-As the Jared Cowen wait continues we have a flood of opinion pieces and in one of them Chris wonders which Sens prospect will surprise this year and suggests one of ten possibilities (so half of Binghamton’s upcoming roster–why stop there I wonder?). Chris favours Mark Stone. His list includes no off-the-radar names, but excludes Matt Puempel (first round pick), Buddy Robinson (the big NCAA free agent), and Andre Petersson among others. Also not included is Eric Gryba who (let us recall) is on a two-way contract. To me the main conclusion of this kind of speculation is that none of the players in his article are likely to make a big impact on the team.
–The Sports Forecaster magazine (which I haven’t picked up yet) is predicting the Sens will win the Stanley Cup. I don’t want to say too much about it until I’ve read their reasoning, but the Sens wouldn’t be my pick as things stand.
–NHL.com is also talking Senators and Corey Masisak believes Craig Anderson is undervalued (!); he has Cory Conacher as overvalued and Patrick Wiercioch as his sleeper. I guess Anderson didn’t do enough last year to accrue value for Masisak….
-In a turn for the funny, check out Ryan Classic and Bonk’s Mullet trip through memory lane for the Sens.
–Travis Yost writes a long article about being a better hockey blogger. Most of it is solid advice and a number of things stuck out to me: quality is not inherently tied to view counts–the platform is much more important (so an indifferent blogger on a well-established site will do much better than an unknown on their own); I largely agree with Travis that opinion-based blogs perform better, but good, hard team-related news is much harder to find;
Remember, simply saying something does not make it so
If only bloggers were punished for not following this truism (alas), many successful bloggers ignore this advice so I don’t believe it’s required for success; he’s right that traditional journalism is failing because it has become a shill for ownership (very much as actual news has become for governments and corporations); my favourite piece of advice:
you need to watch the games
Word to the wise, but as funny as it seems there are bloggers who will offer an opinion on a game they only saw some or a part of.
This article is written by Peter Levi (@eyeonthesens)
8 Comments
Comments RSS TrackBack Identifier URI
eyeonthesens 
The schedule in October is not going to be easy to watch the full games 🙂
I’ve never been able to watch all 82 games of a season (80 is the closest), which is fine, my point was simply that I don’t think people should *assess* games they haven’t watched completely.
It’s also pretty funny how much a number of Sens blogs (not to be named) just copy other blogs that watched the game and try to pass it off as their work.
I actually think a number of Sens blogs get worse during the season because they just report the game. Player X scored. Player Y assisted. blah blah blah. Most of these blogs are afraid to say a negative opinion about the team as they hope to one write for them or something.
Yeah, there’s not a huge amount of original content despite the multiplicity of blogs out there. For my part there’s a very small cadre of “must read” bloggers and even in those cases there are a number of “routine” opinion pieces that they put out for the sake of posting regularly. I do think the blog tonnage helps add to the overall amount of information though (given how identical the two papers are in their coverage). The presumed goal for many bloggers is to write “officially” for the team one day and that desire has definitely meant a little too much pandering for my tastes.
Wrt which Sens prospect will surprise.. I agree that the blog you linked doesn’t really include any “off the radar” names – which to me would define a real “surprise”. Eg. a la JG Pageau last year.
So, here’s my two:
Chris Wideman – will be Bingo’s top offensive D-man and will get a game or two with the Sens
Quentin Shore – Will have a break-out season at U of Denver, strong showing for the US at the WJC, and move himself into the Sens top-10 prospects
Bold predictions, particularly for Wideman. Any particular reason why you think he will break through?
Main reasons for me liking Wideman:
1. Good & consistent production throughout his 4 year career in the NCAA.
2. Made the transition to AHL fairly quickly — not easy (ask Ben Blood).
3. I’ve read on-line comments from Bingo fans that he was the teams best d-man in the second half of the season.
4. In my one or two on-line viewings of him last year, he looked very poised, very confident.
Despite all that, my prediction is a real longshot, of course.
That all hangs together–as you say, it’s a long shot, but why not? He’s a puck-mover and the organisation is all about that.