-Ottawa rounded out its road trip with a 3-0 over hapless Minnesota. Robin Lehner picked up the shutout in a game where he wasn’t challenged much.
–Jean-Gabriel Pageau was returned to Binghamton after being outplayed by Matt Kassian. Just kidding. Pageau‘s second tour of duty in Ottawa was as unremarkable as his first (13-1-0-1 -2, getting less than ten minutes TOI in roughly half those games). This isn’t to say that the Pageau hype prior to the season is completely unwarranted, but he’s a young player who I never expected to produce and perform at the same pace as the end of last season. Time down in Bingo won’t hurt him and he should dominate there.
–Randy Lee talked about his promotion to assistant GM and the comment that stood out for me was this:
We have one of the smaller staffs in the NHL, to be very honest
This is on top of the fact that it was even smaller under John Muckler. Full credit goes to the organisation for being able to do what it does with so few people.
–Travis Yost looks at which NHL teams are improving/sliding via score-adjusted Fenwick. New Jersey, Tampa, and Boston (in the east) as the best over the last 20 games or so, while Toronto, Buffalo, and the Islanders are the worst. Ottawa gets the most improved score under that metric (Pittsburgh has the biggest decline).
-Binghamton fell 5-3 to Adirondack last night, despite Corey Cowick‘s three points.
–Jeff Ulmer offers us his second quarter grades for Binghamton and see’s the following players improving: Fredrik Claesson, Chris Wideman, Cole Schneider, Mark Stone, Jim O’Brien, David Dziurzynski, and Tyler Eckford. On the regression front he has Buddy Robinson, Shane Prince, Corey Cowick, Stephane Da Costa, Ben Blood, Andrew Hammond, and Nathan Lawson. He has Michael Sdao, Matt Puempel, Andre Petersson, Mike Hoffman, and Wacey Hamilton at the same level, while all other players either have no point of comparison from the first quarter or else not enough sample size to judge. The only real surprise for me in either of these lists is Prince, who for whatever reason hasn’t been able to put it together this season (sophomore jinx?). I imagine Blood will find his way to Elmira whenever the team is happy enough with its depth at the AHL level. Shedding Eckford‘s large salary will have to wait for the off-season it would seem. I’ll have my own look at Binghamton on Sunday after they hit the 40 game mark.
-Prospect Curtis Lazar‘s stock is on the rise, albeit I’m not sure what impact that really has in the grand scheme of things other than the Sens being unwilling to move him (which itself is no surprise). For those who want in-depth scouting reports on Lazar go here.
-The call-up of Scott Greenham to Binghamton had me wondering about his numbers so here’s a detailed look. He’s 6-10-2, 3.08, and .909 (these are better numbers than Devil’s prospect Maxime Clermont, who he shares the net with), with a .900 or better save percentage in 11 of 19 starts. He’s given up 4+ goals in 7 of those games, but I think GAA is a less important stat given how dependent the number and quality of chances are a result of the team in front of you. Last year (with Bakersfield) in 36 games Greenham was .900 or better in 20 games (finishing with an overall number that’s almost identical to what he has this year, .908). Has he improved? It’s hard to tell. His ratio is slightly better than last season and in each case he played on awful teams, but the margins are too close to be sure. It will be interesting to see how he performs with Binghamton.
This article is written by Peter Levi (@eyeonthesens)
eyeonthesens 