–Daniel Alfredsson talked about his possibly retirement, “Do I have what it takes to play at a high level in this league? To go through the rigourous workouts in the summer and play an 82-game schedule? All those questions I’ve got to ask myself and then be honest with myself. From there, an answer will come.” He had an interesting answer when asked if he thought the Sens were becoming an elite team, “I don’t know. I think we’ve taken a lot of good steps and we’ve had a lot of guys that have really improved their play and experience. There’s a lot of potential. We’ve done a good job of making sure that there is progress. The challenge is to repeat this coming back next year and be good again.”
–Ian Mendes Tweets that Peter Regin is healthy again and wants to be re-signed by the Senators. I like Regin but with his injury history have doubts that he’ll be retained (although the lack of push from Binghamton’s forwards and the failure of Bobby Butler may leave room for him). If the Sens do let him go don’t be surprised if he joins his best friend Frans Nielsen with the Islanders.
-Mendes also reports that Winchester suffered a concussion in game four and has no idea how it happened–getting concussed from incidental contact is a bad sign and maybe Winchester (who plays a robust game) needs to think about stepping away from hockey.
–Bruce Garrioch speculates that Bobby Butler‘s days are numbered and that Sergei Gonchar might be traded (the latter is hard to imagine unless Filip Kuba is retained).
-I’ve mentioned before that Bryan Murray’s trade deadline track record is poor and the Matt Gilroy addition is another example of it. The UFA added nothing to the lineup.
–Tim Murray was on The Team 1200 and unfortunately wasn’t asked about prospects or free agents. He did say, however, that he believes David Dziurzynski has the potential to play in Ottawa’s bottom six as a power forward in the future.
–Shane Prince and the Ottawa 67s have been eliminated from the playoffs, meaning the only Sens prospects remaining in the CHL playoffs are Jean-Gabriel Pageau and Jakub Culek.
-As has been widely reported a number of Sens prospects and players are going to play in the IIHF World Championships, including Kaspars Daugavins (Latvia), Jakob Silfverberg (Sweden), and Stephane Da Costa (France).
-Here are my predictions for the second round of the playoffs.
–Don Brennan thinks the 2010-11 Sens roster with Paul MacLean as the coach would be in the second round of this year’s playoffs. It’s simply an impossible debate to have–the circumstances to create that scenario could not happen, so why speculate? He’s also still arguing that Butler or Daugavins should have played instead of Stone and Silfverberg–its utter nonsense, but Brennan likes to put the blame somewhere and it has to be on players who aren’t his favourites. This kind of stunted reporting is why he’s so disliked by the fan base.
eyeonthesens 