Had you told me at the beginning of the year that by the quarter mark of the NHL season that Ottawa would receive such little production from the players that it were being so heavily being relied upon to provide secondary scoring, I would have assumed that the team would be suffering for it in the standings.
- Daniel Alfredsson: 5 goals and 10 points in 18 GP
- Bobby Butler: 2 goals and 6 points in 15 GP
- Peter Regin: 1 goal and 3 points in 5 GP
- Nikita Filatov: 1 point in 8 GP
- Stephane Da Costa: 3 goals and 5 points in 22 GP
Yet, with a record of 12-10-2, Ottawa’s been better than many could have predicted. (Mind you, this record is somewhat inflated by the team’s 3-1 record in shootouts.)
So what accounts for the Senators’ success?
Well, we can rule out the fucking goaltending…
In all seriousness though, I keep waiting for Milan Michalek to cool off from his torrid start and what I thought was an unsustainable 20.0% shooting percentage (almost double his career norm of 12.5%) but that hasn’t happened yet. Between his and Spezza’s 23 goals, these two players have combined for 31.94% of the team’s goal scoring.
Fortunately, this kind of production has been supplemented by the play of guys like Zack Smith (6 goals, 13 points), Colin Greening (6 goals, 11 points), Nick Foligno (7 goals, 14 points), Chris Neil (3 goals, 7 points) and this season’s revelation, Kaspars Daugavins (3 goals, 6 points). no comments
In their latest The Business of Hockey: NHL Team Values, Forbes reports that:
The average hockey team is now worth $240 million, 5% more than last year due to a 5% increase in revenue during the 2010-11 season, to an average of $103 million per team. The sport’s popularity on television (NBC’s broadcast of the Bridgestone NHL Winter Classic was the most-viewed NHL regular season game in 36 years with an average of 4.5 million watching during prime time) and online (average monthly unique visitors to NHL.com plus all 30 NHL team Web sites has increased to a record 22 million) is up, as is the revenue from those platforms.
The report goes on to state that the profit margins for the league's operating income is 21-percent lower than it was last season; pinning much of the blame on the league's salary cap that in their words is "set too high for some teams to be profitable."According to their numbers, the Ottawa Senators' current franchise value is $201 million - up 3-percent from last season and more than double the price that Eugene Melnyk paid when he bought the team for $92 million in 2003. This $201 million value ranks the Senators as having the seventeenth highest value in the NHL. no comments
Thanks to the news that the struggling Anaheim Ducks are willing to listen to offers on Bobby Ryan, fans for the other 29 respective NHL franchises are fawning over the possibility that the right winger could headed to their favorite team.
In some hockey circles, many are already suggesting that Brian Burke, the former GM in Anaheim and the man whose scouting staff drafted Ryan, could be the most aggressive in the pursuit of the skilled winger. Listening to esteemed journalist Stephen Brunt ask Nick Kypreos whether “he’d willingly give up (Luke) Schenn and (Nazim) Kadri for Ryan”, might have been the funniest thing that I had heard today until @steffeG trumped it by tweeting, “Schenn will get you that whole line.”
For those of you wondering whether the Senators are interested, here's a little nugget of information from The Fourth Period:
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Reader Michael S. is the author of the Malkin to the Kings blog. After reading the The Bizarro World Senators: Looking at 20 Seasons Worth of Ottawa Senators 'What Ifs...?" post, he was inspired to follow up the question of: 'What if the NCC gave Bruce Firestone and Terrace Investments permission to build a NHL arena on downtown property? ', with this post that wonders when it's prudent for ownership to start considering alternative locations for a future NHL arena.
Below is his post in its originality. Feel free to leave some comments and start the discussion.
Original-Six arenas such as Maple Leaf Gardens, the Montreal Forum and Boston Garden had an operating lifetime of 70-80 years. Early expansion arenas such as The Igloo, Winnipeg Arena, and Le Colisee had an operating lifetime of 50 years. The operating lifetime of two of the three arenas ending with the NHL teams leaving, and with The Igloo nearly facing the same fate. Pacific Coliseum and The Cap had operating lifetimes in the range of 25-35 years. Northlands Coliseum was built in 1974 and is now obsolete. Calgary’s SaddleDome is getting pretty long in the tooth.
All this to say the following: Scotiabank Place is now middle-aged at 15. Bruce’s what-if is not just a coulda-woulda-shoulda. Given the snail’s pace of change in Ottawa, the time to start considering its replacement is now, not 15 years from now. It’s also best to do so without involving the NCC.
While John Martin may have a pipe dream up an orifice regarding developing a football stadium on city-owned land at Bayview Yards, given the freight-train of money and political power behind the Lansdowne development (which, after football fails again, means The Glebe wins again: sorry folks) it does point to an interesting scenario brought up by Bruce Firestone. Bayview has everything needed for an urban hockey arena, including a new light rail system opening in 2017 that will move up to 25000 people per direction per hour, and has a footprint larger than Madison Square Garden (in fact, larger than MSG + Penn Station combined!).
A larger Scotiabank Place superimposed on Bayview Yards. It fits!
A bonus is that the core parcel of land is owned by the City of Ottawa, not by the NCC, with privately owned land, the ugly City Centre, nearby.
Let’s approximately halve that for comfortable ingress or egress, not rush hour crush. It still means that an entire arena population of 22,500 (assuming a larger arena, as that would be part of the point) can be assembled or discharged using public transit in about 45 minutes, which is faster than what happens today at Scotiabank Place, primarily using cars. It also means that such a location becomes a much better venue for other bookings, especially urban-sensitive bookings such as conventions and trade shows, making such an arena potentially viable even without an NHL team.
Scotiabank place likely has 15 years left in it. By then team will need a new arena to suit new needs (transportation, demographics, etc.). Winnipeg, a city with a metropolitan population half the size of Ottawa (and that’s not even including the migrants who come to see the Habs and Leafs), built a stadium in an urban area largely with private money, in an arena that doesn’t need the Jets, and the Jets didn’t need an arena to be built at public cost (cough Quebec cough Edmonton) because the arena was already viable before the Jets. The team is more viable because of this (viable even with a 15,100 seat arena), and the ownership is viable even if the Jets falter (see success of MTS Centre independent of the Jets).
If the Senators are to stay in Ottawa for the long term, it will be because the viability of the team will be independent of the arena it plays in, and vice versa, the resulting symbiosis being two equally healthy organizations that stand well on their own and stand even better together. This is what works, from marriages on up.
As it stands now, the Senators need Scotiabank Place and Scotiabank Place needs the Senators. That is codependent. It is not healthy for the team or for the city it plays in.
Time for The Huge Euge to step up and start thinking longer term.
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Yesterday afternoon, a pissed off Bryan Murray unleashed a number of bombs directed towards the Pittsburgh Penguins and the manner in which forward Nick Foligno was treated at the front of the opposition's net.
From the Ottawa Citizen:
"The rules are very clear now and if you fall into a goaltender and touch a goaltender, an elbow to the head and a butt end to the head is fair game," Murray said, referring to the hits Nick Foligno received following a scuffle with Penguins goaltender Marc-André Fleury. Crosby threw the elbow.
"Dan Bylsma said that's OK for them. Sidney said Nick Foligno is that kind of player. I wish (Foligno) was that kind of player."
Bryan Murray wishes Foligno was a dirty player. I wish Nick Foligno was actually the top six player. Weird.Here's the event itself that has Murray so steamed...
As much as I would love to shit on Crosby for being a hypocrite and landing a cheap blow on Foligno's head, a large part of me is envious because the Penguins' best player and someone who recently came back from injury and took it upon himself to protect his goaltender and settle the score.
Mother of All What Ifs
In a follow up to our Friday post that looked at some of the greatest 'What if...?" moments in Senators history, former Senators owner Bruce Firestone has published what he says is the "mother-of-all" what ifs.
From his EQ Journal,
What if Prof Bruce had accepted Ogden’s Doug Logan’s offer to relocate the franchise to Anaheim? Doug and I were on the witness stand together in the summer of 1991.
We were being cross examined by the ‘Perry Mason’ of OMB lawyers, Tom Lederer, who was a Toronto-based gunslinger hired by NDP Bob Rae’s government to derail the Sens by opposing the construction of the Palladium in Kanata. Their vain hope was that somehow, by nixing the Sens, the franchise would miraculously reappear in Hamilton’s Copps Colisuem where the NDP had more political support than Ottawa.
On the 2nd day, Doug got PO’d by the line of questioning being taken by Lederer and during one break offered on behalf of then Ogden President and CEO, Richard Ablon, a $20 million leasing inducement to relocate the Sens to Orange County to play in the then nearing completion arena there.
They had no prime tenant there and viewed the ridiculous reaction to the franchise award in Ontario (Hall of Famer Phil Esposito who was fronting the Tampa Bay Lightning franchise told me about the congratulatory call he received from the Governor of the State of Florida for bringing a NHL team there while we got a lawsuit from our Premier) as reason enough to blow town.
I said: “Doug, we didn’t bring back the Senators to play in California” and the hearing, which we eventually won, endured for 13 weeks.
A year and a half later, I was on the NHL’s expansion committee when the CEO of the Disney Company, Mike Eisner, came in the room wearing a Goofy hockey jersey– the NHL’s Mighty Ducks of Anaheim (now just the Ducks) were born a short while later…
Mark Stone Named to Canadian National Junior Team Selection Camp
Hockey Canada has released its World Junior Championship selection camp roster. Amongst the list of invitees is Mark Stone, the Senators' sixth round selection from 2010. Conspicuously absent from the list of names is 2011 first rounder Matt Puempel.
Senators Practice Notes
- According to Allen Panzeri, Nikita Filatov's skating alongside Jason Spezza and Colin Greening. Considering that last night was his fourth game in four nights, it's nice to see that Filatov's accompanying the team on their current road trip and being given a few games to acclimate himself. Although I thought he skated well last night, I'm sure like many of you, I wished that Filatov was a little more aggressive on that 2-on-1. I still stand by my statement that he looks like more of a playmaker than a sniper and on that 2-on-1, he still looked like a pass-first player.
- For what it's worth, Foligno is once again centering Milan Michalek and Daniel Alfredsson on Ottawa's second line. While not particularly impressive last night, Foligno handled himself quite well in the faceoff dot going 5 for 8.
- Chris Neil has resumed skating but is sporting the no-contact grey jersey.
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According to the Ottawa Senators' website, Filly does recalls.
The Ottawa Senators today recalled forward Nikita Filatov and reassigned forward Stéphane Da Costa to the club’s American Hockey League affiliate, the Binghamton Senators.
Assuming that Filatov plays this afternoon against the Carolina Hurricanes, he'll be playing in his fourth game in four days so it will be interesting to see how Paul MacLean utilizes him this afternoon.In the four games that Filatov played in his previous recall, his ice-time progressively got better and he started to see more time on the power play.
- October 30th vs Toronto: 5 minutes 16 seconds TOI; 2 hits; and 1 shot.
- November 1st vs Boston: 6 minutes and 34 seconds TOI; 22 seconds of PP TOI; nothing but zeroes on his game log.
- November 4th vs Montreal: 7 minutes and 18 seconds TOI; 1 hit; and 1 shot on goal.
- November 5th vs Buffalo: 8 minutes and 51 seconds TOI; 45 seconds of PP TOI; 1 hit; and 1 shot on goal.
Probably not for today's game. As Twitter follower @BruceCadieux pointed out, "Filly may be too tired to do rebounds."
Fair point. Mind you, this is the same player who ended last night's game with a 10-minute major penalty for abuse of an official. So maybe there's fight left in him yet. However, considering the circumstances, it is reasonable to figure that at least for the interim, MacLean will keep his recent stretch of games and start a fatigued Filatov on the fourth line and use him sparingly on the power play.
With 3 goals and 6 points in his last four AHL games, it's too bad that the timing of today's game follows a portion of Binghamton's schedule that saw them play three times in three nights because Filatov's been tearing it up of late. I'm sure many of us are hoping that at some point, he'll receive an extended opportunity to play more minutes alongside some better offensive players during this recall.
On the flip side of the coin, to make room for Filatov's recall, the Senators did send down a struggling Stephane Da Costa. While displaying the odd flash of Adam Oates-like brilliance, Da Costa had gone pointless in six consecutive games and scored only one goal in the month of November. Sending Da Costa down isn't the end of the world. For a player who is young and who obviously looks like he has the skills to contribute in the NHL, this is just a minor setback for him. In Binghamton, he'll be afforded the minutes and opportunity that any young prospect needs to develop. no comments
Thanks to the number of days that were sandwiched between this past Sunday’s game against the Vancouver Canucks and tonight’s affair against Sidney Crosby and those other 22 stiffs that comprise the Pittsburgh Penguins, like Alex Burrows opening up the bench door in an attempt to embarrass or harm Jesse Winchester, I’m able to get away with things. In this case, I’m going break away from the norm and focus on writing something other than: the current state of the roster; potential trade scenarios; lineup combinations; player ice-times; Mikhail Grigorenko topping ISS’ 2012 draft rankings; Nikita Filatov putting up six points in his last two games in Bingo; or piecemealing together a post based loosely off tweets of Senators beat writers.
So here it is, hopefully the first of a handful of posts that will bridge the Sens 20 motif and spur some discussion and debate.
Here is my list of the 20 Biggest ‘What If’ Scenarios in Senators history…
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