Know what I hate?

(Part 2 of a continuing series)... yeah, well too bad, I'm gonna tell you.

I hate this current "The Senators Are Awful On The Road" schtick that is popular through the blogosphere. Why did they earn this? Because they want 1-3-1 on their recent road trip. So let's review:

• Boston: The Senators stole a point from Boston. Anyone who tells you otherwise is planning the Stanley Cup Parade down Elgin for this June an idiot.
• San Jose: The Sens roll into California suffering jet lag and somehow don't manage to beat one of the best teams in hockey in their own rink. Somehow this is a surprise to people?
• Los Angeles: The Kings are fourth in the west, but are tied with the leading Sharks on points. Again, somehow the Senators don't manage to beat one of the best teams in the league in their own rink.
• Phoenix. The Coyotes are sixth in the west, and therefore should be playing to the same level that the Senators are playing at, but only if you totally ignore the fact that the schedule thus far this year has flattered the Senators efforts. Charitably this could have gone either way. Realistically... well, it didn't go our way, did it.
• Anaheim. Ok maybe I rated them higher than they deserved, but this game was by no means a gimmie.

When you start the season with a soft, leisurely extended home stand against tired, travelling teams who are playing back-to-backs with a marathon road trip, well it is no wonder the results were different.

If you step back from the last-5 or last-10 perspective everyone gets stuck into, you'll see that this team is barely holding on to the bottom of the playoff positions, which is about where we expected the team to be. Yes this road trip was bad. Yes they were flattered by the early schedule. But you know what? On average, we're getting about what we expected.

Once the Senators get into the softer, tired, dispirited teams (Anaheim and Philadelphia, just to pick two names from a hat) then naturally they do better against them.

The "Hot Goalie" Excuse

So yeah, I went away for a week. Sun, sand, private pool, and the single biggest cockroach I've ever seen (who cooperatively went away for the rest of the week after he'd been tipped).

But before I went away, there was this game against the Atlanta Thrashers. Maybe you remember? If not, let me refresh your memory:

October 31 2009, Atlanta at Ottawa: 3-1 (Final). Shots on goal: 21-51 -- not including those blocked or redirected enroute to the net. In other words, Atlanta goalie Ondrej Pavelec made 50 saves, permitting only a single Mike Fisher offering into the net.

And lo, did the commentators say: The Senators were stymied by a hot goalie.

This is what, the third time that this particular excuse has been trotted out? I remember the first game of the year in New York, when Henrick Lundqvist was granted the dubious honor of being dubbed the first "hot goalie" that the Senators ran into this year.

The thing is, it is just an excuse. It only works if the lack of scoring is unusual. If the Senators of early 2007 (who could seemingly put the puck in the net at will) had been stymied by a goalie, then yes, THAT would be a hot goalie.

But if you just can't score, and that state of being is a regular situation, then you can't just hand wave the whole thing off as running into a "hot goalie". The whole point of the game is to put the puck in the net. If you can't do it, then you have a problem.

And the Senators can't do it regularly, which means they have a problem.