I think the team started right from 96 to 04 with Jacques Martin who had the great essential building blocks. His goal was to build solid defense first which he certainly did. Chara, Philips, Volchenkof, Redden (when he was good)etc… Unfortunately, the defense has been ripped out and replaced with rookies who can’t handle the puck or break out of their own zone.

Mistakes

• Trading Hossa and Devries for Heatly. Hossa is consistently a top player in the NHL. Heatly stands around with his stick in the air waiting for a pass and never helps the Defense. Laziest player of the game, highest paid. Doesn’t make sense.
• Ray Emery. He was never the great goaltender everyone thought he was, his defensemen kept his stats up, primarily Volchenkof who made the majority of the big saves. He should have been discarded early as the warning sings were quite apparent to fans let alone staff.
• Loosing Chara instead of Redden. Chara vs Redden, this is a no brainer. A giant warhorse who can move the puck, destroy people’s faces with one punch and has the hardest slaptshot in the league making defense turtle their heads vs a coke head with confidence issues. This one blows my mind, what the fuck are you thinking?
• Gerber. Should have never been on the team let alone the NHL.
• Joe Corvo for Mike Commodore? No words needed.
• Now that all Defense is gone, they get rid of , Wade Redden….
• Moving Murray to GM. Murray as coach took the team to the Stanley Cup playoff.  Murray as GM took the team to the bottom of the league.
• Jason Smith, a two-year, $5.2M contract. He’s ok, but not that ok…
• Throwing Rookie goalies in Net to try and fix the team’s shortcomings. Elliot and Auld, thrown to the wolves. I think the coache’s decision here may have hurt these promising goalies career. Absolutely skilled, much potentials but the absolute lack of defense has to be demoralizing especially when the weight of fixing your team’s moral is put on your shoulders. It’s like ” Hey kid, get in net and see if you can fix this shitty team.”
• Ruutu. 3 years/$3.9 Million. Sens already have a pain in the ass and that’s Chris Neil. His shenanigans are not helping the team’s woes in any way and if you’re going to get a pain in the ass, get one that can fight and not chew on people’s fingers.
• Firing of Coaches.  If a team sucks fire a Coach. If the new Coach can’t fix it, it probably means the team sucks and not the Coach… Throw another Rookie Coach (Clouston) to the wolves

Ok, so enough with the negative, what about the positive?

What or who is working right now for the Ottawa Senators?

Stats wise, nothing or no one.  Most of the team is in the negatives for +/- with the the exception of

• Kuba +6
• Donovan +1
• McAmmond +1
• Carkner, Zack Smith and Peter Regin who are all at 0, primarily because they have yet to play a game.

That’s correct, the rest of the team has negative +/-.

While Elliot and Auld plays as fantastically as possible, I think it’s incredibly unfair to them that the rest of their team sucks asshole. You can only goal tend so well until your brain turns numb from watching your team turn over the puck, create odd man rushes, can’t break out, can’t connect a pass, can’t skate and most of all can’t score. If I was one of these goalies, I’d do whatever it takes to get off the Senators because they’re going to ruin their potential to become great.

So you have 5 players who play well for the team. While it may not show in statistics I think there are a few more that have a good work ethic and deserve to be salvaged. Fisher, Alfie, Vermette, Kelly, Philips and Foligno give their best each game. Unfortunately for some of these guys, their best is still sub par.

Conclusion

You can blame goalies, players, GM’s, coaches all you want, but when a company sucks, it starts with the CEO. If the CEO doesn’t realize that his staff suck, the company dies and this company is a downhill spiral.

Problem with the Sens is the inability to realize that everyone is collectively sucking. It’s not a slump, it’s not the goalie, it’s not the GM, it’s not moral.  I keep hearing ” This team is bursting with talent, what’s wrong?”

It comes down to this. Yes, these players were good, past tense. Many of them are simply no longer good, so this team is no longer bursting with talent. You have to keep the positive, and rid the negative starting with the defense. With rules, contracts, salaries there will be no quick fix to this problem as the only fix is to blow the team up and that takes time. So if you’re a Sens fan like me, we may be waiting quite some time before we see this team get to another Stanley Cup playoff. I’d love to hope, but if you’ve watched the team play this year you’ll know as I do, this is currently a very sad hockey team.

First you’ll need a program called http://www.sopcast.com/, which can be downloaded at http://download.sopcast.cn/download/SopCast.zip.

Once you’ve got that installed, checkout http://livetv.ru/en . Currently the left hand bar under “upcoming broadcasts” has a list of games that will stream. Click the little play button on one of the streams and watch your game. Not the best quality but sure beats the radio.

Cheers!

Would I cheer a man down?

Would I cheer if a Leafs player was practically unconscious on the ice, of course not, at first I would but the cheering would stop as soon as I see he’s grasping for dear life, I’m not a monster. There’s rivalry, then there’s humanity and common sense, I’d like to think I have an ounce of dignity for players no matter what the situation. A player goes down, you shut up, he gets up, you cheer. It’s called respect, something the fans in that crowd seemed to have lacked last night. Do I blame them, maybe not, not sure how it feels to have a team suck that badly for years on end so it’s hard to put myself in those dirty, dirty shoes.

Why take a man out when your team did not even make the playoffs?

Do you think this hit was just random coincidence? I mean come on, you have a lackluster team who’s done nothing for the fans all year but piss them off so they need to do something to get the Leafs fan dishing money to their franchise right? Last game before they go play golf, nothing to gain, nothing to loose, playing their number 1 rival… Why not give the fans something to keep at least a shred of respect for their beloved Leafs? Winning wasn’t going to do anything, so why not take out the most hated player of the Leafs Nation right before playoffs, I mean, it’s the only possible way they can get their fans to cheer at this point right? Good job Paul Maurice, you’re fired but bravo on a job well done.

Full cage coward

Takes some real balls for someone with a full cage helmet to take out the other teams most valuable player after he shoots the puck in a game that don’t mean shit. Sorry did I say balls, I meant a coward. Going around instigating fights while you know no one can knock you the fuck out cause you have a busted orbital, whatever, silly, possibly suicidal?

Sens, common sense and poise.

First instinct after a hit like that is, retaliate, terminate. What should have been done and was done was focus that hate on demolishing the team with goals. Hats off to the team for being aggressive with goals and not fists. They focused their attention on winning which the smartest thing they could have done. Bravo.

Terrible hit, or best thing that could have happened for the Sens?

What could have been an effort to gain respect from Leafs fans may actually turn out to be the complete opposite. If you’ve been following the Senator’s rapid downfall in team spirit, energy and team play then you’ll know that something DRASTIC needed to happen to turn them around. This may just have been the tipping point. If you where watching the game in the first period, you can see it in the Sens players eyes that they where done, flubbing passes, choking the puck, no smiles. That drastically changed after that hit to Alfredsson. I hate to say it, but that hit may have been the motivation the team needed to wake up because it sure lit a fire under their ass. What’s amazing is after a blow like that, Alfie skates to the bench, and stays… Man, that says allot about a captain, amazing gentleman, amazing player and probably the best captain there is.

Alfie get well

While I think the hit was actually good for the team, I wish no one harm of course and wish the best for Alfie in his recovery. Get well man, we’ll need you later on!

Tonight’s game

Now we need to win tonight’s game or we’ll be waiting all weekend to see what happens with other teams. A victory against the Bruins at home tonight allows Ottawa to finish ahead of Boston. Any loss — regulation or extra-time — gives Boston a chance to overtake Ottawa. The fans need to really, REALLLY fuckin cheer their team tonight. None of that government employee library silence, have some shots, down some beer and CHEER !

I feel bad for Leafs nation, nothing, I mean nothing works for them or their team. There’s a thing called karma, and I think the Leafs organization needs to think about what they do and what they stand for and realize they have to turn their shit around 180 and focus on good in order for good things to happen to them. I hope they can do that soon so we can see a good leafs vs sens playoff some day.

As for Bell, what goes around comes around.

Go Sens Go and get well Mr. Alfredsson!

Mr. Paddock seems to be lacking balls, and the team is more unmotivated then a crack whore…

Only a matter of time.

What was disturbing is after this hit, Downie smiled, and then a brawl started and people where landing on McAmmond’s unconscious body… I love hockey and I love a good hit, but this shit’s out of line. I don’t care to witness carreer ending hits nor life ending hits. That’s borderline murder and it’s not fun to watch. Of course I was hoping McGratton would lay the fucker out after, hypocrite that I am but it was good they didn’t play either of them. Will be interesting to see their next match…

There’s allot of comments on this video here:

People are saying he didn’t leave his feet and it wasn’t an elbow… That’s absurd and in the Video above ( Pardon the quality ) you can clearly see the dirty hit. That kid shouldn’t be in the NHL, he’s going to kill someone.

Here’s the brawl…