-Here are the Capgeek numbers for Jim O’Brien (637.5k) and Eric Gryba (562k).

–Nichols jumps into the Corsi pool to see if Kyle Turris will become the second line center the Sens have long needed.  The numbers are interesting, but I’m not sure how much a half-season illustrates.  What it does illustrate is how much the team needs Daniel Alfredsson back.

–Stefan Noesen talked about his approach going into training camp:

I think I’m ready to take that step. I’ve had a good summer so far training wise. The main thing they wanted me to do was get stronger and I think I have so far. Skating wise, I feel like I’m getting better and better each day I go on the ice. I was very angry [about the world junior snub]. It really fired me up and basically made me want to prove them wrong. That’s what I tried to do (the rest of the season) … I wanted to show that my kind of style can put the puck in the net, can make plays and can do all the things they don’t think I can do, I guess you could say. It was their choice, their decision … I respect it and all, but I just wish I could have been there to help the team. I don’t see [training camp] it as pressure, I see it as an opportunity. I thrive on pressure as well, so if that’s considered pressure, that’s a good kind of pressure … There is pressure to make the team but at the same time, if I don’t, I can go back to Plymouth and put up numbers this year and help our team win.

-This is off topic, but what is going on in Nashville?  I have to think the financial situation there is worse than is generally known.  There has been an exodus of players this off-season:
–Ryan Suter, UFA, Minnesota
–Jordan Tootoo, UFA, Detroit
–Francois Bouillon, UFA, Montreal
–Jack Hillen, UFA, Washington
–Shea Weber, RFA, offer sheet by Philadelphia
–Anders Lindback, RFA, traded to Tampa Bay
–Alexander Radulov, RFA, Moscow (KHL)
Other important players have yet to be signed (the Kostitsyn brothers and Jonathan Blum), the team is at the bottom of the salary barrel and doesn’t have anything close to a true NHL lineup.   Stu Hackel has a good breakdown of the Weber situation and what it means for the Predators (I do not expect them to match Philadelphia’s offer).

This article is written by Peter Levi (@eyeonthesens)

July 20, 2012
Categories: Binghamton Senators, Ottawa Senators . . Author: Eye on the Sens . Comments: Leave a comment

-The Sens have signed Nathan Lawson to serve as the backup in Binghamton.  He was in Hamilton last season.  Tim Murray said:

Well, he’s a depth guy for us right now, but we know he can certainly start at the American Hockey League level. He’s put up good numbers there in the past, so he’s at least that. He’s played games in the National Hockey League. We’ve had guys in the past here who have come up in a pinch — like Robin has in the past, like Mike Brodeur has in the past — so we feel that this kid could, with a couple injuries or if we were stuck, he could come up here and help us not to lose games. That’s what we’re looking for. But the main point right now is, he could, we think he’s a real good American League goalie and could certainly start at that level if need be.

-Murray indicated the Sens are essentially done signing players for Binghamton:

Yeah, it looks like we’re done. We’ve got lots of bodies. I hope we have a lot of quality. We certainly have a lot of quantity right now. I think to just cap it all off, a fifth goaltender that can start in the East Coast League, and again, add depth and come up in the American Hockey League and play well if need be, so that will get done shortly, I’m sure.

-Sens goaltending coach Rick Wamsley was on The Team 1200 this morning and talked about Robin Lehner:

Obviously winning the Calder Cup was a good experience, and you learn that you can play championship-type hockey and give championship-type goaltending. I think young kids have a problem with different types of hangovers, and I thought Robin went through a hangover last year. He didn’t come into camp in the best of shape, didn’t come in with the best of attitudes, and I thought his play was very reflective of that. Robin has, during the two years I’ve been with him, has had tremendous short-term success where you see glimpses of what this guy can do, what he can be with the way he’s played in short periods. What he needs to do is just continue to even out the ride a little bit. Right now, it’s just too much of a roller coaster, where the highs are really high and the lows are too low. If he can even out that ride, I think he has a real good chance of being what we think he can be, and that’s a quality No. 1 guy.

The comments reflect Lehner‘s performance and I wonder how much his attitude was due to the Sens having Alex Auld (of all people) beat him out as a back-up in the NHL.  By all accounts Lehner was in much better shape at this year’s development camp and I suspect the idea of being able to compete with Ben Bishop means he’ll carry that through to training camp.  The question for me is what will happen when he loses out to Bishop‘s one-way deal?

-Here’s my profile of Nathan Lawson.

–Rob Brodie has an article on NCAA free agent signee Cole Schneider.  Tim Murray said

We saw him night after night at UConn and he was the best player there. We just like his skill set and we think he brings an offensive dimension to our team down the road … We had our guys identify him early in the year and we followed up on him a couple of times in the last couple of months (of his season). We watched him play a lot and we just liked what we saw.

Schneider said:

My agent said that the staff around here was really good and thought this was the best fit for me. I’m more of an offensive player. But when I got there, I didn’t want to not play defence. So I kind of played a lot more defensively when I got up to Binghamton. It [the AHL] was a lot different, a lot faster, a lot stronger I guess. It’s not that I can’t handle it, but you’ve just got to get used to (the pace). They just said they wanted me to work on my skating and become a better skater.

He is one of many Sens prospects (like Mark Stone) who have been added to the organisation despite footspeed problems.

–Nichols joins the chorus of those who think (like me) that the idea that the Sens aren’t tough enough is ridiculous (or “horseshit”, as he says).

It’s not like any of these Northeast Division teams are without their flaws. The Habs were one of the worst teams in the league last season. The Buffalo Sabres are so weak down the middle that their first line center is… Steve Ott. And perhaps most importantly, Senators killer Tim Thomas has hung the Bruins out to dry. At the very least, blaming Ottawa for a perceived lack of toughness is a discredit to the assembled talent that projected to be on the NHL roster. With names like Neil, Greening, Smith, Cowen and Borowiecki filling out the ranks, it’s not like the roster is without a number of candidates who should be more than willing to chuck knuckles in the event that liberties are taken against one of the team’s more talented offensive players. Of course, having some tough role players means nothing unless the team’s best players are willing to pay the price, stick up for their teammates, engage the opposition or go to the high traffic areas. I suppose as the offseason buzz created by Andre Benoit’s signing continues to diminish with each day, there needs to be some kind of narrative to distract fans and maintain some level of hockey discussion in this city. Like a Mike Fisher wrister, whining about a lack of toughness however, misses the mark.

Everything here is spot on.  The argument that the Sens aren’t tough enough is absurd, but perhaps it just gives beat writers something to talk about.

-The boys at Welcome to Your Karlsson Years wrote a farewell for Nick Foligno, but what I enjoyed about it was the deconstruction of inept Columbus GM Scott Howson.  Read and enjoy:

It all starts at the top for Columbus, with General Manager Scott Howson. Here’s a pretty thorough summary – it ain’t pretty. There seem to be a few commonalities: total lack of prospect development; disjointed philosophies between coaching and drafting; allowing critical decisions to linger for far too long, like the firing of coach Scott Arniel; taking what spending leverage was afforded by ownership and blowing far too much of it on terrible free agent acquisitions like Mike Commodore, Kristian Huselius, and maybe Wisniewski (if it’s not too soon to judge there); he outs Rick Nash’s trade request, throwing him under the bus, and then doesn’t trade him for months; he goes on radio shows and makes his demands for Nash public. Not to mention that his demands for Nash – some NHL ready forwards – are also terribly stupid. Why make a lateral move? What’s lateral to last place? Most baffling of all is the firing of the entire scouting staff just days after the 2012 draft. In doing a little bit of reading about that move, I discovered that this same staff had been in place since 2001! That’s insane. A team that has drafted in the top ten every single year of its existence except one, and has only made the playoffs that one year, should probably have looked at swapping out some staff a little bit sooner. I’m not even close to being current on this, but it bears saying again: if you have no faith in these scouts, why allow them to run not only your draft, but one of the most important drafts in the franchise history, one in which you’re launching your rebuild?

July 17, 2012
Categories: Binghamton Senators, Ottawa Senators . . Author: Eye on the Sens . Comments: 1 Comment

Nathan Lawson (GL, 6’2, DOB 1983, undrafted, Capgeek: 600k/105k)
2009-10 AHL Bridgeport 19-9-2 2.52 .922
2010-11 AHL Bridgeport 16-16-3 2.90 .913
2010-11 NHL Islanders 1-4-2 4.06 .893
2011-12 AHL Hamilton 19-17-4 2.57 .914

The undrafted NCAA vet spent a year in the ECHL (mostly in Utah) before joining the Islander organisation in 2008-09.  He played with Montreal’s affiliate last year and isn’t expected to see any NHL time nor seriously challenge Robin Lehner in Binghamton.  Tim Murray said “Well, he’s a depth guy for us right now, but we know he can certainly start at the American Hockey League level. He’s put up good numbers there in the past, so he’s at least that. He’s played games in the National Hockey League. We’ve had guys in the past here who have come up in a pinch — like Robin has in the past, like Mike Brodeur has in the past — so we feel that this kid could, with a couple injuries or if we were stuck, he could come up here and help us not to lose games. That’s what we’re looking for. But the main point right now is, he could, we think he’s a real good American League goalie and could certainly start at that level if need be.”.  Justin Goldman provides a very thorough scouting report based on his NHL debut two seasons ago:

Lawson’s overall biometrics and positioning is well-suited for the NHL. He’s listed at 6-foot-2 and employs a slightly wide stance in order to appear even bigger in the crease. He plays slightly deep in his crease, but does an excellent job of challenging shooters and eliminating time and space when needed. I consider him a passive butterfly goalie with a strong sense of reading plays and pushing into pucks. He absorbs a lot of shots and has great rebound control. Another important aspect of biometrics and technique is a goalie’s balance point. Lawson’s balance is definitely further back on his heels, which lends a hand to his calm style. He has a docile demeanor in the sense he does not over-play pucks or have over-active hands. He has great patience and rarely loses balance. His low center of gravity and tremendous leg strength gives him a solid presence in the net. When looking at Lawson’s strengths, the most obvious trait is his puck moving skills. Aside from his poise, patience, rebound control and ability to challenge shooters, I liked his straight back, lateral movement and his crouching ability. On many routine saves, he moved fluidly to either side and reinforced his legs with good hand placement. He also did a good job of incorporating an active stick when making saves down low. The most visible weakness in Lawson was  dropping into the butterfly too early. Another area of weakness is overall foot speed. Because his balance point is further back on his heels and he’s a passive goalie, he will need to work on actively engaging his inside edges and getting quicker at his overall butterfly recovery if he wants to thrive in the NHL. The final area of weakness at the NHL level is his inability to rotate his hips while down in the butterfly. This is an important aspect of keeping the lower portion of the ice sealed when giving up a rebound and effectively sliding laterally on his knees. Instead of rotating his hips and then pushing, he would try to recover to his feet, which brought his knees off the ice and eroded his perfect balance.

There is a lot of insight here, but I think I can sum it up by saying: he’s a solid AHL goaltender, but clearly not an NHL goaltender.  He’s another example of just how much quality minor league goaltending exists–Bryan Murray has never struggled to find solid free agents to fill that need.

July 16, 2012
Categories: Binghamton Senators, Ottawa Senators . . Author: Eye on the Sens . Comments: 2 Comments

-The early news about a new CBA in the NHL has all been par for the course thus far.  I agree with Bob McKenzie that until September all the rhetoric isn’t worth getting excited about.  As I’ve said before I believe a deal will be struck before the season begins, but until then expect to hear endless doom and gloom.

–Tim Murray talked about signing Andre Benoit:

It’s great to have him back. He was a huge part of our organization two years ago, showing he can play at this level, at least short-term, and a huge part of the championship team in Binghamton, as far as on-ice, off-ice leadership, leading by example. To me (he was) probably the best player throughout the playoffs in the league. We want good people, and he is good people. He’s a leader at the AHL level, he’s a quiet, efficient veteran at the NHL level. He’s a pro’s pro. He knows what it takes to get ready for games, he knows what it takes to play at a high level in the AHL and a level that certainly does not hurt us at this level. I think he was a big part of some of our kids that have come up here and had some success from Binghamton. I think Andre should take pride in the fact he had a lot to do with that. We’ve had the conversation that I think our coaching staff and the organization has been very fair in the last three years on who gets games and who makes the team. Draft status and reputation don’t matter as much to us as the type of player and the type of person you are and your production. We know at the very least Andre is a top player at the AHL level. We certainly know he can play games up here, whether that’s on a short-term basis or a long-term basis, we’ll have to see with him. As I said to him, it’s always up to the player. But I expect he’ll come in at great shape, and I expect he’ll come in with the attitude he wants to win a job. We certainly know that he’s not automatically destined for Binghamton, that he’s going to come in here and, knowing him, he’s.

That gives you an idea of how much the Sens think of Benoit, but at the same time I think there’s no chance (barring injury) that he plays in Ottawa with regularity unless there’s a serious injury.

–Luke Richardson gave some of his thoughts going into his first year as a head coach:

We do have a big load of young talent, but you can’t just go with all young talent. You have to make sure you do your homework and get the good (veterans). (Benoit) has a great personality. He has been around. He has some experience in Europe. He has all kinds of experiences. Young guys ask a lot of questions and you want to make sure they grow up right, in the right circumstance. Sometimes you look around and you see some guys with good talent and they’re in and out of the (NHL). If they have the wrong mindset early (in their professional careers), it’s hard to change. All those guys are looking at spots opening (with Ottawa) and they want to keep their dreams alive. For me, one way or another, it’s about having more depth. If Andre is down there (in Binghamton) for the full year or only part of it, he brings great leadership. We want to bring the best out of all of them and be honest with them. If there’s a flaw in their game, we will work on it.

Intentional or not the comments about the lack of leadership last season are a shot at some of the veterans who were with Binghamton this past season (it’s hard to guess who specifically it might be referring too).

–Nichols echoes my thought that “Bryan [Murray] was simply catering to the line of questioning that was directed towards him” when discussing team toughness.

July 15, 2012
Categories: Binghamton Senators, Ottawa Senators . . Author: Eye on the Sens . Comments: Leave a comment

–Kaspars Daugavins‘ arbitration hearing has been set for July 24th.  Ken Warren writes “If the Senators don’t like the ruling, they can simply walk away from the decision, allowing Daugavins to become an unrestricted free agent. If, on the other hand, Daugavins is awarded another two-way deal, paying him different salaries based on whether he plays in the NHL or the AHL, he could opt to play in the KHL with a team in Riga, Latvia, his home country.”  Warren’s impression that the Sens can walk away is contrary to what Nichols wrote yesterday.

–Bryan Murray says he’s going to look for a Chris Neil clone via trade…I wish him the best of luck with that.  Tough players who can also play the game effectively are extremely rare and virtually never available and I don’t see him moving an asset for a one-dimensional heavyweight.  It’s also not clear to me if Murray meant he’d make such a move any time soon, as what does “We have to address that vacancy somehow and we will do that, but (Neil) has still got to play that role for us, hopefully with the assistance of other players” really mean in terms of urgency?  One wonders if the comment was meant to make the Don Brennan’s of the world shut-up about toughness for awhile.

-Speaking of toughness, Ellen Etchingham has a great article about Cam Janssen and similar players that we hear so much about:

Notice how there is no mention whatsoever of helping the team, of protecting stars, of making space for scoring? Nope. It’s all the self-aggrandizing rhetoric of threat. When Janssen talks about his role on the ice, it consists entirely of this: fighting whoever is willing to fight him and head-hunting whoever has the puck. The only person he’s interested in protecting is himself, from people saying mean things to him. Since all the rules restricting fighting came into play, the only way real way erstwhile ‘policemen’ can make themselves useful is by trying to use intimidation tactics, and not the intimidation that comes from fighting, but the intimidation that comes from concussing. So let’s just drop all the crap about ‘protecting stars’ and ‘making space.’ Maybe that’s how it was in the eighties, but that ain’t how it is now.

This is a great point and what does it say about Janssen‘s value that the best he can do in the NHL are back-to-back a two-way deals?

Cam Janssen doesn’t exist to make hockey safer for good players. He exists to make it more dangerous for them. He exists to skate around uselessly until he sees someone get the puck and have to put themselves in a momentarily vulnerable position to make a play and then hurt them. And he’s proud of it. Goons get all the fucking honorifics in hockey. So brave! So tough! So selfless! Bullshit. Where is the fucking honor in that? Where is the courage? What is so selfless and noble about sneaking up behind skill and destroying it? In fact, you know what? If anything, that sounds a bit like cowardice to me, because it’s doing a kind of harm to others that you never have to face yourself. Cam Janssen doesn’t have to worry about somebody leveling him while he’s carrying the puck because in the NHL Cam Janssen couldn’t carry the puck if they let him do it in a fucking Easter basket. Oh sure, he’ll attack people face to face, when he can see punches coming and can hit back. He’ll fight people fairly. But the kind of unfair, non-consensual violence he’s talking about inflicting on others is the sort he doesn’t have to face himself, because he is a terrible hockey player who barely has the puck long enough to be vulnerable with it. He’s not a policeman. He’s a scavenger. If Janssen’s shit actually worked the way he described, the Devils would be playing him fifteen minutes a night on the top line so he could terrify opposing forwards into coughing the puck up for Kovalchuk. Instead, they don’t dress him for half the regular season and not even one playoff game, and when they do let him play, they give him only five of the very softest minutes against the easiest opposition.  Cam Janssen plays the tenderest, juiciest minutes in the game and he still gets roundly crushed in more or less every available metric, including fights lost.  You know what that means? It means Cam Janssen can’t scare anyone out of anything. Maybe opponents are intimidated in some way. Maybe they know exactly what he means to do to them and feel fear. But, evidently, they swallow their fear and make the play anyway, even knowing that he may come in late and high and knock them out.  But usually he doesn’t.  Most of the time, his puck-carrying opponents succeed in their goal and he fails in his, and the only people who are really intimidated are the Devils’ coaching staff, who are patently scared to have Janssen on the ice in any game or situation that actually matters.

This is a fantastic deconstruction of what “tough guys” really are.  They fight staged, irrelevant fights with other players who are just like them (Konopka) and their only success in limited ice time is to blow up a better player.  It’s a predatory role in which they mostly fail.  There’s certainly no metric that illustrates having more tough guys on the roster equals success.

People will tell you that loving tough hockey means loving enforcers. No. Guys like Janssen, Parros, they’re a very recent invention, a product of the last 30 years or so. For most of hockey history, there was no space on rosters for anyone who couldn’t play, and the famous old-time tough guys could carry the puck and throw a hit both. If anything, hockey was tougher when players, star or checker, fought their own battles, rather than downloading the entire team’s violence onto one or two marginal players. Hockey was violent before the designated goon and it will still be violent after. The Boston Bruins, widely considered one of the best and toughest teams of recent years, have not one roster player who registers an average of less than nine minutes of ES time per game, not one who requires the kind of sheltering Janssen does, and not one who gets killed nearly so badly on the shot clock. Call Shawn Thornton a thug if you want, but he can play in the postseason. People will tell you that hockey has always been violence and gore, and that’s true, but it is also true that it’s changed a lot and is changing still. There are things that used to be acceptable- stick violence, bench-clearing brawls- and are now anathema to nearly everyone. Head-hunting is next on the list. Maybe it was cool in the 90s, maybe everyone loved it back then. But we know things now that we didn’t know then, and among the things we’ve learned is this: if we let it, head-hunting will destroy this game. It will cripple our stars and our grinders alike, it will ruin lives and ruin the image of the game. This story doesn’t just end in bloodshed, it ends in dementia and lawsuits. It doesn’t matter if hockey used to be that way for a hundred years. It can’t be that way anymore.

Unfortunately for Etchingham (and everyone else who enjoys the actual game of hockey) the GMs who run the league are older and carry a lot of notions derived from the 70s and 80s when it comes to how they fill out their lineup.  They are also well aware of the inept discipline in the NHL and realise that the once or twice a season their tough guy knocks out another player he’s 1) unlikely to be punished, 2) even if he is, the punishment doesn’t hurt the team.  Change at the NHL level won’t come until there’s a new generation of management and the current generation of hockey writers cheerleading these kinds of players disappear.

July 13, 2012
Categories: Binghamton Senators, Ottawa Senators . . Author: Eye on the Sens . Comments: 4 Comments

-The Chris Neil signing is now official

–Don Brennan echoes himself and Bruce Garrioch (from last week) by writing another article about how the Sens aren’t tough enough.  Unlike in the other columns Brennan actually includes a theory behind why they need to be tougher, “Many feel that Ottawa was able to stage so many third-period comebacks last season partly because opponents knew that if they ran up the score, they’d take a beating from Neil, Konopka or Carkner.”  This is, of course, nonsense, but let me unpack it: both Neil and Carkner were part of the 2010-11 team that didn’t come back on anybody, so unless Konopka by himself was causing comebacks in the games he played, the idea simply doesn’t wash.  There’s really no sense to the sentiment at all, as Carkner barely played last season, Konopka was scratched during the stretch run.  It’s also not an argument based on facts–it’s a “feeling” based on the addition of one player (Konopka).  This argument about toughness has been dynamited over and over again, but oddly has some kind of currency in the blogosphere.  [Travis Yost also points out flaws in the argument.]

–Nichols points out that Bruce Garrioch’s (and others) expectation that the Sens can walk away from Kaspars Daugavins after arbitration are wrong.  What they can do is either buy him out or trade him (the latter is more likely).

-Here’s my profile of Tyler Eckford.

July 12, 2012
Categories: Binghamton Senators, Ottawa Senators . . Author: Eye on the Sens . Comments: 5 Comments

Tyler Eckford (DL, 6’1, DOB 1985, 7-217/04, Capgeek: 600k/175k)
2009-10 AHL Lowell 61-8-23-31 +11 26pim (ppg 0.51)
2009-10 NHL New Jersey 3-0-1-1 Even 4pim (ppg 0.33)
2010-11 AHL Lowell 37-2-10-12 -8 12pim (ppg 0.32)
2010-11 NHL New Jersey 4-0-0-0 -1 0pim (ppg 0.00)
2011-12 AHL Portland 75-10-15-25 -13 37pim (ppg 0.33)

An offensively-minded blueliner whose career year was three seasons ago, Ottawa signed him to a two-year, two-way deal.  Eckford played for Portland last year (Phoenix’s affiliate), his first season away from the Devils organisation.  Portland was one of the more offensively productive teams last year (they were 10th in AHL scoring) and Eckford finished second in defensive scoring and ninth in overall points .  He also had the worst plus/minus on the team among those players who played the bulk of the season (no one played more games for the Pirates than he did).  Hockey’s Future has an embarrassingly positive (and dated) assessment of him, “His added strength on his skates made him more powerful, yet allowed him to maintain his speed and mobility. It has also allowed him to be more effective in his one-on-one play in addition to being more physically aggressive. Eckford, a converted forward-to-defenseman, possesses great puck skills. His superb ability to distribute the puck smartly and effectively has made him a mainstay on the Nanooks power play. Eckford has great on-ice vision and awareness. He has little trouble finding and getting passes to open teammates. He can make some really nice tape-to-tape passes and sets up his teammates remarkably well. He loves to join the play and this season also saw some marked improvement in his transition game.”  Once considered a legitimate NHL prospect (see the link), those lofty goals are now discarded.  His addition will help insulate Patrick Wiercioch and add offensive depth on the blueline and I expect him to play in the top-four.  The only odd thing in Eckford‘s history is that he missed a chunk of the 2010-11 for unexplained family reasons, but clearly whatever those were had no discernible impact on him last season.

July 12, 2012
Categories: Binghamton Senators, Ottawa Senators . . Author: Eye on the Sens . Comments: 1 Comment

-According to multiple reports Ottawa has re-signed Chris Neil to a three-year deal that should see him finish his career with the Sens.  If the salary reported is accurate it’s a good deal for the Sens, although given Neil‘s rough and tumble style I wonder if he’ll play through it all.

–Capgeek provides the numbers for Tyler Eckford: 600k/175k.

-I meant to comment on Nichols article about the Sens for the upcoming season, but I forgot in the excitement of the Tyler Eckford signing.  With that out of the way, Nichols has a lot to say that I’ll do my best to summarize the massive amount of text:

For all the praise that we can bestow upon management for finding good value on the free agent market, it’s not like the organization didn’t try to pursue some expensive, big name talent.  According to reports out of Columbus, Bryan Murray got deeper into Rick Nash trade negotiations than any other team. It is entirely possible however that their level of interest in Nash was partially driven by optics. The same optics that Tim Murray acknowledged in a radio interview – explaining that management has to kick the tires on these sorts of players because they do have to answer to ownership and a demanding fan base. The Senators are willing to move young assets in a package to land a quality talent whose best seasons lie ahead of him and will likely align themselves with the young talent that the organization has done an excellent job of stockpiling. It’s somewhat staggering to see the number of people who have emphasized the need to find another top six forward who can help the organization take that progressive next step towards contention. Over the past few weeks, bloggers and the traditional media types have been spit-balling ideas and concocting unlikely scenarios that could net the organization productive wingers. Nevertheless, even without adding one of these players, the optimism surrounding next year’s Senators team is unmistakable. And it’s for that reason that it pains me to bring up a filthy word like regression during the offseason -that time of year when the standings reset and every NHL fan base should be filled with renewed optimism and hope for how the next season could unfold. With 192 man games lost due to injury during the 2011/12 season, the Senators were tied with the Los Angeles Kings for the fifth lowest total in the league. In looking at the injuries that Ottawa accumulated, they were fortunate enough to have their best players go through the season relatively unscathed. With the career years that Michalek and Karlsson enjoyed while veterans like Kuba, Spezza and Alfredsson flourished, Ottawa was fortunate that their best players were able to stay healthy and productive. One of the most common arguments that I have heard fans allude to when describing why Ottawa can be better next season pertains to Craig Anderson. From October through December, the Senators’ number one goalie sported some ugly [numbers]. From January through April however, Anderson’s [numbers improved]. Interestingly however, his record during these two splits is almost identical – a 17-12-3 record from October-December versus a 16-10-3 record from January through April. In other words, despite Anderson’s poor individual performance, the team still won a similar proportion of the games in which he played because he was bailed out one of the league’s highest scoring offences.

Nichols goes on to say he’s more concerned about the Sens blueline than its forward group, fearing that age will mean a drop in the performance/production of Gonchar and Phillips, that there’s no guarantee Methot will be able to handle top minutes, that Erik Karlsson can repeat his numbers, or that Jared Cowen is ready for the next step.  He’s also concerned that Ottawa’s prospects aren’t yet ready to make up for lost production, but does believe the players lost to free agency and via trade should cut down on the number of penalties the Sens take.

So what do I think?  I largely agree with Nichols.  In many ways things did go the Sens way this past season.  There were minor bumps in the road–Filatov went back to the KHL, Zibanejad and Da Costa weren’t ready for prime time, Binghamton had an abysmal year–but all the NHL veterans rebounded and the Turris trade made a huge impact on the team’s success.  Coming into the 2012-13 season the Sens have the opposite problem as the year before–they have a shortage of puck-moving blueliners which may hurt Paul MacLean’s system.  Conversely, they have an abundance of forward prospects while remaining thin on definitive top-six forwards and have solidified their goaltending.  It’s easy to imagine the Sens slipping back into the pack, if any key player (Karlsson and Spezza in particular) has injury problems or an off year.  Regardless, I think they will remain an entertaining team to watch.

–Darryl Dobbs takes a fantasy look at the Sens and offers the following:

Mika Zibanejad will be a top-six forward in the future, but he also has the skill set to hold his own on a checking line. That should be enough for him to get a long look in camp as the possible third-line center. He made the team last year, but the Sens got off to a slow start and felt it was best for him to put in another year in Sweden. Between Zibanejad and Peter Regin, the third-line center battle in training camp will be interesting. Jakob Silfverberg won every award possible in the Swedish League last season. He captured player of the year as voted by the league and a similar award as voted by his peers. He finished second in league scoring and later led his team (Brynas) to the championship, earning playoff MVP honors. Then he joined the Sens and was tossed right onto their NHL playoff roster for the last two games (pointless in 18:21 of ice time). He’s as ready to slide into a second-line role as an unproven player can be and I recommend drafting him in all keeper league formats. Although Mark Stone acquitted himself well during his one playoff game with Ottawa, in which he notched an assist, he is best off playing a full American League season. Assuming Daniel Alfredsson returns, I really like Ottawa’s top six, though they could run into trouble if Latendresse spends the majority of the season on the IR. I like how the Sens’ goaltenders are set up from No. 1 to No. 3 and any team with Erik Karlsson on the blueline has offensive spunk. The pipeline has above-average promise in terms of fantasy appeal. Fantasy Grade: B (last year was a D+).

I’m not so sure Zibanejad will automatically makes the club, although the possible departure of Kaspars Daugavins would help his cause.

July 11, 2012
Categories: Binghamton Senators, Ottawa Senators . . Author: Eye on the Sens . Comments: Leave a comment