–Travis Yost continues to document the inconsistent statements by Eugene Melnyk about his finances and those being made by Ottawa team president Cyril Leeder. Nichols transcribes the part of Leeder’s interview that interested him and the president said the following:
Since Eugene (Melnyk) has bought the team, we’ve been in a really good spot financially and we will continue to be.
Does Melnyk really need the casino? Does the owner’s need reflect a team need? We will find out. The rest of Leeder’s material didn’t strike me as particularly engaging, but you can read it via the link above.
-Ottawa re-signed Luke Richardson and the rest of the Binghamton staff, which was well-deserved.
-Some house keeping: the Sens schedule has been released and (as expected) the NHL is going to the Olympics.
–Varada writes an amusing article about the keys to success for a hockey team. My favourite part is this:
Nothing contributes to the performance of an NHL hockey team like signing or trading for a player with minimal ability to play NHL hockey, putting him on the roster at the expense of a kid who could probably use the development time, and then playing him six minutes a night. Whatever swagger your team develops as a result of having a tough guy with a funny mustache on it (I’m developing a metric called SWAGFAC to sell to NHL teams) is probably immediately wiped out in the one instance in which he finds himself in a critical situation and the team gets scored on because he didn’t realize that he was holding his stick upside down.
What more needs to be said?
–Bobby Ryan was in town to stir up hype and good will, but other than good PR it’s not the kind of thing I find engaging. A slight error in the link btb, as Nichols writes that David Dziurzynski signed a two-year rather than a one-year deal.
This article is written by Peter Levi (@eyeonthesens)
eyeonthesens 