Sens at Land’s End

From the Toronto Star:

CBC announced its slate of television shows for the 2009-2010 season, and two new reality competitions will be among the first new series Canadians will see.

The fall premieres includes Battle with the Blades, a combination of skating and Dancing with the Stars. It teams up top figure skaters with hockey stars and culminates in weekly pairs figure skating performances.

Oh please, please let the “hockey stars” in question be actual NHL players. Zdeno Chara lifting his partner over his head. Brian Campbell working gracefully and flawlessly through a footwork sequence. Mike Richards lowering his partner into a death spiral. This could end up being the greatest thing ever seen on television.

Tonight is the first ever playoff game in Columbus. In the spirit of Puck Daddy’s post about other teams’ first ever home playoff dates, I’m thinking back to what it was like in Ottawa when the Sens played the Sabres in that first playoff series. I didn’t get to go to any of the games, but I remember listening to one on the radio on my walkman (yes!) as I walked home from a 67’s game. The Sens won in overtime, and I stopped and cheered right in the middle of Bank St.

Let’s go Jackets!

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.

Kukla’s Korner’s resident Sens blogger SENShobo has a post this morning entitled “Senators Improving as Losing Streak Reaches 5.” Geez, you know things are bad when.

Trade rumours continue to swirl: the Sun reports that Vancouver GM Mike Gillis and Minnesota GM Doug Risebrough were both at the game last night, along with scouts from Columbus and Los Angeles. Rumours involving the Blue Jackets make me nervous due to the slight chance that they could result in Jason Spezza leaving town: I know how much Bethany and her people covet Mr. Giggles, and I feel the CBJ would do almost anything to pry him away from us. Personally, I’m in favour of clinging to him for dear life until his no trade clause kicks in and all this nonsense can stop. Meanwhile, Yahoo is reporting that the Sens are stepping up their efforts to acquire Canucks defenseman Mattias “Ohuld,” and the Citizen has them looking at getting Jay Bouwmeester from the Florida Marlins, because apparently Bouwmeester is playing baseball now.

Okay, people. I know reporting rumours isn’t the same as reporting truth, but that doesn’t mean you can’t fact-check your story before going to press.

Reader Appreciation Note

To a reader named Jim who left me a nice comment earlier: I’m sorry, I seem to have accidentally deleted your comment. It may have been a rage reflex induced by your calling Buffy “the worst show ever.” Despite your clearly awful taste in TV shows and hockey teams (he’s a Leafs fan), you can rest assured that I read and appreciated your comment, and only deleted it due to my own idiocy.

To everyone else who’s ever commented here, I appreciate you too. Except the spammers.

The TV schedules for national NHL broadcasters in Canada and the US (that would be CBC, TSN, and Versus) were released yesterday. For Sens fans living in the Ottawa area, this isn’t such a big deal: you can be pretty sure you’re going to get local coverage of most of the games from Sportsnet or whatever CHRO/The New RO/A Channel is calling itself these days. For people like me, though, who live in faraway places where other NHL teams get all the local broadcasting attention and where they only have access to Sportsnet Pacific, this makes a difference. I learn exactly how often I’ll be able to watch the games comfortably from my bed, and how often I’ll be getting eyestrain and back pain from trying to watch them on a tiny streaming video window on my computer while sitting in my desk chair.

I have browsed the schedules, and I’ve learned a few things. For one, no matter how many times the CBC claims it’s going to show fewer Leafs games, this will never actually happen. If the Leafs finished dead last in the NHL every season from now until 2017-2018, the CBC would still show their games cross-Canada every Saturday night in the 2018-2019 season, and they’d probably bill the Leafs’ quest to set a record for incompetence that might never be broken as the most exciting thing to happen in hockey since 1967. I’m not too sure where they get the impression that people in the west are interested in the Leafs. I suppose there are probably Leafs fans out there, but I haven’t met them. Most people in Vancouver appear to view the Leafs the same way I do, that is, with a mix of violent hatred and complete derision. On the other hand, they react to the Sens mostly with a big "eh." I guess the second thing I’ve learned from the broadcast schedule, then, is that a violent reaction is better than no reaction, and that’s why the Sens won’t be coming to my TV via Hockey Night in Canada very much this year (unless they’re playing the Leafs, or maybe Sidney Crosby’s team). Could it be that Western Canada’s giant collective shrug towards the Sens has something to do with a lack of coverage of the team in the west by the nation’s official broadcaster? Maybe, but I guess we’ll never know.

CBC’S Confirmed Nationally Broadcast Sens Games for 2008-2009
Oct. 4: Pittsburgh at Ottawa (Stockholm, Sweden) (2:30pm Eastern)
Oct. 5: Ottawa at Pittsburgh (Stockholm, Sweden) (2:30pm Eastern)
Oct. 25: Ottawa at Toronto (7:00pm Eastern)
Nov. 22: N.Y. Rangers at Ottawa (This game is part of "Original Six Saturday.") (3:00pm Eastern)
Dec. 6: Pittsburgh at Ottawa (2:00pm Eastern)
Dec. 27: Ottawa at Calgary (A birthday gift? For me? How thoughtful!) (10:00pm Eastern)
Jan. 3: Ottawa at Toronto (7:00pm Eastern)
Jan. 17: Montreal at Ottawa (7:00pm Eastern)
Feb. 21: Ottawa at Montreal (Hockey Day in Canada) (3:00pm Eastern)
Feb. 28: Toronto at Ottawa (7:00pm Eastern)
Mar. 14: Ottawa at Pittsburgh (3:00pm Eastern)
Mar. 29: Ottawa at Tampa Bay (a Sunday game, for some reason) (6:00pm Eastern)
Apr. 11: Ottawa at Toronto (7:00pm Eastern)

Good thing for afternoon games against Pittsburgh, eh? The Sens will be featured nationally in the primetime Saturday slot only five times this season (the CBC will also broadcast other Saturday night Sens games regionally in the Ottawa area), and each time they’re playing either Montreal or Toronto. Looking at the Sens’ remaining Saturday games, I actually can’t blame the CBC for not showing them more often. The Leafs generally do have more appealing matchups. The only problem is that the other team in those matchups is, of course, the Leafs.

Which brings me to lesson #3 learned from the broadcast schedule: TSN only gets to pick its Sens games after all the other networks are done. How else can we explain a slate that features matchups against mostly teams that are either mediocre (Florida and Atlanta — twice!), boring (Boston and New Jer-zzzz), or Nashville? They’ve thrown a couple of good looking matchups — one game each against Montreal and Washington — to make it a bit more palatable, plus meetings with Buffalo and Tampa Bay which should at least be entertaining. I don’t want to complain too much because really, I’m always glad to see the Sens on my actual TV, but these are games it’s going to be a little hard to get psyched up for.

The NHL on TSN’s Sens Games for 2008-2009
Oct. 22: Florida at Ottawa (7:00pm Eastern)
Nov. 11: Ottawa at Montreal (7:00pm Eastern)
Dec. 3: Atlanta at Ottawa (7:00pm Eastern)
Jan. 4: Ottawa at New Jersey (5:00pm Eastern)
Jan. 14: Ottawa at Atlanta (7:30pm Eastern)
Jan. 20: Washington at Ottawa (7:30pm Eastern)
Feb. 5: Boston at Ottawa 7:00pm (Eastern)
Feb. 11: Ottawa at Buffalo (7:30pm Eastern)
Feb. 16: Ottawa at Nashville (8:00pm Eastern)
Mar. 11: Tampa Bay at Ottawa (7:00pm Eastern)

So, all in all, that’s 23 Sens games on TV in Vancouver this season. Not bad, but also not enough to satisfy my bottomless appetite for Sens coverage. The final thing I have learned from the schedule is thus that I will be subscribing to NHL Center Ice Online as soon as I get back to my west coast home. This will allow me not only to watch about 60 more Sens games (unless there are pay-per-view games) but also to watch any other televised NHL game. Like Spider-Man’s amazing abilities, this will, I’m sure, be both a gift and a curse. The eyestrain and backaches will get worse and worse the more hockey I watch, and my grades will suffer, and I’ll have no life. But at the same time, I will become an encyclopedia of hockey knowledge, able to comment intelligently on that questionable penalty in the Columbus/Dallas game the other night and the reasons for the Ducks’ 18-game winless streak. It will be awesome.

Man, I am really tired of this no hockey thing August has going on, know what I mean? It just sucks. Could there be any less to do? Could I be any more bored? Hmm … well, probably, yes. But still, things would seem much less lame if there were a Sens game on TV tonight.

When I’m bored and there’s no hockey in sight, I read lots of different hockey blogs. A few of them have come up with some good ways to make this nightmarish hockeyless month pass more quickly. Sherry at Scarlett Ice, who like me is feeling the pain of no hockey, has started working on a 100 things about me meme, which makes for very interesting reading. I had no idea Sherry was so multi-talented! Meanwhile, Puck Daddy has announced the winners of the “Gary Bettman: Portraits in Heroism” contest. If you have some time to kill (and who doesn’t?), I strongly suggest checking out the Flickr gallery of all 231 entries, which not only is hilarious, but also serves as a great demonstration of just how overdone the whole Dark Knight “Why So Serious?” thing has become.

Puck Daddy has also got a series going called “5 Ways I’d Change the NHL,” in which they ask various people to describe, you guessed it, five changes they’d make to the NHL. My personal favourite suggestion comes from Will Leitch:

1. Hockey players should no longer be allowed to wear helmets. As all casual observers of the sport know, hockey players are impervious to pain. But their faces are still able to be damaged; teeth destroyed, eyes knocked out of their socket, noses flattened. And yet they will keep coming. This will help us train our master class of human to take on the Terminators during the upcoming cyborg apocalypse.

Yes! Anything that will give humanity a chance to survive the inevitable conflict with artificially intelligent beings (which all the science fiction movies and TV shows I watch assure me is coming any day now) gets my vote.

Inspired partly by Puck Daddy, I’ve come up with my own take on this concept. It happens to be something I’ve spent a bit of time thinking about. You see, I am a daydreamer, and when I’ve finished reading hockey blogs and there’s still no hockey in sight, that is when I start to drift off into my own imaginary land. When I daydream, I sometimes create elaborate scenarios that place myself at the centre of the universe in some way. Elaborate scenarios such as …

If I Ran the NHL

Picture a world where Gary Bettman is no longer NHL commissioner and the board of governors has, for some reason, decided that I, Meaghan, humble blogger and huge hockey fan, shall be appointed Supreme Ruler over the league. All my decisions will become law without any debate. I have total control and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. Luckily, I’m a pretty benevolent dictator on the whole, even if I do show a disgusting amount of bias towards a certain team, and it’s generally agreed that my changes make the league much better. I am also invulnerable, which means Anton Volchenkov and I will likely be humanity’s last hope when the machines attack. (He’ll be like a Russian John Connor, and I’ll be like Neo from The Matrix.) It also means that even if there were disgruntled owners and GMs they couldn’t assassinate me, so I really am Supreme Ruler for Life. The National Hockey League changes its name to Meaghan’s Hockey League and I am given my choice of season ticket seats in every league arena. It’s awesome. (Bettman is now working as the home team’s penalty box door opening guy in Anaheim.)

“How did this come to pass?” you might ask. That is a story for another time. For now, here is the first major change I would make in taking the shoddy, somewhat run-down NHL, polishing it up, and turning it into the wonderful, wildly successful, crowd-pleasing MHL.

First Order of Business: Contraction and Re-realignment

I don’t think anyone could argue that the NHL’s current divisional and conference setup makes any sense. The Northwest division covers a vast geographic area and has teams in three different timezones. Detroit and Columbus are the only two Eastern timezone teams stuck in the Western Conference, where they play all their roadgames — except the ones against each other — in timezones different than their own. Dallas, despite being nowhere near the west coast, finds itself in the Pacific Division, while Vancouver, which is in fact right on the west coast, is not in the Pacific Division. It is bizarre.

The problem is the lack of teams in the western US. 21 of the NHL’s 30 teams are east of Dallas. One solution might be to expand into more western markets, but the MHL’s most glorious leader feels that the league already has too many teams, some of which are not very good, and some of which always seem to play in half-empty arenas.

With these considerations in mind, the MHL will make the following changes to its roster of teams:

• Six teams from the former National Hockey League will be shut down, effective immediately. These six teams are the Atlanta Thrashers, Carolina Hurricanes, Florida Panthers, Nashville Predators, New York Islanders, and Tampa Bay Lightning. The remaining teams will have the option of taking on players from these teams at their current salaries in the MHL’s Contraction Draft (format to be announced). Southeast Division teams, it’s nothing personal. You simply don’t fit in with my vision. Nashville, we all know you weren’t going to last anyway. New York, in your case, it is personal. You annoy me, and I see no point to your continued existence.
• The Phoenix Coyotes will return to the city of Winnipeg and resume playing as the Jets. All Phoenix players and personnel will move with the team. Pack your bags and get ready for that prairie winter, boys!

The remaining 24 teams will be divided, as in the old NHL, into a Western Conference and an Eastern Conference, each of which has three divisions. The Western Conference divisions have been arranged in an attempt to minimize the amount of time teams spend travelling to different timezones:

Pacific Division
Anaheim Ducks
Los Angeles Kings
San Jose Sharks
Vancouver Canucks

Mountain Division
Calgary Flames
Colorado Avalanche
Edmonton Oilers
Winnipeg Jets (I know, there are no mountains in Winnipeg. But it’s the best I could do.)

Central Division
Chicago Blackhawks
Dallas Stars
Minnesota Wild
St. Louis Blues

The Eastern Conference divisions are based mostly on geography:

Northeast Division
Buffalo Sabres
Montreal Canadiens
Ottawa Senators
Toronto Maple Leafs

Atlantic Division
Boston Bruins
New Jersey Devils
New York Rangers
Washington Capitals

Midwest Division
Columbus Blue Jackets
Detroit Red Wings
Philadelphia Flyers
Pittsburgh Penguins

I expect to receive an effusive thank you letter and possibly a large gift of some kind from the Red Wings’ and Blue Jackets’ owners later today.

MHL teams will play a 74 game schedule. Each team will meet each other team in its division 3 times at home and 3 times on the road (18 games). Each team will also play each team from the other divisions in its conference twice at home and twice on the road (32 games). Finally, every team will play each team in the other conference twice a season, once each at home and on the road (24 games).

At the conclusion of the 74 game regular season, the top eight teams in each conference will advance to the playoffs, which will use the same format as the NHL playoffs: four rounds of best-of-seven series. Division winners are guaranteed to make the playoffs as they were in the NHL; however, they will not automatically be ranked 1-2-3 in the conference. Instead, the division winners and the other top five point-getting teams will be ranked 1-8 according to their point totals.*

Wow. I feel better already just looking at the new lineup! Big changes, I know, but there are so many benefits to this new setup. No more Southleast jokes. More in-timezone road games for Western teams should mean higher TV ratings, which might translate to more media attention and increased fan support for teams like Chicago and Columbus. Having Sidney Crosby in town three times a season can also only help the Blue Jackets’ attendance numbers. The two most boring teams in the league are now hidden away in the same division, which, okay, is painful for Rangers and Caps fans, but really good for the rest of us. There will be a lot of pressure on Alex Ovechkin to offset the dull, but I think he can handle it. Best of all, Winnipeg has its team back and we can all stop worrying about that Jets megafan friend we have who’s been verging on suicidal since 1996. Newly suicidal obsessive Coyotes fans, we haven’t forgotten you! An employee of the Anaheim Ducks will personally pay to relocate you all to Winnipeg with the team if you so choose. That’s what things are like in the MHL. We care about hockey fans.**

*The lone exception to this rule is the Ottawa Senators who, should they win the Northeast Division, will have the option of choosing their own position within the top 4 in order to secure the most favourable first round opponent (or mess with another top 4 team).

**Except Thrashers, Canes, Panthers, Preds, Lightning, and Isles fans. Sorry.