Senators News: August 24th

Travis Yost believes Paul MacLean is a Corsi guy:

He [MacLean] never mentioned the name, but that’s exactly what it is. Clearly the team prioritizes winning the shot-differential battle and sees the correlation between Corsi and possession-time, and tangentially, the correlation amongst Corsi, scoring chances, and goals. I mean, it’s all right in that very sentence. Not the first time he did it, either.

Whether MacLean specifically uses the term of not it’s pretty clear Travis is right he emphasizes puck possession and shot differential.

-Here’s my look at the Sens rookie tournament roster.

Jeremy Milks looks at re-signing priorities for the Sens and includes Chris Phillips on his list, saying:

Yet there doesn’t seem to be any signs of a big drop-off in play right now. He had a strong season last year

I’m not sure what Jeremy means by “strong season”–Phillips continued to be mediocre, so I’ll agree there was no drop off, but I’ve got no enthusiasm for retaining the aging fifth defenseman.

-Given all the Internet chatter about the Leafs inability to handle the cap, it’s funny to read this from Damien Cox who doesn’t understand all the fuss about resigning their outstanding RFA’s:

Seriously, if Nazem Kadri isn’t signed by Oct. 1, we can all get worked up about it then.

I always wonder with Cox if he’s trolling or if he’s actually trying to downplay sensationalism in sports coverage.  I think it’s the former, since a huge percentage of sports coverage is based on speculation about situations exactly like this one.

-Here’s a trip down memory lane: James Gordon going to bat for Brian Lee prior to the 2011-12 season.  It’s a good illustration that understanding and evaluating talent is not easy or in everyone’s wheelhouse.

Pavel Datsyuk unfortunately seems to support Russia’s insane anti-gay stance.

This article is written by Peter Levi (@eyeonthesens)

2 Comments

  1. Have to agree on Phillips, unless he takes both a paycut and a reduced role (i.e depth 7th defenceman), his time is running out. His 3 million in salary more or less offsets the raises for Spezza and Ryan (assuming the new contracts average 7.5-8 million).

    If Phillips was a still even the Number 4 defender this would be a harder question but he has firmly been 5/6 under Maclean with a healthy lineup. Gryba is a younger cheaper alternative (though not necessarily better). Ceci/Claesson//Borowiecki (especially given his recent 2-year 2nd year one-way contract structure) all project towards those spots in the next 2 years. His time in Ottawa is ending, if the Senators are truly operating as a low budget team going forward, bloated contracts on underperforming veterans cannot be taken.

    • It will be interesting to see what the team does with him–I think he’s overpaid right now and the organisation has soft spots for certain players (ala Chris Neil). On merit there’s no point in retaining him unless he takes significantly less money.


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