• I spent the better part of three weeks in California, where I was able to attend homegames for both the Los Angeles Kings and the Anaheim Ducks. Coincidentally, the visiting opponent in both cases was the Ottawa Senators. I wore my Spezza jersey, cheered loudly, and managed not to get beaten up by Ducks fans, who are, despite what you might think, very friendly people. I witnessed two miracles during my time in California: a Jonathan Cheechoo goal in LA and an Ottawa shootout win in Anaheim. Well, technically, that’s three miracles since a shootout win and a win in Anaheim are both pretty rare.
• I finished school. HELL YES.
• I left Vancouver. I have now moved back to my beloved hometown of Ottawa. This move leaves me with a bit of a dilemma as I am no longer a displaced Senators fan and the title of my blog technically no longer applies. Some editing will be required, but I don’t think I’ll change the name. Thoughts?
• I joined the world of the gainfully employed. This partially explains why I haven’t been blogging: for once I have a job that actually requires me to spend most of the day working. The horror!

Major life changes, as you can see. Now, let’s recap what the Sens have been up to:

• Winning an assload of games.

I think that about covers it.

Tonight, the boys are back in town post-Olympics (OLYMPICS WOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!! CANADAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!) and we start to see just how much momentum they have left from their pre-pause play. Hopefully, it’s a lot. As friend of blog Senators Lost Cojones pointed out via email the other day, “NO Ottawa Senators were harmed in the making of this Olympics.” This is key. In fact, it’s fair to say that all Ottawa’s hockey Olympians suffered some form of embarrassment at the games — Daniel Alfredsson, Milan Michalek, Filip Kuba, and Anton Volchenkov were all eliminated in the quarter finals, with Volchenkov’s Russian team suffering a tremendous ass kicking at the hands of Team Canada (CANADA WOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!); Jarkko Ruutu won a bronze medal for Finland, but I’d like to see him try bragging about that after the so-bad-it-defies-belief collapse the Finns had against the United States in the semi final. Could the anger and shame these players feel motivate them to play at a higher level in Ottawa? Who knows, but we can hope so.

Deadline Fever

As you may have heard, tomorrow is the NHL trade deadline, a day when many NHL players start looking for moving companies. (By the way, Global Pack N’ Ship of Vancouver? Terrible.)

In advance of tomorrow’s frenzy, the Sens today sent San Jose’s second round pick to the New York Islanders in exchange for defenceman Andy Sutton. I’m going to be honest: I don’t know anything about this guy, but I looked him up and apparently he’s 6′6″. That’s really tall. With the pre-Olympics (CA-NA-DA! CA-NA-DA!)  trade of Alexandre Picard and the injury to the awful Chris Campoli, the blue line was looking a bit thin, so it makes sense for Bryan Murray to go after another d-man. Like I said, my Sutton knowledge is very thin but 12 points in 54 games this season on Long Island tells me he’s not an offensive force and he’s in the NHL’s top 25 hitters this season so I assume he’s a physical type. Balance on the Sens’ defensive line appears somewhat skewed now, with Chris Phillips, Anton Volchenkov, Matt Carkner, and Sutton all being primarily defensive players and only Erik Karlsson and Filip Kuba expected to put up points. (Campoli is too bad to count.)

As for Volchenkov and his pending UFA status, I’m completely with The Universal Cynic on this one, as I said in my brief contribution to Cycle Like the Sedins’ Northeast Division deadline-themed post: I understand that Murray is in a predicament, but it simply does not make sense to trade a hugely important component of the team right now just to avoid losing him for nothing on July 1. The worst case scenario here — complete destruction of team chemistry, things fall apart, no playoffs, mass firings, trade the entire roster, move the team to Kansas City … okay, maybe that’s a bit of an embellishment, but it could be horrific — is bad enough to make the best case scenario not worth the risk. The A-Train should stay put, for now and hopefully forever.

People always say Canadians are so polite and love to apologize for things, and the fact is: this is our bad. We seem to have messed up. And even though Vancouver completely excluded my home province of Ontario from their “cross-country” tribute to Canada in the opening ceremonies and I could easily distance myself from the whole debacle, I’m going to be Canadian and stand by my countrymen by helping them apologize for their incompetence.

Opening Apology

We’re sorry we made you watch a kid flying around over a fake wheat field for five minutes. We’re sorry about the whole hydraulic cauldron fail thing. Finally, we’re really, really sorry we inflicted a Bryan Adams/Nelly Furtado duet on you and dragged out Sarah Mclachlan again. It could have been worse, though — at least she didn’t sing that I Will Remember You song (she’s probably saving it for the closing ceremonies) and at least she wasn’t Celine Dion.

Wet Apology

We’re sorry Vancouver has failed to live up to Canada’s reputation as a barren, icy wasteland. Really, though, this one’s at least partially on the IOC. They probably should have picked up on the fact that Vancouver tends to have warm, rainy winters before awarding the city the Winter Olympics.

Non-Zambonic Apology

We’re sorry the “Olympia machine” at the Richmond Oval is apparently a giant piece of crap. You’d think we’d be able to get that right, wouldn’t you? Weather delays are out of anyone’s control, but you would really think it’d be possible to avoid delays at an indoor venue. Apparently, not so much.

Luge Apology

The death of Georgia luger Nodar Kumaritashvili was an absolute tragedy and my heart goes out to the Georgian Olympic team and the entire luge community. Which is why I’m so disgusted by the comments from Canada’s luge coach, Wolfgang Staudinger. World, we’re sorry our luge coach is such an insensitive, heartless prick. Please note that this man is actually German. (Just like Dany Heatley!)

Pants Apology

We’re really freaking sorry Nate Holland of the USA snowboarding team doesn’t like our snowboarding pants or our “own the podium” slogan. Oh wait, no we’re not. How’s the view from fourth place, Nate?

Attitude Apology

We’re sorry for my previous statement. There’s nothing wrong with finishing fourth. Although, if you do try to force someone from another country off the course to benefit yourself and your teammate, you should probably be prepared for a karmic bitcshlap of some kind. Like, say, a big wipeout.

Fashion Apology

We’re sorry our speed skating outfits look so weird. They gave the contract to The Bay for some reason when we all know Roots does a much nicer job.

Advance Apology

We’re sorry in advance to whichever country has one of its hockey players’ brains scrambled by Chris Pronger. Lord knows he won’t apologize for it himself. Honestly, we don’t like him much either.

Moguls Mogul Apology

We’re sorry former Canadian and moguls skier Dale Begg-Smith is such a douchebag. Yeah, he was born and raised in Canada and he might actually be responsible for some of the spyware on your computer. We feel bad about that.

But we probably feel worse about the fact that this guy hates us so much that he may be trying to rob us of our best moment at the games so far. Australia, it’s your turn to apologize now, though I know you’re also not his biggest fans.

And, uh, I know I said I’m sticking with my countrymen on this one and everything, but I just want to note that I don’t live in Vancouver anymore, so … totally not my fault. I’m over 3,500 km away. Nothing I can do. Really.

Eberle

by Meaghan

I think that I shall never see
A man as clutch as Eberle.

A teen whose stick is clearly blessed,
Who when behind does never rest,
But miracles at will performs,
He nations, teams, and fans transforms.

He lifts them all in hope and joy!
Who is this awesome prairie boy?
Can he also outrun trains?
Does blood of gods run in his veins?

Although sixth gold was not to be,
They’ll never stop young Eberle.

*     *     *

Oh yeah, and I think the Sens probably lost, at least I assume they did since they were down 4-0 last time I checked.

Too subtle?

It doesn’t seem quite right that the Sharks don’t play in Ottawa this year, does it? Heatley skipped town and he gets to avoid the consequences for at least a full year. Well, the Sharks do have to play the Canucks this season. Tonight, in fact. And although my disgruntled Sens fan voice will be a tiny minority in a room full of Canucks fans who probably don’t care that much about our pain, I will try to make myself heard.

Tonight, Ottawa, I boo for thee.

At any rate, I just wanted to check in quickly and do some self-promotion: I am now a weekly contributor over at Cycle Like the Sedins, where I will be providing links to good posts about the Northeast Division every Wednesday. You can check out my first post here, and please email me or tweet at me if you have any suggestions for links I might post.

The timing of this deal strikes me as strange. Carkner has performed better than I think anyone expected to this point in the season, but it’s only been seven games and it seems a bit soon to conclude that he’ll keep it up forever. On the other hand, a cap hit of $700,000 would make Carkner the 191st best paid defenseman in the NHL this season. A number like that doesn’t seem like much to risk on a guy who can, at the very least, worry people and kill penalties. When you think about the somewhat inflated contracts of Chris Kelly, Chris Neil, and Mike Fisher, it’s unfortunately refreshing to see a hometown hero type of guy get a very reasonable, totally non-crippling deal from the Sens for once.

The interesting part of all this is wondering what it means for the Senators’ future roster. Ottawa’s defense looks rather crowded at the moment; if Filip Kuba ever happens to recover from whatever injury he’s dealing with, someone will have to come out of the lineup. The team also has Brian Lee down in Binghamton and the monstrous Jared Cowen in the pipeline. But:

• Anton Volchenkov is a UFA at the end of this season.
• Chris Campoli, Alexandre Picard, and Brian Lee are all RFAs at the end of this season.

That leaves four spots on the blueline definitely filled in 2010-2011: Chris Phillips, Carkner, Kuba, and presumably Erik Karlsson. It’s also possible that Cowen will make the leap to the NHL, which means five of six/seven positions may be filled before Campoli, Picard, Lee, and Volchenkov even enter the picture.

So. What is the deal here? What is Murray’s plan? It seems reasonable to assume that at least one and maybe two of Campoli, Picard, and Lee will not be back. Personally, I’d be inclined to re-sign Picard. He played very well paired with Kuba at times last season and he’s definitely looked more impressive than Campoli so far this year. As for Lee and Campoli, well, it wouldn’t break my heart to see either one walk (unless I started thinking about wasted first round picks).

The real question is: what will happen to Volchenkov? Is signing a very cheap player like Carkner a way of readying the payroll to give the A-Train his raise? I kind of hope so. Every time Volchenkov crushes another rookie, he reminds me why he’s one of my favourite players and I would hate to see him leave Ottawa. That said, I’m also with Nichols of The 6th Sens in not particularly wanting to see Volchenkov eat up $5 million of the Sens’ cap space for the foreseeable future (see Nichols’ post “What’s Volchenkov Worth?” for some good reading on this subject).

With that in mind, I wonder if signing a physical d-man like Carkner might be Murray’s attempt to fill a forthcoming Volchenkov-shaped void. I hope not: I like Carkner, but really … he’ll never be the A-Train.

Primary, Secondary, Tertiary, and Quaternary. At last! An offensive breakthrough! I really hope this is the start of a trend and not just some flukey one-time Tampa-induced outburst. No, I don’t expect them to start scoring seven per game, but three or four would be a level to aim for. It would be wonderful to think the offense has started to click.

Manic Michalek! This is what I’m going to be calling Milan Michalek due to his foot speed and his hilarious speed-talking in interviews. Michalek was clearly the star last night. Two shorthanded goals is pretty impressive, and it was exciting to see him get his first NHL hat trick.

All Aboard the A-Train, Part Whatever This Is. Yet another high profile rookie learned the hard way about Anton Volchenkov’s ability to throw a hard bodycheck last night. This time it was Victor Hedman who went down after a big hip check. It seems Volchenkov is on a mission to educate the young ‘uns this year. He’s had a fantastic start to the season.

Alas, Poor Giggles. Jason Spezza, on the other hand, probably hasn’t had the start he’d hoped for. With just three points in six games, he’s currently ninth on the Senators in scoring. Despite that, he’s playing very well. He’s leading the forwards in icetime, and he’s been noticeable doing little things like winning puck battles. Cory Clouston has been using him in all situations and Ray Ferraro singled him out during TSN’s broadcast last night for his “exemplary” effort in the game. Spezza has said he feels he’s starting to click with his linemates, Michalek and Jonathan Cheechoo, and his beautiful pass to set up Michalek for the hat trick goal seems to back that up. No doubt Spezza will break through with some points soon — maybe even as soon as Saturday when the Sens play Montreal, a team Spezza has traditionally destroyed.

Is There a Matt Carkner Fan Club? Because I’d Like to Join. How long have Sens fans been waiting for someone to come along and beat the crap out of Steve Downie? Two years. That’s how long. Last night, Matt Carkner did exactly that. Afterwards, Carkner said: “Payback for McAmmond … I hate that little prick.” Music to our ears! Unsurprisingly, Downie went for the eye gouge and kick post-fight, but Carkner prevailed because Downie is a pathetic little boy and Carkner is awesome.

No I in Beatdown. I also saw Carkner standing up in the penalty box and cheering after one of the Sens’ goals. He seems to be a real team player, and his kind of attitude appears to be one Cory Clouston has somehow managed to cultivate on this Senators team. From the Sun:

“The atmosphere is good on this team,” Volchenkov said when asked to explain his early season success. “It feels good. I like playing with this team.”

You can see this positive atmosphere in the way they’re standing up for each other, and in the small stuff like Spezza grabbing the puck as a souvenir after Michalek scored his third goal. I also see it, or think I see it, in how I feel after I watch the games. I come away from Sens games these days feeling that I haven’t really noticed any one forward or forward line standing out (last night Michalek was the obvious exception), but they’ve all generally played well. I think what I mean is best expressed by Spezza’s good play, and by the fact that I was really shocked to discover that Daniel Alfredsson is the team’s leading scorer with seven points right now. His performance hasn’t stood out to me as being particularly strong; in fact, I thought he was having a rather slow start.

Now, this team-wide invisibility could be a horribly negative thing if it meant all the forwards were playing badly, but I don’t think that’s what’s going on. They’re just quietly going about the business of, you know, winning a few games. Their philosophy seems to be that there’s no need to be flashy: just get the job done. The Sens are playing a real team game so far, and it definitely feels good to watch.

Toot Toot

If I may belatedly promote myself a bit: I was asked to contribute a short piece on the Sens’ “sore thumb” — that is, the one issue that might be the team’s greatest weakness this season — for Cycle Like the Sedins. No, my answer was not “everything.” See what I came up with here.

Luck Be a Lady Tonight. Interesting trend in Sens games this season: good luck. Two reviewed goals go in Ottawa’s favour. The refs fail to blow the whistle when the puck hits the mesh, and Peter Regin scores. Is this good karma saved up from the whole Heatley thing? Whatever has caused fate’s fickle finger to point favourably at our heroes, it’d be nice to see it keep up for a while. (Although it’s also possible that the botched goal call had something to do with the almost complete lack of Ottawa power plays last night, which is less great.)

All Aboard the A-Train, Part II. Rookies of the NHL take note: the A-Train changes track for no one. Not even you, John Tavares. Evander Kane is probably feeling a mysterious sense of creeping dread right about now.

Dazzly Pazzy, Part II. Another solid performance from the goaltender. That one save? You know the one. I pressed the little 15-seconds-back button on my remote to watch it again about five times, my jaw hanging wide open all the while.

Long Time Coming. Matt Carkner’s goal was a real bright spot in the game. You can’t help but root for a guy who’s spent the better part of 10 years in the AHL and is now finally, unexpectedly, getting his shot in the big league. Carkner’s total joy after he scored what was his first NHL goal — he must have wondered if this moment would ever come — was infectious. His teammates on the bench were smiling. I was smiling as I watched on TV. Heck, I bet even the Islanders were smiling as the crowd at Scotiabank Place gave Matt Carkner a standing ovation. It was lovely.

Woe! I was happy for Carkner, and happy to see the third line of Jonathan Cheechoo, Chris Neil, and Peter Regin playing a great game. It’s wonderful to get goals from unexpected places. It really is. Nonetheless: I think it would be advisable for the Sens’ top six offensive players to start scoring soon. For example, Mike Fisher obviously knows how to shoot. Maybe he could try doing that before overtime in a future game.

Like maybe Saturday would be a good time for that to happen. I know it’s the Thrashers and we’re used to not taking them seriously, but they’re tied for the league lead in goals per game right now, with an average of five. Five. Granted, they’ve only played two games. Still, that’s impressive and, given that Ottawa is tied for 25th in the league right now with an average of 2.33 goals per game, a bit scary.

Cory Clouston has attempted to address the scoring problem by putting Nick Foligno on the first line with Jason Spezza and Milan Michalek, and moving Alfie to Foligno’s old spot on the second line with Alex Kovalev and Mike Fisher. The second line seems like it could work. Alfie brings out the best in Fisher (he does that for everyone except Leafs fans, actually) and he might be a good intermediary between Kovalev’s fanciness and Fisher’s … non-fanciness. I’m not convinced by the first line, but Spezza and Michalek seem like they might be developing chemistry.

If the big guns don’t start producing then, well, Chris Neil may just beat them up. Awesome! I think Darren over at Silver Seven summed it up best: “Good to see the team playing with intensity at practice, bad to see Chris Neil ready to punch the team’s top centre in the face.”

All Aboard the A-Train! Everybody knows the story with the Leafs this year: it’s a series of 10 cent words that mean they like violence. Despite that, the Sens were the ones wreaking a bit of havoc in last night’s game. Anton Volchenkov took out Viktor Stalberg with a massive hit in the first period, and I thought Volchenkov and Mike Fisher were pretty big with the bang and crash throughout the game.

Sheantastic. I like Shean Donovan. I wish he got to play more. That is all.

He Doesn’t Really Shoot or Score. As nice as it was to see Donovan get that goal after the Sens caused chaos in the Leafs’ crease, it’s got to be a cause for concern when the fourth line is the only one generating offense. Other than Milan Michalek’s aborted breakaway that led to the Daniel Alfredsson penalty shot (and to Michalek needing some dental work courtesy of Luke Schenn’s stick), I can’t remember Ottawa having many dangerous looking scoring chances. I’d be hard pressed to tell you anything really notable that most of the forwards did during the game, although I did notice the line of Nick Foligno, Mike Fisher, and Alex Kovalev doing some good defensive work in the third period. Kovalev had a nice presence, I thought: he looked steady and calm with the puck.

Dazzly Pazzy. It’s hard for me to trust a goalie. I’ve been hurt, you know. That’s why I’m starting slowly with our Monsieur Leclaire. I don’t want to say anything too positive because it’s only been two games and you never know: he could fall apart — literally or figuratively — at any moment. However, I will say that so far, he looks strong out there. He doesn’t at all make me want to hide under my covers until the puck is out of the Ottawa zone. And I call that progress.

You Can Do Eet! (That’s supposed to be a reference to The Waterboy. I shouldn’t love old Adam Sandler movies so much, but I can’t help myself.) Pierre McGuire offered what I thought was an interesting tidbit from his position between the benches during TSN’s broadcast last night. He said he could hear all the Sens players encouraging each other, and it was “fun to listen to.” The fact that he bothered to point it out made me think this was something beyond the norm. Can it be that there’s a positive atmosphere within the team? I don’t know, but I’d also say Alfie looked pretty darn happy during his second intermission interview, and Alex Kovalev had some very nice things to say about Alfie in particular and the general level of communication between players on the team in his blog for RDS’s website. (Thanks to Battle of Ontario for pointing it out.) We can only hope this apparent positivity will lead to good things on the ice.

Ottawa’s next game is their home opener, Thursday, vs. the New York Islanders. Practice update via Sportsnet’s Ian Mendes: Jason Spezza sat out today but won’t miss a game. Filip Kuba and Ryan Shannon will not play against the Islanders. Jesse Winchester was on the ice today. Pascal Leclaire will probably start tomorrow night.