GAME DAY: Ottawa Senators @ Boston Bruins - 7:00pm ET - TUE. Jan. 11 2011

I think we're going to start seeing guys like Winchester, Foligno, Z. Smith, O'Brien and who ever else we call up getting a lot more ice time and a lot more responsibility. It's about time too. Our top line guys aren't getting it done and it's time for a bit of a changing of the guard.

tim1_2 wrote:I agree with bringing up Locke. O'Brien would've been my 2nd or 3rd choice. Locke has earned a legit shot...he needs a good 10-15 games playing on the 1st or 2nd line. I don't think O'Brien was the right guy to bring up in this situation.

I guess Locke has to clear waivers though if we wanted to send him back down? Still, would've called him up for the long-haul.

Maybe they're waiting until they've cleared out some contracts and then they can keep Locke up and in the lineup for the duration of the season?

tim1_2 wrote:I agree with bringing up Locke. O'Brien would've been my 2nd or 3rd choice. Locke has earned a legit shot...he needs a good 10-15 games playing on the 1st or 2nd line. I don't think O'Brien was the right guy to bring up in this situation.

I guess Locke has to clear waivers though if we wanted to send him back down? Still, would've called him up for the long-haul.

Hard to say if that's fair or not though. The B-Sens are climbing into what *could* be a playoff spot - and in the long run, we need them to make it so guys like Butler, Condra, O'Brien, Lehner, can get some playoff experience in the pros. If you take Locke off that team, they're dead.

True SpezD but this is about what's best for the NHL club and it always has been. It sucks for Bingo and their fans but that's how it is for minor league affiliates.

I do agree that they need Bingo to be successful to start building a culture of winning and to give the prospects experience though.

SpezDispenser wrote:Hard to say if that's fair or not though. The B-Sens are climbing into what *could* be a playoff spot - and in the long run, we need them to make it so guys like Butler, Condra, O'Brien, Lehner, can get some playoff experience in the pros. If you take Locke off that team, they're dead.

That's a fair comment. Better to have team success in Bingo, or some experience in the NHL? Hard to say.

SpezDispenser wrote:

tim1_2 wrote:I agree with bringing up Locke. O'Brien would've been my 2nd or 3rd choice. Locke has earned a legit shot...he needs a good 10-15 games playing on the 1st or 2nd line. I don't think O'Brien was the right guy to bring up in this situation.

I guess Locke has to clear waivers though if we wanted to send him back down? Still, would've called him up for the long-haul.

Hard to say if that's fair or not though. The B-Sens are climbing into what *could* be a playoff spot - and in the long run, we need them to make it so guys like Butler, Condra, O'Brien, Lehner, can get some playoff experience in the pros. If you take Locke off that team, they're dead.

Locke was paid big AHL dough to help make our "real" prospects better. Nothing more. Sucks that he's not NHL calibre but I'd love to be in his shoes anyway.

SpezDispenser wrote:

tim1_2 wrote:Hopefully Boston is drained after their ridiculous comeback last night and we can take advantage of that.

The bad news is we'll be facing Timmy T, Sens killer extraordinaire.

Reverse psychology maybe? We can't score anyway, combined with Tim Thomas being a Sens goal-stopper = goals aplenty for the Sens?

Or the more probable scenario of the Senators getting thoroughly embarassed once again.

hemlock wrote:

SpezDispenser wrote:

tim1_2 wrote:Hopefully Boston is drained after their ridiculous comeback last night and we can take advantage of that.

The bad news is we'll be facing Timmy T, Sens killer extraordinaire.

Reverse psychology maybe? We can't score anyway, combined with Tim Thomas being a Sens goal-stopper = goals aplenty for the Sens?

Or the more probable scenario of the Senators getting thoroughly embarassed once again.

A loss is a loss and I'll take'm any way I can get'm.

tim1_2 wrote:

SpezDispenser wrote:Hard to say if that's fair or not though. The B-Sens are climbing into what *could* be a playoff spot - and in the long run, we need them to make it so guys like Butler, Condra, O'Brien, Lehner, can get some playoff experience in the pros. If you take Locke off that team, they're dead.

That's a fair comment. Better to have team success in Bingo, or some experience in the NHL? Hard to say.

Catch-22 though. If we call him up and Kovalev comes back from injury, then we have to waive him back down. If we lose him, then that's a lot of work down the tubes because I know Tim Murray spent a lot of time wooing Locke to the organization.

Stupid rule, the player should be able to sign off on it and shouldn't have to go through waivers back down to the AHL. It's definitely costing Locke right now - and it's not his fault.

Brodeur and O'Brien recalled...

http://senators.nhl.com/club/news.htm?id=549064

I'm very pleased for O'Brien - he deserves it, but shouldn't we be looking at Condra and Greening as well? I guess there's time for that, but this time I would have called up Greening to play some top 6 minutes.

I'll go out on a limb and say that Mike Brodeur will start one of the back to back games coming up.

I would have actually liked butler to get the call again...sounds like he's cooled off in the AHL and could use a kick in the arse to show him what he's really playing for, but I'm equally happy with Jimmy'O

We have two forwards out, and another (Fisher) who could probably use a maintenance day (or week). Why could Locke not be called up on an emergency basis? No waivers to clear in that case.

wprager wrote:We have two forwards out, and another (Fisher) who could probably use a maintenance day (or week). Why could Locke not be called up on an emergency basis? No waivers to clear in that case.

I think Roache was saying it's quite difficult to get the NHL to agree to an emergency basis.

Like I said before. Call Locke up once we've traded away some players and then you can leave Locke up here for the rest of the season.

Cap'n Clutch wrote:Like I said before. Call Locke up once we've traded away some players and then you can leave Locke up here for the rest of the season.

And then Bingo misses the playoffs by 4 points and you're left to wonder what could have been...

SpezDispenser wrote:

Cap'n Clutch wrote:Like I said before. Call Locke up once we've traded away some players and then you can leave Locke up here for the rest of the season.

And then Bingo misses the playoffs by 4 points and you're left to wonder what could have been...

Send them Leclaire he can cook them up some nice pre game meals to get them going, that's one way he can contribute to the organization.

wprager wrote:We have two forwards out, and another (Fisher) who could probably use a maintenance day (or week). Why could Locke not be called up on an emergency basis? No waivers to clear in that case.

He will never do that. He's a warrior.