Friday, February 29, 2008

Where's the panic button!!!!

A new bench boss typically does not signal an immediate string of successes, but rather it signals changes. Quite often these changes are slow paced, for better or worse, and they take time to come to fruition.

Bryan Murray took over for the Sens to face the Flyers on Thursday night’s game and although there were significant improvements the team did not win. There was more grit, emotion and hitting in the game, but overall, the game was a trial of errors and struck with bad luck.

Top flight centre Jason Spezza, while celebrating his goal, was confronted by Flyers goalie (Biron) with a cross check that Spezza did not appreciate. Quickly the referees did their jobs and got in there to break up the scrum, but several Flyers took exception to Spezza asking what Biron’s problem was and dragged him out by his collar. Spezza’s emotional response of butt-ending a player got him ejected from the game and it knocked the wind out of the sails of the Ottawa Senators. They lost the 1 goal lead shortly and would not get back into it. To make matters worse, defensive specialist Anton Volchenkov had been suffering the effects of the flu and ended up getting winded. He ended up leaving the game and did not return.

A shining moment came when Mike Fisher took exception to Steve Downie, who all Sens fans remembers well for laying a dirty hit on McAmmond that side lined him for quite some time, and Fisher absolutely cleaned Downie’s clock. It is unfortunate that despite the efforts, Biron was the answer for the Flyers and the Senators were held at bay.

This morning the media and the Internet were both abuzz with the fair-weather attitudes of a tired fan base. Many questioned the coaching change immediately, some thought that Gerber being named as our start on Saturday was bad, and some even said that the team was hopelessly adrift. This last bit is for you ...

Murray was the coach last year and this year is almost done. He has to get back in the saddle and feel out the attitude of the team while attempting to challenge the players to be their best. Keep in mind that all year long he has had a coach who was the buddy to the team and rarely, if ever, played the bad guy. Paddock quite often got away with speaking his mind with the media because the players didn’t look up at him, but looked at him equally ... What the Ottawa Senators require is a basics game with a coach who tells them when they did good or bad. There are seventeen games in the schedule left and though the protective cover is off it is not time to press the panic button. Give Murray a couple of games and we will forget any of this ever happened.

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

On Monday we saw our team host the Maple Leafs ... the laughing stock of the NHL. With the trade deadline looming I expected both teams to play like pros because jobs were literally on the line for each club. The Senators were coming off one of the worst months for any hockey fan to watch. Close games are nice, but not when they have to go to extra time to resolve them because the supposedly hottest team in the NHL can't collectively stop a goal against. When Monday rolled around it looked like Emery had passion to play again, but it could have also been the bolstering of trade interest that kept him between the pipes; either way, he was keeping the guys into it until they faced Toronto.

Losing so decisively was not because the Leafs were simply stellar. Don’t get me wrong, they were good, but they were no better than they have been all season long (exception being Tucker ... I may hate the guy as a player, but he played a great game). Last year I watched a spot when Alfie called out Emery at practice, asking him if he could stop a beach ball or not and I was reminded of that again on Monday. Not only did Emery drop the ball, but the team in front of him simply couldn’t do anything to battle back against one of the worst teams in the league.

Tuesday simply could not come fast enough and I am sure the players thought the same thing as they rolled into Bean-Town. I sat watching the trade deadline come, acquire LaPointe, laughed at the Penguins who blew away some future life and shook my head as Huet hit the Caps for a pick; it was an odd day of silliness, but I thought the Senators were free and clear. Again the Senators allowed another shutout and with the trade deadline passed there as only one thing the team could do ... fire John Paddock.

Wednesday afternoon the fans of the franchise, on the par, got their wish and Paddock (along with Low) was fired. Each have been rumoured to have offers within the organization, but I don’t know the validity or likelihood of those. What I do know is that I have been somewhat vocal, but patient with how this team has been split at the seams. So, with Murray back as the couch, what does this mean? I have made a short list of changes we’ll see pretty quickly based off of past successes.

- No more two or three men below the goal line pretending to be Gretzky
- No more cycling the puck around away from high percentage scoring zones
- No more open shots at the net without traffic going to get some garbage
- No more soft plays with no responsibility and accountability of each player on the ice
- No more quiet bench boss who’s too afraid of his shadow to actually yell at a player
- An immediate sense of urgency as the players are now facing the reality that they may lose their playoff contention if they do not turn it around now
- No more of Jason Spezza’s drop passing to the slot, no more Meszaros’ wimpy hands up checks, no more Alfredsson’s single handed passion, no more goaltending cry baby antics from either one of them and most importantly, no more skating around with the puck, standing still without it and not actually hitting someone ...

Welcome back to the era of Murray. The basics of hockey, hardnosed, fast paced, tight checking kind of game where you make a mistake you get told it. With Murray at the helm this Titanic may actually avoid that iceberg and turn itself back to home ... the same home as the Stanley Cup. Lapointe said it best this morning in a spot with TGOR (http://www.team1200.com/tgor/index.asp) that the team needs to have a common goal in mind and once everyone is on the same page the team will succeed.

So welcome to my first blog post about the Senators. During the regular season and playoffs I will do a post-game insight into how I thought the game went. This means I may be dead wrong, but that's OK. I am a fan ... I get some liberties of being dumb now and again. When we hit the post-season I will only post the big ticket things that happen until the training camp.

Cheers,

Big Will