ECF 2017 Game 7 Tonight

So here we are just hours away from game 7 of 2017's Eastern Conference Final, and Your Ottawa Senators are still in it. I have to admit, I was one of the doubters at the beginning of the season -- the team just didn't look fundamentally different from that team that failed to get into the playoffs last year. Nobody seriously thought that this team had it in them. And yet, here we are.

I've said on more than one occasion that I think in the current parity league, the gap between the best and the worst in the NHL is much, much smaller than it ever has been in the past, and that on any given night, any given team could beat any other given team. It means that, in the absence of a massive differential, randomness plays a much bigger role than it would have in the past.

I am by no means a hockey fan any more -- if, indeed, I ever really was a "real" hockey fan, but I'm still interested in the Senators' progress. It still bothers me to watch the team play Playoff Hockey, with the meat-grinder play and wheel-o-randomness officiating. I've actually watched more of the west's games because I have nothing invested in the outcome, so I can just watch hockey.

It will be interesting to see what this season does for the relationship between Ottawa and the Senators. The city has been abandoning the team to a certain extent. Certainly nobody expected there to be tickets going unsold for playoff games of any round. I am sure that Phoenix and the flood are factors, as is the fact that the arena is in the middle of nowhere. Jacking up the playoff ticket prices and boosting the parking pricing doesn't help either. Fundamentally though this team never looked like deep playoff team, and the Ottawa fan base isn't deep enough to sell out routine, grinder games. Ottawa likes a winner, and we are unlikely to see that in today's league of parity.

If there is a lesson to be learned from all this, it is that nobody really understands hockey. Ottawa was 50:1 at the beginning of the season to win the Stanley Cup. But they avoided injuries, played their system, got the bounces and the calls that all add up to tonight -- one single chance to beat Pittsburgh to go to the final. And the team has shown that they can win on the road and -- specifically -- that they can win in the Penguin's arena. So it is possible, even if it is, in the long run, unlikely.

I probably won't be watching tonight. But I still hope they win.

That Was Terrible

Well I found a doctor willing to change my medication, but despite that I find that I still don't give any significant part of a rat's anatomy about the Senators right now.

Watching the Boston game tonight I didn't see anything worth getting excited over, either pro or con.  It was just, meh, why did I spend my Friday night watching this.

Frankly the team just isn't playing very well right now.  If anything, I think the current "results" even flatter the effort being put into it.  I think that the gap between a really good team and a really bad team is so small that if a really good team (say Pittsburgh) considers the game a no-effort "gimme", then they'll get blown out.  But frankly I think that's the only way the Senators are going to find success this year.

Maybe I need advice from a Leafs fan as to how I should go about being enthused about a team like this.

Next Year's Scapegoat Hired

Because of their poor playoff performances, the Pittsburgh Penguins have taken the step of hiring a new assistant coach with a track record of being fired because of his teams' poor playoff performances.

I'm sure there's a way to say that so it doesn't sound stupid, but I can't immediately think of it.

Round Two Prediction Time

So: on to Round Two.

I did make some round one predictions, albeit elsewhere:

...and albeit incorrectly, but I did make them.

My round two prediction: I think that the Penguins may have problems, but overall the gap between their offence and our defense is greater than the gap between our offence and their defense.  I think this series is Pittsburgh's to lose, and they'll make a mighty effort to do just that -- but in the end will come up short.

Pittsburgh in six.

Eyes Water

Pittsburgh and Sidney Crosby conspired to make eyes water today as they came to terms on a 12-year, $104.4 million dollar contract extension.  This sees the Penguin superstar on the books somewhere until 2024, when he'll be 36.

For Pittsburgh, this is possibly a can't lose proposition:

• There's always the chance that the CBA being negotiated this summer will exclude ridiculous, cap-circumventing terms like this, with some kind of retroactive clauses to get owners out of the deep holes they happily dug (see also: Luongo, Kovalchuk, et al);
• If the CBA deals with both the salary cap and floor, there's a good chance that it will include a haircut on existing contracts the way the previous did -- my guess is that the haircut is priced into this contract and the cap hit for Crosby will be less than what's indicated here;
•  If Crosby plays well, it keeps the asset safe in Pittsburgh;
• If Crosby doesn't play well, he'll probably be on the injury reserve with another concussion or similar condition -- where the team doesn't have to pay his salary

The possibility that he stays healthy but doesn't play well doesn't seem likely with this player.

Personally though if I was a GM, I wouldn't be signing such contracts before I knew what the CBA was going to do them.  Similarly, if I was a player, I'd want to know if I needed to price in a haircut into my contract.

Isn't hockey fun!

This Man Has A Plane To Catch

Le Artiste has left the building. Alexi Kovalev has played himself into a trade to the Pittsburgh Penguins. In exchange, Brian Murray has got himself the princely return of... nothing. Well OK, a seventh round draft pick, which lets face it is nothing, which might turn into (hold your breath for this) a sixth round pick, which lets face it is... nothing.

The real win is the $5 million per year cap space freed up, and more importantly to Mr. Melnyk, the something like $1.2 million in real money he no longer has to pay for the rest of this year.

Since Kovalev was gone at the end of the year anyways, converting on this trade to relieve real money pressures now is a win for Melnyk. And even at the trade deadline Kovalev probably wouldn't have returned much more than what Murray got for him as it is. Given that, the sooner he's gone, the sooner some other sucker owner starts to pay his bills.

So I count this as an organizational win, although not a hockey win.

Personally I liked to watch Kovalev do his thing, skate, shoot, and play. The problem is, he didn't do much of any of that with any frequency or reliability. With this new world order, I'll still get to watch him on the highlight reels, but he won't be dragging down my team the rest of the time.

Fight Night

So on Saturday morning, I saw the 17-minute "highlight" reel of the Islanders-Penguins game the night before. This reel included such classics as the full-ice-brawl, the blind-side sucker punch, a skater fighting a goalie, and someone leaving the bench to get involved in a fight. By the end of it, Pittsburgh had five skaters on the ice and three on the bench. Everyone else had been tossed out.

On Saturday there was the predictable round of lamentations that this was a disgrace to hockey. On Monday, Pittsburgh owner Mario Lemieux gets on his high horse over the lack of action taken over the event, saying something to the point that he needed to "reconsider his involvement" with the league.

The whole thing was sickening to watch.

The kicker for me? The commentator on the highlight reel mentioned that the evil deed perpetrated by Pittsburgh had been deemed a clean hockey hit. Now I have not seen the offense myself, but this goes to show you how out-of-control the "self-enforcement" of fighting has become, when a clean hockey hit leads to this kind of carrying on.

The sick feeling carried over into Saturday's afternoon game between Ottawa and Edmonton, where there was some pushing and shoving after some non-event or other on the ice. There were a couple points in the game where I nearly gave up on it.

I'm for contact in hockey.

I'm just not for fighting.

If the players fight because the refs don't call the rules, then either fix the rulebook or fix the reffing.

5 Things To Be Happy About From 2009-2010

Well summer has come to Ottawa. The weather is nice and my kids have a brand new play structure in the back yard to play on. Sure, it might be nicer to be continuing down the playoffs towards a Stanley Cup, but really I don't mind so much. In any case, here's my list of things to be happy about from this just finished season.

Playoffs

This team wasn't supposed to make the playoffs at all, or at the most, scrabble in at the tail end of the position 6-7-8 logjam of mediocrity that the East features so much of. Instead, we finished 5th, and made the defending Stanley Cup champions earn their round 1 victory.

As for the round 1 itself, considering that we were running without minute-munching defenseman Kuba, defense-coverage-magnet Kovalev, or either of the "parts" we got in exchange for Heatley -- the fact that we still made Pittsburgh earn their round 1 victory is an achievement in itself. And standing tall, fighting through to a triple-overtime win in game 5 to bring the series back home for game 6, granting team owner Melnyk an unexpected playoff gate -- I think that put this all together and this year was a definite success.

Secondary Scoring

...as in, we had plenty this year.

This year the team had credible threats on all four lines most of the year. Instead of past years where the top line had to do it all, we got a good year from Fisher, quality production from Michalek, and a streaky set of performances from Kovalev.

And I forget how many times the grinder line of Neil-Kelly-Rutuu came up with a big goal to either take the game or to swing the momentum back in Ottawa's favor.

Having such productive lines gave opposing coaches fits, as they'd have to pick which lines to cover closely and which to risk against.

Jason Spezza's New-Found Defensive Discipline

Spezza has shown more willingness to get back after the opposition gets going. He's more willing to get in and grind in his own zone, rather than just floating around waiting for the outlet pass to happen (since lets face it we pay Kovalev a lot of money to do that). I like this new Spezza, and I hope that it continues.

Overall it would be nice if there was more in terms of point production, but lets face it we as fans will always say that. Rumor is that the no-trade clause kicks in this July 1st, and I sincerely hope he isn't traded ahead of that.

Erik Karlsson

At the beginning of the year I said I would like to see him sent down to Bingo in order to get his game together. Turns out that the braintrust at the team came to the same conclusion, and down he went, where he played very good hockey, ending up running the power play down there. Having proved he had the basic hockey skills to do the job, the time came for him to get his NHL-level experience and make his NHL-level rookie mistakes.

Which he did, costing the team several goals at times; but his offensive senses are wonderful, and once he has settled in through the next year or two we can hope that he can develop into something special.

Daniel Alfredsson

What more can be said of Alfredsson that hasn't already been said before? He played his 1000th game as an Ottawa Senator. He brought his A-game every night, playing at both ends. He played top line or shut down. He ran the power play and penalty kill special teams. He played hurt, he played hard, he played with heart.

He is without a doubt the heart and soul of this team.

The one thing I want to mention specifically is his comments after he was injured in Pittsburgh earlier in the year. While the commentators were on the TV baying for blood (followed by much of the blog-o-sphere the next time the two teams met), Alfredsson himself said that the play was a clean, legal hit and it was his own fault for putting himself in a vulnerable position. Now that's class.

Unfortunately the clock is running down on Alfredsson. We say this every year, but it is a fact of life that years of playing hockey will eventually catch up with him and he will have to stop. No one, not even Alfredsson, can continue to do this forever. We can only hope that before that happens the team can get him the Stanley Cup ring he so richly deserves. (And hey, it'd be nice for the rest of us to have the Stanley Cup here in Ottawa.)

Bonus: The Continuing Disaster That Is The Toronto Maple Leafs

The Leafs continue to suck, and that's never a bad thing. What's so bewildering is that given the brain trust in charge of them, why are they so bad? It boggles the mind.

I would still like to see the Leafs and the Senators fighting for top spot in the conference -- or even the Leafs-Senators games being competitive affairs -- but in the absence of that I'll settle for the status quo.

Look at this picture

Round two, 2010:


Two things leaped out at me.

First: the only top-four seed in the east that beat their opposition in round one was... Pittsburgh.

Second: the seed numbers from the east that failed to get through are the seed numbers in the west that succeeded.

The second factiod means precisely nothing.

The first one confirms that the East really is drowning in mediocrity.

Made Them Earn It

Well considering where we were at the beginning of the year, the fact that we took the defending champions to six and made them earn the win, dragging them through overtime twice -- with the officials staying out of it for the most part -- well I am disappointed but I did expect this.

Now we relax until the cup is dealt with in May (or June?...) and then it is planning for next year.

Here's hoping that the team can build on this and do even better next year.

Sens force game 6

Well THAT... that was unbelievable. First time in a long time I've watched a game end-to-end, and first time ever I've stuck with the OT. Most of the time I bail out halfway through OT1 because it is getting late.

Putting LeClaire in tonight was a no-lose decision for Clouston tonight. Everyone (me included, I'll admit) thought that tonight was going to be it, the last game of the season. If LeClaire lost, well the series was over anyways. If they win, everyone's happy. LeClaire played like he was out to prove something, and I think he did. He got a LOT of help from the guys in front of him, and that meant he didn't have to carry the whole effort on his back.

I thought the Senators were outclassed in periods 2 and 3, like they were just waiting for opportunity to be handed to them. Fortunately for them it was handed to them, permitting them to tie the game.

Through OT1 and OT2 I thought that Pittsburgh looked more affected by being tired, with the Senators seemingly able to take the game to the Penguins end almost at will. My theory was that as the teams got tired, the speed factor that the Penguins could bring dropped off much faster than Ottawa's output did. In OT3 the Penguins came back hard, with Ottawa looking more like they were getting run around in their own end. However even though the Penguins were pressing, I didn't think many of the chances were truly dangerous. The Senators hung tough and stayed disciplined and kept the opportunities to a minimum. They still were able to press when the opportunities to go the other way presented themselves, and that resulted in the game winning goal.

So congratulations to the Senators for forcing a game 6 to bring the series back to Ottawa for Saturday. Honestly I still don't think the team can win the series, but I'll happily be wrong again. If the Senators make Pittsburgh earn the win then I'll be satisfied with the end to this year.

Trivia: one commenter on the "Live Blog" thing I was participating in during the OT periods (since my PVR caught up to live TV for once) said that before tonight, the Senators had never won a playoff game when their opponents had 3 wins in the series.

LeClaire sets a franchise record for the number of saves made in a playoff game by an Ottawa Senators goalie with 58 56 stops.

Round 1: Penguins

Here's my prediction for round one: Pittsburgh in six. Ottawa will come out of Pittsburgh with a split series, but it will be split again when they go back; Ottawa loses a close game 5 with a spirited effort, but folds completely in game 6. Historically when Ottawa has been in a "do or die" situation, they choose "die".

(I do know that Ottawa has never won a game 7.)

Optimism

Well due to various reasons I only got to watch the first period last night, and in keeping with the "it's still early days" theme, I'm going to be thinking positive today.

I think putting Michalek, Cheechoo, and Spezza together is going to look like a stunningly brilliant move in the long run. Their first game together and not only did they combine for the only goal of the night, I counted three quality chances that this line put together. Once these guys really click, the goals will come.

I think that Alexi Kovalev is going to be another player that other commentators hate but that I really like to watch. Kovalev was magic with the puck several times, carrying the puck deep into the Penguins' zone, or feathering a pass through the sticks of unsuspecting Penguins players right on the tape of a waiting Senators teammate. Oh, and a no-look drop pass to the left of the Penguins goal that a Penguins defender picked up. I think that again, Kovalev and Alfredsson will start to look very good together.

I still don't like the defensive scramble in front of the Ottawa net. It seems far too frantic and too uncoordinated. But LeClaire is there, most of the time. Commentary from last night blames three of the four goals on funny bounces. If we can get some defensive discipline then this team will look a lot better.