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.

Unexpected Brains

Robin Lehner is smarter than he looks:

Lehner insists he’s still just Senators’ backup 

As long as Craig Anderson is the #1 goalie, he can be the magnet for all the boo-birds and other mouth-breathers in the media. Lehner understands that the problem with this hockey team is usually the five guys ahead of the crease, not the guy standing in it. And I bet that Lehner understands that one reason why he's "outplaying" Anderson is that Anderson is getting the tougher starts.

I'm sure Lehner is just hoping that next year when he's the guy that the team reverts back from its uncharacteristically poor level of play, and he can therefore take credit as being the one thing of significance that changed.

Lehner will get his turn in the entryway to the Goalie Graveyard; we shouldn't rush Anderson's time in the chute. We should savor this process. Just be patient. Don't skip to the surprise ending.

Meh

This is how a fan base disappears -- one by one, just silently not coming back any more.  No passion, no anger, no shouts and proclamations of wounded pride.

Just a lack of interest.  Just not coming back any more.

I may go to games in the future, I may watch on TV, but right now, I don't think I care.

Not Time To Panic

You have to hate the blogosphere some times, you really do.  Here we are, not 10 games into the regular season, and already the fans are pushing the panic button.

The problem is that this really isn't appropriate yet.  I mean, when most of your losses consist of games against western teams like Anahiem (twice), San Jose (twice), and Chicago, all of which can be charitably describes as "better than you are", you have to assume that most of those games are not going to go your way.

Never the less, the blogosphere is pushing the panic button: trade for defense.  Trade for offense.  Blame Ryan for not gelling with Spezza.  Blame MacLean for not playing this guy, or for playing that guy.  Blame Murray for the staffing problems.

The best one I read was a throw-away tweet vaguely blaming Alfredsson.  It is obvious that if he had stayed in Ottawa, then the team would come together better and continue to overachieve.

This is the first year in a while where the Senators have been expected to impress, and it is harder to live up to those expectations than the previous years expectations of mediocrity.  This year the team might just underwhelm.  And while that's not good for the front office -- which already seems to have some problems in that area -- it is, frankly, to be expected.

No, the time to panic will be much later this year, when we have played more of the divisional rivals we are going to grind against through the year.  Only then will we have a real picture of where the team is, night in and night out, against the competition that matters this year.

Comparing ourselves to the likes of Chicaco will only result in us coming up short -- and really that shouldn't be a surprise to anyone.

Leafs/Sabres: The Gift That Keeps On Giving

This dead horse really takes a beating, doesn't it. I was going to decide I didn't care any more, but this is too good to pass up:

The notion that we should let players “police themselves” is the highest of high comedy, as if Cam Janssen is a modern-day Wyatt Earp, dispensing justice on the hockey frontier when referees can’t get the job done. 

Seriously, I think that article should be considered the premier anti-fighting article thus far.

Related: NHL coaches don't like the fact that the Sabres coach was fined for "player selection" in sending out a goon with his line change. Toronto tried to calm the situation by putting skilled players out against the goon, but hilarity ensued nevertheless. In this I agree with the coaches, in that if a player is on the bench, a coach should have the option of putting him out at any given legal time. To decide that some players can't be played in certain incidents only illustrates the degree to which the NHL will bend good sense in the pursuit of... I don't even know.

NHL Logic

So the whole mess that is the Leafs-Sabres pre-season brawl has been done to death, but I just want to beat a particular part of this dead horse one more time:

Kessel Swings His Stick Not Once, But Twice – Whether or not he connected, and whether or not it was in self-defense (the first one, not the second), brandishing your stick in such a manner as a weapon is definitely contravening the rules and could be (and was) construed as an attempt to injure.

Attempt to injure, huh? Later, in the same article:

As of now, however ridiculous it sounds in the real world, punching someone of any size with your fist is not considered an attempt to injure in the NHL.

Yeah.

That said, I'm yet to read anyone really standing up and enthusiastically justify the thuggery that was a part of this "game".  It is all back-of-the-hand justification, half-assed references to "The Code", and generally not providing a ringing endorsement.

Beating That Dead Horse

The fighting debate in a nutshell:

• On what possible level can you even begin to justify having more than $9 million worth of starting goalies fighting each other in a meaningless exhibition game? 
• Notwithstanding the above, can we all agree that goalie fights are the greatest?

(Linked because it is funny.)

This is what happens when I pay even a passing attention to the NHL.  Somehow my urge to watch hockey is at a five- or six- year low.

That said, there seems to be more noise in the blog-o-sphere which are sounding tired of fighting.  A couple of entries:

• What’s The Deal?: Fighting After A Clean Hit Without Instigator Penalty 
• NHLers fight through loophole in rule book 
• I Don't Know What The Code Is Anymore
• There’s no need for all this NHL preseason fighting

The last article is interesting, as it compares the incidences of fighting in the pre-season (more than one per game) to the incidences during the regular season (0.8 per game) to incidences during the no-holds-barred, put-the-whistle-away playoffs (just over 0.5 per game).  In other words, the more the game "means", the less fighting there is.

I'm still following things, even if disinterestedly, so my interest level is still higher than 2005 when it was "who cares?"  But I wonder how much of even this minimal interest level is sheer inertia.