At last, the Sens are getting back to a somewhat normal schedule, with games yesterday and today. Yay! They started off with what I guess was a satisfactory performance against the Coyotes last night. I say I guess because …

Outage Outrage! My Coyotes fan friend Elle came over to watch the game with me last night. We put on the TV to the correct station and found … a black screen? Yes, there was a highly unfortunate Centre Ice outage in beautiful British Columbia yesterday evening which meant that I only got to see the second half of the game. An offensive outburst from the Sens, including that rarest of sights — a goal by Anton Volchenkov — and I missed the whole thing. Not cool.

No More Nogoalov. How about that Volchenkov! Going to the net, getting his own rebound … the man has unexpected levels of greatness just waiting to be discovered underneath all the obvious surface greatness. He’s an onion of greatness. The team celebration after his goal was, it must be said, adorable. I’m sure hockey players are really far too manly to be called adorable, but there you have it.

Rocks it Like U2! Jarkko Ruutu scored two notably nice-looking goals last night. We knew he had some skills — having witnessed them firsthand in terrible fashion last season — and it was good to see him bringing them out in the cause of good. When he scored, Scotiabank Place PA man Stuntman Stu announced “Jarkko!” while the crowd took over for the “Ruuuutuuuu!” part. Did they plan that? I’ve often thought that Ruutu’s name could replace Marco Polo in the world of call and answer games.

Captain’s Courageous. I was really hoping the Captain would take some time off to heal, but I should have known he can’t be stopped. Alfie, who had two assists in the game, has no need for this “rest.”

Stop PICKING ON US Already! Jason Spezza and Martin Gerber both did their best to get their respective large crowds of haters to lay off a little with pretty good performances yesterday. Well, Spezza’s performance could probably be called outstanding, as he scored two goals and two assists. His first goal, which came on a sharp angled shot after he faked out Ilya Bryzgalov, was a fancy one. But Spezza’s game was generally notable for its lack of fanciness: he was seen dumping and chasing rather than trying to carry the puck into the offensive zone. It will be interesting to see how this develops over the season. As for Gerber, he stopped 34 of 37 shots and managed not to give up any obviously weak goals for the first time this season.

On the Other Hand … It didn’t exactly overjoy me to see the team give up three goals in the third period and come close to blowing a 4-0 lead. I don’t think Gerber could be faulted on the goals, but the team defense sure could. Blown leads are perhaps my biggest hockey pet peeve. I hate them! For that reason, I can’t call this a satisfying win.

Up later today are the Boston Bruins and Tim Thomas, who has a 2.05 goals against average, a .939 save percentage, and three shutouts in his career versus Ottawa. Uh oh. At least the Bruins’ other Sens-killer, Chuck Kobasew, is out with a broken ankle. Edit: This just in. Fernandez to start instead of Thomas! The hockey gods have smiled upon us! Oh happy day!

Teams Who Aren’t the Sens: Dallas Stars

Can someone please explain to me what is wrong with Marty Turco? In the Stars’ first four games, Turco had an awful goals against average of 4.59 and a save percentage of .823. Today, he’s given the Avalanche five goals on 18 shots after two periods. The Stars are 28th in the league in terms of goals allowed right now. Last season, they were 6th. Marty. I’m begging you. Please stop sucking! You and Martin Biron are destroying my fantasy teams!

No … that’s not true. That’s impossible! Noooooooooooooooo!!!!

If you are like me, you turned on your computer yesterday morning feeling cheerful enough. You went to dress your fantasy teams for the day, and noticed a little newsblast icon beside Alfie’s name. You clicked on it, then had a mini heart attack and shouted WHAT?!!?????! at your computer as you read that the captain will be out for about two weeks as he recovers from the surprise arthrosopic surgery he had yesterday to remove a bone chip from his knee. My gut reaction –

OH MY GOD WE’RE SO SCREWED!!!! ALFIE COME BACK! ALFIEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!

– has subsided a little. Two weeks. Not so bad. The team has a pretty light schedule for this week, at least, with only today’s game against the Red Wings between now and next Friday. And let’s face it, this team needs to get over its massive coping issues and learn to play without him at some point, so why not now? Maybe this is the moment when they actually figure out that hey, they can make it around the block without daddy holding on to the back of the bike the whole time. Sure, there might be a few scraped knees along the way, but this is what growing up and finding your own identity is all about.

In Alfie’s absence, Dany Heatley will be acting as team captain. I’m a little surprised he’s been chosen over Chris Phillips, but I’m of course interested to see how he’ll handle the added responsibility. He seems to have been thriving with the A so far. His first task will be to lead the team into battle against the defending champs today at Scotiabank Place. No pressure, though, Captain Heater.

Teams Who Aren’t the Sens: Columbus Blue Jackets

With my shiny new Centre Ice subscription, I watched Rick Nash and company take on Dallas last night and actually beat them 5-4 in overtime! It was very exciting! Nash scored the winner with about 20 seconds to go in OT. The Stars had a 2-1 lead after totally dominating the second — the Jackets got into some very bad penalty trouble and were outshot 15-2 in the period — but Columbus then scored three in the third to take the lead. Dallas was able to come back and tie it with two goals in less than a minute towards the end of the third period. The Jackets just looked like a young team that hasn’t yet learned to play with a lead at that point, and the more experienced Stars pounced on them. It looked bad, and I was quite surprised that CBJ was able to pull out the win. All in all it was a very entertaining game! I’m generally not one to heap praise on the NHL and their marketing people, but Centre Ice might actually be one of the best ideas ever.

And so begins the end of Christoph Schubert’s career in a Senators uniform? The Citizen reports:

Craig Hartsburg made his first unpopular decision as coach of the Ottawa Senators on Tuesday morning.

He told Christoph Schubert that his position this season would be as a forward on the fourth line, not as one of the team’s six defenceman.

The decision so upset Schubert that he slid out of the Scandanavium after the team’s practice without talking to the media.

Given that there is no room for Schubert in the forward ranks either (unless someone else is about to be traded), and that the team has gone to great lengths to create a more positive atmosphere in its locker room this season, this seems to make it even more likely that Schubert is on his way out. Hopefully Bryan Murray can find a good outcome for this situation via trade.

A few other bits and bytes:

No Thanks, Nikolai. Murray tells the media that the Sens have no interest in the newly-waived Nikolai Khabibulin and his massive contract. I feel shocked.

Scandinavian Getaway. The Sens are now in Sweden, no doubt spending their spare time eating lots of Mother Alfredsson’s home cooking and assembling stylish yet affordable furniture. The team’s official site has photo galleries and video from the trip. TSN also did a nice little story on the trip on SportsCentre yesterday, which included an interview with Alfie’s father Hasse, who really does look like an older, moustachioed version of his son. Looking at the photos and watching the interviews, I’m struck by how totally overjoyed Alfie seems to have this opportunity to bring his two hometowns together. He’s like a proud papa introducing his kids to his country, and his country to his kids. His 23 hulking kids.

Doomsday Scenario. Ross McKeon at Yahoo Sports offers this unhappy prediction for the Canucks this season:

Train wreck. They won’t score, they won’t be good defensively outside of an overworked Luongo, who better be prepared to face 35-40 shots a night. The coach will probably get fired, the fans might turn on them. It’s just not going to be pretty at all.

Yikes! But hey, this could be my chance to recruit a few disgruntled Canucks fans to the Sens Army.

This morning, I headed over to UBC’s hockey rink (scene of all my own greatest hockey triumphs and tragedies, if such terms can be applied to me scoring a few goals and then falling and cracking a bone in my finger during scrimmage in the UBC Ladies’ Beginner Hockey classes) to watch the Canucks’ rookies in action. Yes, the Canucks. Well, I live in Vancouver, and I have to work with what’s available.

But anyway: rookie camp! You know what this means. Hockey season is almost upon us! In fact, it is one week from today that the Senators will be taking the ice for their first pre-season game against Wade Redden and the New York Rangers.

Yesterday I did one of those fan surveys for NHL.com. It asked me a bunch of questions about how often I listened to games on the radio last season, which was pretty much all the time, due to my geographical situation. This season, I plan to avoid the radio by ordering Center Ice Online. Not only will I be able to watch the Sens to my heart’s content, I will also have the option of watching just about any other game I want to. It’s going to be like an all-you-can-eat hockey buffet!

I’m excited about it, because there’s a few teams other than the Sens I’d like to keep an eye on this year, for various reasons — because the Sens can’t play every day and I have to get my hockey fix somewhere, but also because some of these teams have players I like, some of them look like good young teams whose development will be interesting to watch, and one is a team I could not possibly avoid, even if I tried really, really hard.

Five Teams to Watch This Season on the Sens’ Days Off

Rick Nash and his wacky spaceman hockey suit want you to watch the Blue Jackets this season!

Columbus Blue Jackets: Oh, the Blue Jackets. One of those weird expansion teams no one really knows much about. They entered the league in 2000-2001, and have still never made the playoffs. I think that right there is actually a pretty good reason to watch them: they’ve got to make the playoffs someday (don’t they?) and maybe this year will be their year. It could be quite exciting to watch. The Jackets made some fairly big changes during the offseason. They also gave coach Ken Hitchcock a three-year contract extension, and seem to be building the team around his style of play. Will this plan work? Can goalie Pascal Leclaire, fresh off signing a three-year deal worth almost $12 million, match or better last season’s performance? Was the R.J. Umberger we saw with the Flyers during the playoffs last season the real R.J. Umberger? Will Mike Commodore do better in Columbus than he did in Ottawa? These are all things I’ll be watching for. But even without all that intrigue, I would still have one excellent reason to watch the Blue Jackets, and that reason can be summed up in two words: Rick Nash. My love for him is on its own enough to make the Blue Jackets my number one hockey destination when the Sens are off doing whatever they do when they’re not playing hockey.

Chicago Blackhawks: This one is a no-brainer — anyone who follows the NHL knows the Hawks are one of the most exciting-looking young teams out there right now. There’s an extremely strong chance they’ll make the playoffs this season, led by two fantastic young players: 2007-2008 Calder Trophy winner Patrick Kane (19) and his fellow Calder nominee Jonathan Toews (the Hawks’ newest captain at just 20 years old). Dustin Byfuglien (23) and my personal favourite Patrick Sharp (the old man of the group at 26) aren’t exactly chopped liver either. On defence, the Hawks were of course the winners in the Brian Campbell sweepstakes this summer: as an old 67’s season ticket holder, I’m a longtime Campbell fan and I’ll always keep an eye on him. Duncan Keith and Brent Seabrook are two other Chicago D-men of interest. Aside from all that, there’s also the annual Martin Havlat Injury Watch and the debut of The World’s Most Expensive Goaltending Tandem, with Nikolai Khabibulin ($6.75 million) and Cristobal Huet ($5.625 million) both still on the roster, to keep things interesting in Chicago.

Edmonton Oilers: With the Canucks and the Avalanche looking mighty bad and the Wild seeming to have taken a step backwards, I think the race for the Northwest this season will be between Calgary and Edmonton. It should make for some very entertaining Battle of Alberta games! I like both Alberta teams, and so the question arises: which do I root for in what will no doubt be an intense struggle for Northwest supremacy? My gut tells me I will be cheering on the boys from Edmonton. I was really rooting for the Oilers to squeak into the playoffs last season, and will be shocked if they don’t see some post-season action this year. They’re a fun team to watch, and a likeable one too. Beyond my somewhat random love of Shawn Horcoff, I admit that I have no reason for this preference of Oil over Flame. The Flames thus get an honourable mention on my list of teams to watch, too.

Phoenix Coyotes: The Coyotes haven’t made the playoffs since 2002, but I think they have a good chance of ending that streak this year. They’ve got a strong goalie in Ilya Bryzgalov, a great captain in Shane Doan (he is one of my favourites), and, in Todd Fedoruk, the always entertaining Daniel Carcillo, and our own Brian McGrattan, they’ve also got more enforcers than you can shake a stick at, though I don’t know that shaking a stick at an enforcer would ever be a good idea anyway unless you wanted your face broken. With that lineup, the Coyotes might just be trying to scare the rest of the Pacific Division into submission. But with young talent like Peter Mueller and Kyle Turris, who should be making his NHL debut this season, in the lineup along with new addition Olli Jokinen, they may not have to.

Vancouver Canucks: Vancouver Canucks? Shouldn’t it be Vancouver Ca-sucks? Zing! This team is going nowhere but down. With the departures of Markus Naslund, Trevor Linden, and Brendan Morrison this offseason, the Canucks lost three longtime players and important team leaders — Naslund had been the team captain since 2000 and Morrison was an alternate, while Linden, though he played only 59 games last season, was one of the greatest Canucks ever and no doubt took on a huge leadership role for the team. New GM Mike Gillis has replaced these guys with, er, Steve Bernier, Pavol Demitra, Kyle Wellwood, and Nolan Baumgartner. That doesn’t exactly seem like a step up, and with this loss of offense, Vancouver fans seem destined to have to watch an even more boring brand of Alain Vigneault defensive hockey than they saw last year. The Canucks’ one ace in the hole is Roberto Luongo, who can undoubtedly carry the team when he’s playing well. But Luongo did not seem happy last season, and I wonder how long he’s willing to stick around if this team doesn’t start winning. Which it won’t. So why am I going to be watching them, you ask? Simply put: they’re the only thing on TV. I get Sportsnet Pacific. Pacific! It’s not even Sportsnet West! It’s a channel with one audience: British Columbians. Their only job during hockey season is to cover the Canucks! It is wall-to-wall blue and green and orca logos out here, and because of the sad depth of my hockey obsession, I am incapable of looking away. It’s like a particularly nasty form of self-imposed torture.

As you can see, all the teams on my list are in the Western Conference. This is partly because most of the Eastern teams I don’t hate with a fiery passion are either really bad or incredibly boring, and partly because I am first and foremost a Senators fan, and I am really too invested in their fortunes to want any other team in the East to do well. However, if I were to pick a backup Eastern team, I would go with the Washington Capitals. I developed a soft spot for this bunch as I watched them systematically dismantle the Sens four times last season. Yes, it was truly horrifying and embarrassing, but at the same time I had to admit that, wow, those guys were good. Once the Sens had been eliminated from the playoffs, I was prepared to make the Caps my Eastern team in the second round … until they didn’t make it through. This season, they should only get better. There is, of course, the brilliant Alex Ovechkin to watch (bonus: the Ovechkin factor ensures that a lot of Caps games will be televised nationally), and add Alexander Semin, Nicklas Backstrom, and Mike Green to the list of great young players in DC. Though I can’t say I hope they win the conference, I will at least not actively be hoping for the Caps to fail.

If I do manage to follow through on my plan to watch as much hockey as is humanly possible this season, you may see posts about some of these teams in this space. But rest assured — I’ll be thinking of the Sens the whole time.

Pop quiz, hotshot. The NHL team you own has 47 forwards under contract and only three defencemen. The normal roster for an NHL team is 13 forwards, seven defencemen, and two goaltenders. You are obviously in desperate need of defencemen. What do you do? What. Do. You. Do?

If you are the Tampa Bay Lightning, you trade two of your defencemen (namely, Filip Kuba and Alexandre Picard) to the Senators to get one defenceman (Andrej Meszaros) back. That seems logical. If you failed grade 1 math.

The Lightning seem to be careening around with no particular destination or plan guiding them at the moment, just the whim of a madman telling them they’ve got to keep going or they’ll die. The result is that there is simply no place for logic in Tampa Bay right now. In this situation, logic is the lady who tried to get off the bus when they brought out the stretcher for the driver who’d been shot. You remember what happened to her.

But I am feeling pretty okay about the death of logic at the moment, since it seems to be benefiting the Sens. In this case, we are getting more bodies by spending less money and losing a player who was kinda starting to bring back some unpleasant Yashin-esque memories with this whole cash grab thing he had going on. Also coming to the Sens in the deal is a first round pick, formerly San Jose’s. I’m got a feeling the Sharks may not do very well this year, so who knows? That could turn out to be a reasonably high pick.

TSN is reporting that Meszaros will likely sign a six-year deal with the Lightning, worth $4 million per year.

This has been a pretty interesting story over the last couple of days. First, there was Bryan Murray’s press conference, at which he told reporters that the talks with Meszaros were still going nowhere. A few hours later came a Hockey News story that Meszaros had signed an offer sheet with an unnamed team, and then today we started to hear this talk about Tampa, and the offer sheet that couldn’t exist due to Tampa’s third round pick already having gone to Pittsburgh, and Ray Shero’s apparent unwillingness to be even remotely involved with an RFA offer sheet. Finally, we get this trade.

Personally, I’m very happy to see that something has finally happened with Meszaros. This whole stalemate situation was getting old, and I think it was preventing BM the GM from putting the finishing touches on the roster for this season. Now, with the additions of Kuba and Picard (a Gatineau native), the defence suddenly looks much deeper. The two of them combined make a little less than Meszaros is reportedly getting from the Lightning, which makes the cap situation look a whole lot brighter. I can’t say that I know a whole lot about either Kuba or Picard, but from the sounds of it Kuba has fairly decent offensive skills. He’s also really big. Picard, meanwhile, is only 23 years old (a few months older than Meszaros), has just over a season’s worth of NHL experience, and scored 38 points in 53 games with the Flyers’ AHL team last season. Whether he can produce in the NHL is definitely a question, but it’s also far from certain that Meszaros is ever going to live up to the promise he showed as a rookie and I would not have wanted to see the Sens pay him $4 million per year while they waited to find out.

The question that pops into my mind now that this is done is: are there any top six forwards left? Is there anyone alive out there? Hello? Maybe if Mats Sundin would just make up his flippin’ mind already, some of the other NHL pieces would fall into place.