–The Ottawa Sun‘s Don Brennan writes about last night’s game (link) which includes quotes that get to the heart of the matter. Paul MacLean said, “Obviously, coming to town with all the reports of their [the Bruins] demise, they responded real well. I didn’t really think they gave us much of an opportunity to play and we didn’t respond really well. I thought they were a better team than we were (Tuesday). When we did make good plays, we couldn’t make the next one. We couldn’t put two or three passes together like we had been doing. A big strength of our team the last six games was how well we played in our own zone and (Tuesday) it was an Achilles heel.” Jared Cowen added, “We kind of knew what to expect. We didn’t really play in a way that hindered them. They were keeping us in our own zone and making us play defence quite a bit, which is something we obviously have to work on.”
-Allen Panzeri, writing for Senators Extra (link), quotes Craig Anderson happily throwing his teammates under the bus again, “You want to limit the odd-man rushes in this game. That’s what’s going to kill you. When you start giving up three-on-twos, two-on-ones, and breakaways, you can make a few saves, but those are good players you’re playing against, and eventually they’re going to score.” Anderson should take a page from his coach and talk about how winning and losing is a team game rather than blaming defensive breakdowns for all the goals scored on him. I wonder if this approach was part of his problem in Colorado.
-In the same article Panzeri singled out David Rundblad as a big part of the problem last night. It wasn’t a great night for Rundblad, but he was nowhere near the worst player on the ice. I do agree when he writes “in the end didn’t get the saves they needed from Anderson.”
–Sports Illustrated‘s Stu Hackel looks at early season surprises in the NHL (link), including Ottawa, but there’s nothing new here.
–The Hockey News offers up a mea culpa about their prediction that Edmonton will finish at the bottom of the Western Conference, but won’t do the same for Ottawa insisting that they were lucky to win six games in a row (link)–apparently all the teams they played aren’t very good, ergo, Ottawa isn’t very good. The errors in logic here are a bit astounding, but in brief if Ottawa can beat other teams that aren’t very good it’s pretty hard to see how they’ll sink down to where THN predicted.
–Tim Sestito, who elbowed Nikita Filatov in the head (and in an earlier game ran Mark Borowiecki from behind) was suspended for five games by the AHL (link). Joy Lindsay has included a Youtube link of the brutal hit (which you can watch here link).
-Joy Lindsay provides the following forward lines for Binghamton: Grant-Cannone-Petersson, Hoffman-O’Brien-Parrish, Cowick-Radja-Downing, Dziurzynski-Hamilton-Lessard
–Hockey Futures D. J. Powers takes a look at college hockey through October (link), which includes very little about Ottawa’s prospects. He writes that Michael Sdao (Princeton) had two points in the ECAC’s opening tournament, that Ben Blood and Derek Forbort are an excellent pairing on the blueline, and that Jeff Costello‘s (Notre Dame) injury is considered week-to-week.
eyeonthesens 