-After last night’s game there was a team meeting, which when added to Paul MacLean’s difficult practice last week are the two most obvious strategies to get the team going. Chris Phillips said “It was a wakeup call to all of us to be more accountable. We have to figure out what our identity is and be better to a man really. We can’t be going home thinking, ‘I had my guy and everybody else is doing a bad job.’ We have to take a long, hard look at ourselves and figure out how we can be better and how each guy can help the team more.” He refers to the Senators primary problem of defensive coverage.
-Fans should keep in mind that the combined record of the team’s Ottawa has played is 21-1-2 thus far.
–The Ottawa Sun‘s Bruce Garrioch looks at the reaction to the game (link) with Paul MacLean saying “It’s time for some self-evaluation and to look in the mirror and ask the guy there if you’re doing enough. The coaching staff is going to have to do that itself because obviously what we’re doing is translating from a practice into a game. We need to have a self-evaluation of ourselves and make sure that we’re doing the right things.” He stood up for Alex Auld despite a terrible game, but Auld himself was direct, “I didn’t really give the guys much of an opportunity to get off to a good start. I definitely feel like they deserve better goaltending. I don’t feel like I did my job.”
–The Ottawa Citizen‘s Ken Warren is already impatient with the rebuild (link), for which he supplies no particular reasons before talking about the game itself.
-Rod Brodie writes about David Rundblad for the Sens website (link), who talked about playing the Flyers, “It’s good for my game. When you play against very good players, it makes you learn things and it makes you a better player. It’s good for me to play against them” and playing in general, “When you get to play more and more, it’s easier. You get to feel everything and learn every situation … it’s easier to get into the game and get into the feeling of the game. Against Washington, it felt good. I got to play a lot in the second and third period and it was nice to get my first (career NHL) point, too.”
–Senshot‘s Ian Mendes thoughts on last night’s game (link) and The Silver Seven‘s Darren M’s thoughts (link).
-Binghamton called up Josh Godfrey and Jack Downing to practice with the team.
-For those interested in wrapping up Don Cherry’s mea culpa on the weekend and giving it some context check out Sports Illustrated‘s Stu Hackel’s article (link). Like Stu, I still remember Don’s “diatribes against Europeans and Francophones” (essentially they don’t play “our” style of game–they’re soft). For me, Coaches Corner stopped being relevant when the CBC fired Dave Hodge in 1987 and replaced him with Ron MacLean. Cherry became an increasing self-parody intended as much to sell Rock ’em Sock ’em videos as look at the game. Incidentally, Grey Wyshynski (Puck Daddy) has posted Stu Grimson‘s statement (link).
