Seven of Eight into the Break

Unlike my fellow bloggers, I decided not to go on the Bell tag line. Not to say it is a bad line, but rather that is overplayed. Yes, Bell’s goal was great, but it was also lucky and comes off of him being scratched for a few games prior to last night.

ALEXANDER THE GREAT AND PIERRE

I did not want to lead off my first little blurb about Bell, but the goal was lucky and decent. However, I wanted to avoid the topic of Pierre McGuire from TSN and Alexander Ovechkin like the plague. Sadly with all the talk about it I simply cannot.

McGuire is, by all accounts and somewhat rightfully so, enamoured with #8; I can’t blame him. He is the most exciting and electrifying player to lace them up since Gretzky ... at least to Pierre. He is star struck by him and it showed last night as he kept riding the wagon around his reporting on the game even to the point of asking him if he was OK after a high stick clipped his visor.

That said ... people need to understand that McGuire is being paid to say the favourable talk. He works for TSN because he does his job well and right now the Senators are not in favour with the sports world regardless of getting seven of possible eight points in the past four games. The Senators may not have started a comeback by most, but they certainly enter the All-Star break on a great starting point. A huge part of that is team play and secondary scoring.

GROUPTHINK

For once it is nice to sit here on my laptop and write about the positives of the team play. Sure, it was not as fantastic as it could be and there were some things to keep working on, but again it was a great step toward the strong play Hartsburg’s system preaches. The more the media hounds the Senators for stalling and falling flat the more the players appear to come back with a bit of a vengeance to play better. This begins with the coaching staff ... and Hartsburg commented on the lag in the standings well before beating Washington with just one word: consistency.

VERMETTE VS HEATLEY

Last night Heatley put on a shooting clinic to get two goals and Bell put the nail in the coffin, but for me it was all about Antoine Vermette. An assist on all three goals when just a few weeks ago we wanted to see him traded away for a bag of pucks. If you ask me, Vermette was more key to last night’s game than Heatley because he was hounding down the puck and making the plays to get the puck to the right spots for a second pass or a shot on goal.

PAT BURNS

TSN is reporting that Pat Burns, former New Jersey Devils Stanley cup winning coach, has now going through his third bout with cancer. My heartfelt thoughts go to Burns and his family and I wish him a speedy recovery.

W.