Here’s the Sunday news roundup (I’ll post my reaction to today’s game tomorrow, but for those who don’t know the Ottawa rookies beat Chicago’s 6-5):
–The Ottawa Sun‘s Bruce Garrioch interviewed head coach Paul MacLean (www.ottawasun.com/2011/09/10/q-and-a-with-sens-coach-paul-maclean). Two interesting things to note: 1) MacLean wants to experiment with his top line, seeing a Michalek–Spezza–Alfredsson combination as something to fall back into–“That’s a place I can always go back too. I know it works. If I need that, I can always go with that, so I don’t have to start with that. That’s going to be in place if I need it. We have a lot of guys who need an opportunity to play like (Nikita) Filatov, (Bobby) Butler, (Erik) Condra, (Peter) Regin, (Stephane) Da Costa and (Mika) Zibanejad, even (Nick) Foligno. We won’t find out until we have scrimmages and games who is going to compliment one another.” He also specified which veterans he’s talked to over the summer, “Jason [Spezza] and I sat down for about an hour the other day when he was in town and had a real good conversation. I’ve talked to Chris Phillips, Sergei Gonchar a little and I talked to Alfredsson when I got the job. As they’re coming into the rink in the last week or so, I’ve tried to spend some time with as many as I can. So far it’s been positive about what we’re trying to do and the expectations.”
-Garrioch also wrote about Corey Cowick after his strong game in the rookie tournament opener (www.ottawasun.com/2011/09/10/glory-for-corey–hard-work-pays-off). Cowick said “The biggest thing for me was the mental part of the game. Gaining confidence. Knowing that I can play at the next level. I think physically I’m strong enough. Yes, there are things you can work on every summer, but I think the majority of my time was spent trying to get mentally stronger.”
-Alan Panzeri had a similar article in The Ottawa Citizen (www.ottawacitizen.com/ sports/hockey/ottawa-senators/Goalie+Robin+Lehner+shines+rookie+game/5383218/ story.html), with this tidbit from Kurt Kleinendorst, “I think Corey [Cowick] will be the first one to tell you that he didn’t play as well as he could. He got himself into a bad spot. But this to me looks like a positive sign that he’s coming out of it.”
-Rob Brodie of the Senators website wrote an article on Matt Puempel (senators.nhl.com/club/news.htm?id=588160&cmpid=rss-brodie), where the rookie talked about his first tournament game, “It’s a lot faster than it is in junior, so you have to change your game knowing that and it’s just a different type of atmosphere. The first one’s out of the way and the nerves are out of the way so hopefully, today’s a little bit more of a relaxed day and I can go into a little comfort zone and get a lot more confidence.”
-Bob McKenzie tweeted about the Sens-Chicago rookie game (twitter.com/#!/ TSNBobMcKenzie), saying “Checked out OTT-CHI rookie game today in Oshawa. Stephane Da Costa and David Rundblad, as well as Mika Zibanejad, played well for Sens.”
-Kurt Kleinendorst about the game today (https://vr.shapeservices.com/listen.php?hash=d6665b453101e502dee87dbb2c5c087849cec3219ee9922f7), saying he thought Chicago dominated the first period, but gave the team credit for dominating the rest of the game.
eyeonthesens 