–The Sens beat Boston 4-2 last night (boxscore and Amelia L‘s summary), as Craig Anderson picked up his first win since his injury. Ottawa overcame a 2-0 deficit and dressing Matt Kassian to earn the victory. Bobby Ryan took an elbow to the head from Dennis Seidenberg late in the third and I agree with Travis Yost that unless Ryan misses time a suspension is unlikely.
–Bob McKenzie talked about Ottawa’s trade possibilities:
I don’t think there’s any question that they’re looking for a defencemen. They’re also, I think, looking for a winger that maybe can play with Jason Spezza. But, keep in mind, anything that happens in Ottawa right now comes back with a lot of financial concerns and staying on budget and making sure that you’re not pumping the budget up too high. So, we’ll see where all that goes. I see part of (carrying eight defencemen) too is that sometimes when you’ve got eight, it’s cause you can find six or seven that you like and the extra guy gives you a little flexibility here and there. You know, Borowiecki came up and did a real good job of injecting a little life through the lineup and scored a goal – his first NHL goal. He’s kind of been a little bit of a catalyst there when they did go on a little bit of a run.
It’s difficult to find a blueliner or a scoring winger when you don’t want to add salary, so if the Sens make a move they have to swing for the fences–a player they hope can improve in Ottawa or else a player they think can shake out of a slump that has them on the outs with their current team.
–Cyril Leeder talked about the Sens attendance–is he concerned?
No. No, we’d like to be full obviously every night, but we’re right where we thought we’d be at this point of the year. And as I’ve said in two of the interviews this week that our revenues on tickets are up this year, year-over-year and compared to last year and compared to the last full year (in) ‘11/12. Just to change some of the promotions, and the discounting, and the policies we’ve had have really attributed to that. We’ve always had a realistic goal for us is to really get a 13,000 season ticket holders and sort of make that our base and hopefully grow from there. We got there one year in 2007/08, the year after the Stanley Cup Final run. And we’ve made great progress the last two years now. I think we’re a little over 12,000 season seat owners now and that’s coming off of the last two full years – ‘11/12 and this year—(We’ve had) double-digit growth in season seat owners, so we’re in a pretty good spot there and we’ve got a good product. The team is really solid on the ice and we’ve got a bunch of good, young players and I think that people can see that there is a future with this team. (Fans) like this team a lot and we’re making the progress we need to on the season seat side and we just need to stay at that
So…nothing to worry about as far as Leeder is concerned, at least publically. There’s a lot more about the future in Nichols’ link above, but I’m not going to get too excited about that (the LTR etc) at this point.
–Binghamton defeated Adirondack 4-2 last night (boxscore and Jeff Ulmer‘s summary), behind Nathan Lawson‘s 48-saves. They face Rochester (7-3-4) tonight.
–Jakub Culek scored the only goal as Elmira got crushed by Wheeling 5-1 (Scott Greenham took the loss). Elmira gets the chance for revenge tonight.
–Brian Cazeneuve echoes my sentiment that tragedy is likely going to be what pushes fighting out of the NHL. I bring up his article not for that, however, but this:
Without fighting, the game’s traditionalists argue, dirty players who swing sticks and hunt for kneecaps wouldn’t be held accountable for their misconduct. Perhaps, but the prospect of brawling never stopped players such as Ken Linseman, Claude Lemieux, Ulf Samuelsson and Sean Avery from playing dirty.
Exactly. It’s never been a deterrent.
This article is written by Peter Levi (@eyeonthesens)
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