| 29 May 2009
It's fitting that with the NHL Combine going on, that this bit of information comes out. But don't look now, your Ottawa Senators are slowly ascending the list of organizational prospect rankings -- at least according to the staff over at Hockey Futures. Within a few months, the Senators have climbed from their December rank of 27th all the to 18th. Whoo! Good thing it's a Friday, tonight I can go out and celebrate.
Sure, it's nice to hear that some outsiders are noticing the progress being made by some prospects but does any of this matter? No, not really. But with little movement expected by Bryan Murray, the team's success will have to depend on improvement from within the organization.
You can thank Erik Karlsson's stellar year and showing at the World Juniors as the biggest contributing factor for Ottawa's jump up in rank. Also, it shouldn't be ignored that a number of lesser heralded prospects (ie. Peter Regin, Zach Smith, and Ilya Zubov) made significant contributions last year in Bingo. And it's expected that Cody Bass and Brian Lee will play large roles on the club this forthcoming season.
Anyways, here's what they had to say in their Spring 2009 evalation:
Strengths: The Senators have a jewel of a defender in Erik Karlsson. Behind Karlsson is a nice collection of defenders in Brian Lee, Patrick Wiercioch, Kirill Lyamin, and Vitaly Anikeyenko. Cody Bass, Jim O’Brien and Zach Smith project to be strong character forwards for the Senators in the near future. Weaknesses: Though Andre Petersson, Peter Regin and Ilya Zubov project to be top-six forwards, the Senators could still use skilled forward depth to compliment their current squad. The same could be said for their defensive depth. Even with the depth the Senators do have, there are question marks with their Russian prospects and if they will ever make the jump over to North America. Top 5 prospects: 1. Erik Karlsson, D, 2. Brian Lee, D, 3. Brian Elliott, G, 4. Ilya Zubov, C, 5. Peter Regin, C. Key losses to graduation: Jesse Winchester.
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