–Chris writes an excellent article (I highly recommend reading it through) exploring the Sens penalty killing and whether or not it will be worse than this past season. He concludes that goaltending (more than anything else) contributed to the team’s excellent numbers, which to my mind means the change in penalty killers isn’t as relevant. However, he points out (and I agree) that it’s extremely unlikely to get the same kind of goaltending performances this upcoming season so there’s no reason to doubt a decline of some proportion in the upcoming season.
–Erik Condra filed for arbitration and Travis Yost writes about that archaic process. The thing to remember is Bryan Murray almost always makes a deal prior to the arbitration hearing, so I don’t expect things to get that far.
–Adnan takes a look at why Clarke MacArthur‘s offensive numbers dipped his last two years with Toronto, and points out in 11-12 his line often played against top opposition, while 12-13 he was underused by Randy Carlyle.
–Mark Parisi manages to write an article about the Sens finances without referencing any of the information that has come to light over the past few weeks. He blames the NHL system for Ottawa’s financial troubles while claiming no one can know the Sens numbers (and therefore, Mark has no idea if those troubles truly are Ottawa’s or Melnyk’s). While Mark may have a point about the NHL’s financial system (although as he admits no one really knows how that system operates), it’s more than a little baffling that he doesn’t delve into any of the news about Melnyk’s finances (other than to say we don’t know what those financial issues are, if they exist).
–Allan Muir gave the Sens a B- for their draft this year (among the worst grades he handed out in the Eastern Conference), but provides no real explanation for it.
-The NHL announced yesterday that the Sens and Canucks will be playing in the next Heritage game. It will be interesting to see what kind of ratings are generated–if good, it becomes a little harder for CBC to hang its hat on Ottawa being a poor television draw.
-News columnist Jeffrey Simpson apparently made an ass of himself back in 2011 when he sent a letter to Cyril Leeder demanding Bryan Murray be fired. I have to admire his passion, but hopefully Simpson learned to leave hockey decisions to people who understand the game.
-I remain puzzled why TSN, Sportsnet, etc continue to report the total salary for a player who is signed rather than their annual salary, since the latter is all fans are interested in.
This article is written by Peter Levi (@eyeonthesens)
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