-Ottawa lost 3-1 to Pittsburgh last night; Craig Anderson made 21 saves in the loss and clearly needs a break; Patrick Wiercioch scored the only goal. Here’s the boxscore; Darren M was unimpressed by the team’s effort. Scott had the scoring chances 17/16. I can’t say I’m surprised the Sens lost; above and beyond the Pens being a good team, it seems like whenever Ottawa has a huge distraction (like Matt Cooke) they’ve stumbled. I thought Robin Lehner should have played this game (which may not have changed the outcome), but MacLean wanted to go with his top goaltender even if he struggled in his prior start. Regardless, it’s not the end of the world, but the playoff race is definitely more interesting (there were already plenty of reasons to not want to face Pittsburgh in the post-season and last night just emphasized the point).
–Bobby Kelly offers us his Binghamton playoff preview, but rather than making predictions he provides us with a look at their opponent Wilkes-Barre:
The WBS Penguins are led on the stats sheet by Chad Kolarik, an AHL veteran who has played a grand total of six games at the NHL level. He came over to the Penguins halfway through the regular season and has been very good since- their very own Rob Klinkhammer. Riley Holzapfel and Trevor Smith are important pieces to the Penguins’ offence as well. Jeff Zatkoff back-stops this team, and does it very well. After 49 regular season games, Zatkoff is showing off a .920 save percentage and 1.93 goals-against-average.
–Bob Howard writes about the Binghamton-Wilkes-Barre rivallry which he points to beginning with the Penguins upset of the Jason Spezza era B-Sens.
–Duncan Keith took some stupid pills and he told reporter Karen Thomson:
[You’d be the] First female referee – You can’t probably play either, right? But you’re thinking the game, like you know it? See ya.
I want to think Keith‘s comment is connected to Thomson saying that she can’t skate, but he has to know better than throwing her gender into the equation. His argument doesn’t make much sense either; playing the game can give you some insight, but it’s not a prerequisite to understanding it.
This article is written by Peter Levi (@eyeonthesens)
eyeonthesens 