Sens at Land’s End

The less said about the Ottawa Senators in 2008, the better. Though the team ended the year on an up note by beating the Oilers with a solid effort on Tuesday (despite my doom and gloom before the game), the positives were few and far between in 2008. It’s hard to say whether 2009 will be any better, but hopefully it at least won’t be a lot worse.

Next up for the Sens are the Leafs on Saturday, a game which unfortunately coincides with Team Canada’s semi-final matchup against either Russia or the Czech Republic in the World Junior Championship. If you watched the epic Canada-USA game last night, then you know that the Canadian kids have been providing some pretty ridiculously good entertainment and, like me, you will probably skip the battle of teams trying to out-suck each other in the Tavares sweepstakes (can there really be a “winner” in this game?) in favour of watching the actual Tavares, who is far more interesting.

Pensive Moment

I was reading the bloggers’ wishes for hockey in 2009 over at the New York Times’ Slap Shot blog, and I couldn’t help noticing that three of 14 bloggers wished for the NHL to try pleasing the fans it’s already got rather than constantly changing everything in (fruitless!) attempts to bring in new fans. This is definitely one of my personal issues with the league. In my opinion, trying to make hockey something it’s not only makes it look silly to non-fans, and is the last thing the league should be doing to bring in new people. There is a reason those of us who already love hockey love it so much. Other people would figure it out too, if the NHL would just let it be.