good friend and fellow Sens blogger Free Willig, upon learning of my unexpected devotion to the Jackets, was moved to ask me why. Why would I want to watch a boring Ken Hitchcock team? Putting aside the irony of Willig asking me that while being a Minnesota Wild season ticket holder, it is probably a question worth considering. The answer may be that, as much as I love watching flashy offensive hockey … I hate it when my team gives up a lot of goals. Hate it. I appreciate good team defence, and the Jackets have that.

More importantly, the Jackets have my favourite non-Sens player in the NHL in the person of Rick Nash, whose name I always kind of want to put an exclamation point after. Rick Nash! Nash is a player whose style of play I enjoy immensely. He is himself also immense, and uses his size to skate over or through other players, pushing them aside as though they were nothing more than the strings of bead curtains. Despite his size, he’s a fast skater. If he can’t go over someone, he wll go around him: there isn’t too much a person can do to stop him once he gets going. This combination of size and speed makes it easier for him to make use of puck skills that I believe the kids today would describe as “sick.” As Pierre McGuire would say, Nash is a monster.

In addition to their captain and franchise player, the CBJ have a few good rookie stories going this season. First there was Derick Brassard, who was likely the frontrunner for the Calder Trophy when he went down for the season with a shoulder injury. No fear: teammate Steve Mason has more than adequately stepped into Brassard’s rookie of the year candidate shoes. Mason’s season has been remarkable so far, and I’m really happy to have been following it. Perhaps the greatest “rookie” story of all is the team’s quest to make the playoffs for the first time. If the playoffs started today, well, they wouldn’t be there. But I have faith that they will be at season’s end, and come 2009-2010 other teams’ commentators will no longer be able to say that Columbus is the only team in the league never to have played a postseason game.

So yes, the Jackets. I’ve adopted them as my Western team. More than that, I have started thinking of them as my Other Men, much as Schnookie and Pookie of Interchangeable Parts fame have designated their secondary teams their “Tranny Brides” and “Tranny Gentlemen Callers.” The Sens are and will always be the ones I’ve committed to, while the Jackets are the boys on the side who pop in to show me a good time when my number one guys are not around. Rick Nash! is The Other Man, in that he is the chief of the Other Men. (He is also The Other Man to Heatzza’s The Man, in the sense of “You da man!”)

There is a certain excitement that comes with finding a shiny new team. I almost feel the Jackets are wooing me with their excellent play. So far this season, the Sens certainly haven’t appeared to feel the need to do much to make sure I stick around (although I give them credit for spicing things up these last few weeks). I have been lucky enough to see both my suitors teams in person when they’ve visited me (and the Canucks) here at Land’s End. Let us review the results of those games:

• Sens visit Vancouver and lose 3-0. They can’t even be bothered so score a flippin’ goal for me. The “goaltender” who shall not be named and is no longer with us (hallelujah!) lets in one of his specialty weak goals at a crippling moment. Wearing my Heatley jersey, I am subjected to mock sympathy by a drunk Canucks fan after the game.
• Jackets visit Vancouver and win 6-5 after treating me not only to regulation time, but also to overtime and a shootout. Jared Boll takes on Darcy Hordichuk in a thrilling fight right below where I’m sitting. Rick Nash! shows off for me, with two assists and a goal that demonstrates his bull-like tendencies during the game, as well as a lovely goal to end the shootout. My favourite Canuck, Ryan Kesler, does his best to make the case that I should give his team a spot in my affections, doing some pushing and shoving with Nash and getting into a fight with R.J. Umberger. But Nash will have none of it, and he totally pwns Kesler on his goal as if to drive home what I already knew: that the Canucks are no CBJ. No one can mock me for wearing my Jackets t-shirt on this night.

Oh, I think it’s clear which team is making the bigger effort here.

I’m bringing this up today because tomorrow is the day when the battle for supremacy between the Sens and the Jackets — a battle which, until now, has probably mattered only to me — comes to a head, as in a head-to-head matchup. There is very little doubt in my mind about who will triumph in the game (the Jackets), or who will ultimately prevail in the contest for my heart (the Sens). The question is: who will I be rooting for tomorrow? Can I really cheer for the team that is playing the Sens? Given that the Jackets need all the points they can get to secure a playoff spot while the Sens are basically out of it … yes, I probably can. But what I’d really like is for the Sens to play well enough that I don’t want to.

Gary Bettman does stupid things pretty much every day, so I think hockey fans are used to it. But forcing injured players to attend the All-Star Game kinda takes the cake.

As we all know, hockey players have a different standard of what “injured” means depending on the importance of a game. You would think that after years of working with these guys, Bettman might understand that by now … if you weren’t familiar with Bettman. It makes perfect sense that Steve Mason or Henrik Zetterberg can play in a game that has actual meaning for his team and still be too hurt to go to a totally meaningless exhibition game. As a fan, I would be pretty pissed off if Dany Heatley went to the ASG and aggravated an injury. It’s not there isn’t a very recent example of a player getting hurt during this type of event.

The NHL has already ensured that the All-Star Game is a huge joke by allowing fans of certain teams to use automated voting scripts to ensure that their players made the starting lineups. I would bet money that they failed to crack down on this solely so they could point out that certain players got “record numbers” of votes this year. Is it any wonder some guys don’t want to go? The whole thing is a complete farce.

Personally, I have enjoyed the All-Star Game in the past, but I don’t know if I can watch this year. My reasons are mainly related to my hatred of Montreal fans — if I do watch I’ll likely have to mute the TV to avoid the “Ole” chant; the ludicrous fan voting has only added to my hatred of them — but this year the NHL is really pissing me off. I wish none of my favourite players were going to be there so I wouldn’t feel any obligation to watch at all, but I’ll be annoyed with myself if Heater or Rick Nash does something awesome and I don’t see it.

I guess I will probably still watch, and I’ll just hope the following things happen:

• Carey Price allows 8-10 goals.
• No one from the Canadiens gets a point.

I am unclear on whether Crosby is being forced to play, or merely to attend — presumably so we aren’t all deprived of his glowing personality and fascinating commentary from the sidelines (”Oh, Ovechkin is a great player, no doubt. Kovalev is fantastic, too, for sure. Heatley is definitely a skilled player. He can hurt you if you give him the chance!”) — but if he does play, wouldn’t it be ironic if he hurt himself enough that he misses the rest of the season? Then how would Bettman feel? The precious! The precioussssssssss!!!

Fare thee well, Swiss cheese. Sorry, but I won’t miss you.

Long time no blog. My apologies: I’ve been occupied with school and watching hockey and stuff. Since we last met, the Sens have continued to play well. So far this season they haven’t been able to put together a string of more than five good games in a row. I’d guess that means they have one more except I imagine the All-Star Break may kill their momentum.

Either that or they’ve got their mojo back and they’re about to go on a massive roll that will see them win all 38 of their remaining games and the Stanley Cup. Who can say what the future holds? Not me, obviously: I thought they’d win the Cup last year.

Where Have You Been All My Life? Heater. The way you played in the first period? That is why you’re my favourite. That is why I devote blog space to recognizing your Moments of Awesomeness. Why can’t you be that version of Heater all the time?! I was not sure what Coach Hartsburg was trying to accomplish by moving Heatley to the second power play unit when he first tried it, but obviously it’s worked wonders. Heatley’s first power play goal this evening was fairly typical — give a sniper a wide open net like that and you’d hope he wouldn’t miss — but his second was pretty cool (I choose to believe he put the puck off that Washington dude on purpose). Heatley also showed some moxie by absolutely robbing a Caps player whose identity I’ve now forgotten of the puck in the first period. This is something I really think he — being a giant, potentially scary guy with ridiculous puck skills — should be doing more often. Late in the third, he helped Brian Elliott preserve the Sens’ lead by getting to a loose puck in the crease and shoving it towards Elliott’s pad before (yegads!) Alex Ovechkin could reach it. If not for Heatley, no doubt Ovechkin would have scored. The game would have gone to overtime, the Caps would have had all the momentum, and the Sens and their fans would have been sad.

Joy to the World! All the Boys and Girls! Instead we got players high fiving and bumping heads (in a good way) at the end of the game. Nick Foligno was so excited when Brendan Bell scored the go-ahead goal that he hopped (not the full Foligno leap). I’m fairly sure I saw Jason Spezza doing some kind of weird head tap ritual with new callup Peter Regin on the bench after Ovechkin took that penalty with two seconds to go, and Dean McAmmond was actually smiling. Yes, the players have a bit of spring back in their step and I like it.

I Have … Confidence? I realized that once the Sens had taken the lead, I felt sure they could hold it. Okay, they only had to hold it for 75 seconds or so, but still: I knew they could do it. I haven’t felt that way very much this season.

Barackulous. The Sens are now 2-0 against the Caps on days when Barack Obama becomes President in some way. So … um … Obama 2012!

Notes From Another Game: Columbus @ Edmonton

I believe I just saw Dwayne Roloson spank Jared Boll. And when I say he spanked him, I mean he smacked his bottom. Whether he first shouted “You’re not too old to put over my knee, Boll!” I do not know, but let’s assume he did.