–The Ottawa Sun‘s Bruce Garrioch writes about last night’s game (link) and Paul MacLean blamed Bobby Butler for Erik Karlsson‘s giveaway, “No, it’s not Karlsson at all. The forward came back looking for the puck and then turned away.”
–The Ottawa Sun‘s Don Brennan reports that Stephane Da Costa, David Runblad, and Jared Cowen have been told to check out of their hotel and find places to live (link). The Team 1200‘s Steve Lloyd tweeted the news about Cowen on October 22nd (as I mentioned link), so I’m not sure how Bryan Murray’s declaration today relates to what Lloyd heard. Regardless, here’s what Murray said, “Means that if we send them down we have to cover their rent or mortgage. We’ve provided an opportunity for them to be considered regular players. It’s still up to them every day, like every player who can get traded or sent down. But right now, they should be a little relieved. They can move out of the hotel, get a place and get their lives under way. My belief in young players is they shouldn’t get worse. They’re all contributing to this hockey team and I think they’re going to be better in January than they are right now. That’s sort of what I’m telling them.” Da Costa said “There’s nothing to do (living) in the hotel.”
-James Gordon reports for Senators Extra that Ottawa’s lineup for tonight is not expected to change (link), which means Brian Lee will get another chance to impress
–The Ottawa Citizen‘s Wayne Scalan writes about the Senators penalty killing problems (link), which includes an interesting comment from Paul MacLean, “The penalty killing isn’t very good because a lot of the people we have doing it (Zack Smith, Erik Condra and Daugavins) are really learning how to do it in the NHL. If you’re killing off the first minute of the power play in the AHL, you’ve probably killed off the penalty because the second unit that comes out isn’t as good as the first. Here in the NHL, you have to kill the whole two minutes because the second power-play unit could be better than the first and it’s definitely better than the first unit in the American league. So all the things about penalty killing at this level, our guys are learning. And this is a hard league to learn in.” As interesting that this is, I thought Craig Anderson made the key assessment of the problem, “The main thing, as with any team, is 200-foot clears. When you get the puck on your stick, the puck’s got to be out. So many times when you watch highlights of the power play/penalty kill, the guy has the puck on his stick, shoots it off the glass, the guy keeps the puck in and the puck ends up in the net. That’s pretty much the Achilles heel of any PK around the league.”
–Sports Illustrated‘s Michael Farber interviews Paul MacLean (link). He talks about how much the change from Cory Clouston to Paul MacLean is, including Chris Phillips noting “that when players make mistakes now, they generally are corrected and return to the ice without a 10-minute benching.” MacLean also talked about Erik Karlsson, “He can control a game from the back end really well, but I don’t think he can control it totally. As I told him, I’d like to play him 30 minutes a night, but we’ll only play him 14 if he’s playing 14 for us and 16 for them.”
-Joy Lindsay has her post-game comments posted (link), with Kurt Kleinendorst saying, “I didn’t like our first five. I really didn’t like our last five, which is a little unfortunate. First five, not everybody, but we had some guys that just, they weren’t ready to answer the bell. And they came out hard. And they got a couple goals around our crease, where they just outworked us and outmuscled us and outdetermined us, which is unfortunate. So they get two right off the hop, and then we’re playing catch-up all night. And then, the last five, for me a little disappointing — not that the effort wasn’t there, but that there was no execution. When the game was on the line, and we needed our guys to step up and show a little bit of poise and composure, it just, it wasn’t there. We were passing pucks we should have been shooting, and we were shooting pucks maybe that we should have been passing. But other than that, I think there were a lot of good things in that hockey game. Special teams — much better. Power play, Patty Cannone‘s group in particular, looked really well. The penalty killers did a great job. There’s some progress there. The result isn’t what we were looking for, without a doubt. We’re not here to play well and lose. But, having said that, we know this is a group that’s growing, and we still have a long way to grow.”
eyeonthesens 