Whenever a trade in the NHL occurs, the immediate reaction dictates that we need to determine and declare an immediate winner or loser to the deal. So with news late last night that the San Jose Sharks and Minnesota Wild had consummated a rare one-for-one trade that sent Martin Havlat in exchange for Dany Heatley, who better to break down a deal involving two former Senators players than The 6th Sens?
From a Senators perspective, aside from perhaps Bill Muckalt’s inability to dent the twine, few things provide greater pleasure than being able to heap excrement on Dany Heatley’s reputation. Like Bruce Garrioch tweets mocking Brian Elliott, nothing comes easier for this site. For us, it’s the equivalent to using a Google news search to find some Senators links; copy and paste said links into an article; and lazily publish it to drive some website traffic.
So without further ado, let’s break this shit down:
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With Eugene Melnyk as an owner, you could never be sure that the organization could resist the temptation to become players on the open market.
It was six minutes past noon on July 1st when our worst fears could be put to rest and fans could breathe a collective sigh of relief. There would be no Gonchar-like surprise signing this year. Nor would any short-term solutions be brought in for that matter to augment an inherently flawed core that ownership and management had grown loyal to.
Often when I look back in retrospect as to what has transpired over the past few seasons, I can’t help but wonder what could have happened had the Euge bought the Ottawa Senators when the team wasn’t considered a perennial Stanley Cup contender. Would he have been as inclined to keep the team together or push management to augment this core by making forays into deadline deals or the NHL free agency period?
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According to the Ottawa Sun's Bruce Garrioch, it appears as though Ryan Shannon's days with the organization are over. Via his Twitter (@SunGarrioch), Bruce posted these messages:
Senators winger Ryan Shannon will go to UFA market. Wants to see what's out there. Door not closed with Ottawa by any means.
And...
Ryan Shannon's decision to test the market makes sense. He can see what's out there and perhaps get longer term. Strong finish.
It's understandable for Shannon to test the market. In all likelihood, the Senators organization probably didn't offer Shannon the kind of term and job security that otherwise might be available on the open market. In such a lacklustre free agent class, maybe there's an organization out there that will be willing to give Shannon an opportunity to play with skilled players.
But hopefully, it won't be here in Ottawa.
Don't get me wrong. Shannon's a well-liked player who has been a good soldier for the team but from the Senators perspective, it's a savvy hockey ops decision not to extend Shannon a multi-year contract. Simply put, he's a classic stopgap player. Not gritty enough to be suited to one of the team's third or fourth lines but not skilled enough to play regular top six minutes. And with the influx of projected third and fourth liner prospects who are on the cusp of being NHL-ready, it simply does not make sense to block their path(s) by bringing Shannon back into the fold in some fourth liner/PK specialist capacity.
Conversely, there are also better in-house alternatives than Shannon for what appears to be a vacant Ottawa Senators second line center position. As The Hockey News pointed out in their draft analysis, Mika Zibanejad could play right away on the second line next to fellow Swede Daniel Alfredsson. Or, he'll return to Sweden for one more campaign. Armed with an opt-out clause in his Swedish Elite League contract with Djurgarden, the Senators may have already determined that they may be willing to roll the dice on Mika being ready for the start of training camp.
Peter Regin might be another in-house candidate for that role as well. Following the Mike Fisher trade, Regin was the first to benefit from the increase in ice-time. While he saw some immediate (albeit, modest) success, he's already under contract and could afford the organization to be patient with Zibanejad.
There's also the possibility that like Shannon, the organization could test the free agent waters to see if there are any veteran centers who could fill this role. If someone like Tim Connolly would be willing to take a pay cut and a one-year deal, it might be worth it for the Senators to sign a player like this so long as there was the intent to flip this player for future assets at the NHL trade deadline.Anyways, tomorrow might lack the fireworks that we've seen in the recent years that followed the NHL work stoppage but that doesn't preclude from being interesting. Enjoy the Canada Day weekend. Enjoy the festivities and be sure to throw your UFA predictions for Ottawa in the comment thread. no comments
When Dany Heatley arrived he was a blossoming star in the NHL with ample emotional baggage as a result of an off-ice incident resulting in the death of his friend and teammate.
We greeted him with open arms and were willing to give him a fresh start despite the horrific incident which pales in comparison to a small ruffling of feathers between a coach and player.
How is Filatov's arrival any different than Dany's?
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I got a back up plan to the back up plan to back up my back up plan. ~ Big Boi
I'm not going to lie - when Don Brennan casually brought up the possibility that the Senators could consider bringing Patrick Lalime back into the fold as Craig Anderson's understudy next season, I died a little bit on the inside. That's not to disrespect anything that Lalime did in the five years that he played for the organization. Blessed by a strong Senators squad and by playing in the the pre-lockout era that turned a blind eye to obstruction, Lalime's numbers were pretty exceptional.
| Year | Team | GP | GS | MIN | W | L | T | OTL | EGA | GA | GAA | SA | SV | SV% | SO | |
| 1999-00 | OTT | 38 | 32 | 2038 | 19 | 14 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 79 | 2.33 | 834 | 755 | .905 | 3 | |
| 2000-01 | OTT | 60 | 60 | 3607 | 36 | 19 | 5 | 0 | 3 | 141 | 2.35 | 1640 | 1499 | .914 | 7 | |
| 2001-02 | OTT | 61 | 59 | 3583 | 27 | 24 | 8 | 0 | 1 | 148 | 2.48 | 1521 | 1373 | .903 | 7 | |
| 2002-03 | OTT | 67 | 65 | 3943 | 39 | 20 | 7 | 0 | 1 | 142 | 2.16 | 1591 | 1449 | .911 | 8 | |
| 2003-04 | OTT | 57 | 55 | 3324 | 25 | 23 | 7 | 0 | 3 | 127 | 2.29 | 1334 | 1207 | .905 | 5 |
Of course if he were to return, it wouldn't bode well that every time an opposing player would streak down the left side near the top of the faceoff circle, fans would grimmace, squeal and/or wrench their bodies away from the action... but that's beside the point.
Thanks to the influence that Jonah Keri's The Extra 2% has had on me, my biggest contention with signing a Lalime or a veteran retread like him, is strictly because I would prefer to see a rebuilding Senators team roll the dice and invest in a player who could potentially step into a starter's role if injury happens to beset Craig Anderson (this is me, knocking on wood) and afford Robin Lehner the opportunity to play the lion's share of games with Binghamton.
In examining the unrestricted free agents who are out there, I was looking for goaltenders who exhibit some blend of these characteristics:
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Now I'm not one to play FJM, and lord knows Tim and Nichols are more skilled in this method. But I can't help but speak my two cents on this (now archived) Erin Nicks piece from Tuesday night on the subject of Filatov and fan expectations.
Specifically this paragraph:
"But all it took was a simple mention of "top-six", and some Sens fans seemed ready to, yet again, put all their eggs in one basket. A quick tweet by yours truly suggesting that we not pencil in Filatov for 40 goals alongside Spezza, lead to a "Chill the f*ck out! They've got this!" retort from an Ottawa honk. (Aside: We were talking about trades or getting our buddies in and out of the Beer Store with a case while using fake ID? "They've got this"? Seriously?)"
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Since John Muckler was fired from the Senators organization in the summer of 2007, it's taken some time before we could finally say as fans that Bryan Murray had finally put his stamp on the team.
As easy as it's been to dump on Johnny Mucks for drafting poorly – going against convention to draft a high proportion of Russian players in light of the possibility and emergence of the KHL - and frivolously mortgaging the future with reckless abandon, I'll give credit where it's due. For all of the praise that's been bestowed to the current regime’s drafting and for the failures of prospects like Nikulin and Zubov, we’ve actually witnessed somewhat of a Muckler draft pick renaissance over the past two seasons. Albeit, the impacts of players like Regin, Greening, Elliott, Wick and Condra has been modest but at least it looks like each, with the exception of Elliott, will be contributors at the NHL-level.
Now that the 2011 NHL Entry Draft experience is behind us, Tim and I had the opportunity to evaluate and discuss the weekend's occurrences with Neate Sager from Yahoo! Sports'Buzzing the Net - a blog on junior hockey. If you haven't yet, I highly recommend bookmarking Neate's blog or adding it to your RSS feed. I also encourage you to add Neate to Twitter as well (@neatebuzzthenet) .
As always, you can subscribe/download/stream the episode or entire catalogue of episodes from Itunes. Or you can download the file by right-clicking and saving this file. Or you can simply stream the episode below. We hope you enjoy it. If you have any questions or comments about the podcast, please leave us some feedback in the comment thread below. Thanks for listening, we hope you enjoy the show.
Tracklist for the podcast: I Only Date Models Tunnels; and The Clash I'm So Bored With the USA.no comments
The National Post continues to turn out poorly analyzed and in this case, contradictory articles faster than my stomach can churn at the thought of reading another one of their amateur and compost worthy articles. This time the article comes from Michael Traikos with analysis from Mark Seidel who is the director of scouting for North American Central Scouting. The article begins with a rehash of the likelihood of few of these players ever playing in the NHL and some more empty words about things we already know. Now Michael hands it off to Seidel who "took a stab at reviewing how each of the seven Canadian teams did on the draft floor." A stab in the dark may have been more appropriate. I can see how this conversation unfolded.
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Much like an ill advised Glen Sather free agent signing or the arrival of Canada Day on July 1st, the “Ottawa should acquire Zenon Kenopka” recommendation from the Ottawa Sun has come around like summer clockwork.
Below is an article written in its entirety by Tim Baines and as is the norm, my comments are in bold...
Before Bryan Murray decides to go on a Canada Day spending spree, he’d better pull out a shortlist of recent Senators free-agent signings and wash down a couple of Tylenols with water.
Before Tim Baines decides to write an editorial piece criticizing the Ottawa Senators free agent signings, he’d better pull out a philosophy book and recognize that the organization has moved from its cut-and-paste ideology predicated on the signing of past-their-prime free agents to augment a complacent core. A core, that management felt was owed an opportunity to return to prominence based on the team’s 2007 Stanley Cup Finals appearance. Obviously that didn’t happen and we’re now in the midst of a rebuilding phase that management acknowledged will not culminate in the signing of UFAs from FA classes that make Sean Couturier’s max rep bench press result look strong by comparison.
At this juncture of the article, I’m already torn: on one hand, I already know where this is leading; on the other, I know if I stop now, I won’t be able to poke fun at the rest of it. Shall we continue?
