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Cory Clouston's magic potion has revived the Ottawa Senators...at least it looks that way.
Their first four win streak of the season has fans buzzing. Are the playoffs in sight? Will the hated rivals east and west of the Ottawa Valley be leapt over in a mighty bound? Are the Senators this year's 'Cinderella Team'? Will Bryan Murray go from being a 'seller' at the March trade deadline, to a 'buyer'?
But wait a minute...is there any realistic hope of making it...and would the team survive even the first round? And what about...the Sens' high draft pick?
All these questions and more, are heating up the blogs, call in shows and sports pages.
Here's Allen Panzeri's take:
http://www.faceoff.com/hockey/teams/ottawa-senators/story.html?id=1294179
Sens feeling like winners again
Strong run could cost team high draft position, but sits better with underfire GM, players
Allen Panzeri, The Citizen, Monday, February 16, 2009
Bryan Murray is in that awkward, uncomfortable middle ground that no National Hockey League general manager likes to find himself in.
His team is not going to make the Stanley Cup playoffs, but all of a sudden it is playing itself right out of the John Tavares-Victor Hedman draft sweepstakes.
There's no pot of gold at either end of the rainbow.
With Saturday's 5-3 victory against the Minnesota Wild, their fourth in a row, the Ottawa Senators leapfrogged the Tampa Bay Lightning into 12th place in the Eastern Conference.
However, they are still 14 points out of playoff position.
If they keep playing the way they have been under new coach Cory Clouston, they could create some excitement, as if they actually have a chance to challenge for a playoff spot.
However, the gap is almost assuredly insurmountable, leaving Murray with the consolation prize: a draft pick in the middle of the first round, used on a player who may not work out.
Murray knows this, of course, but he doesn't mind.
What's most important is that he's finding out his team isn't as bad as it appeared to be for the first 48 games of the season under former coach Craig Hartsburg.
There's a selfish interest in this for Murray, of course: He gets to keep his job. All season long, he has been telling owner Eugene Melnyk that this team is better than it is playing. Finally, he's right.
There's also this, though: Murray doesn't mind missing out on the chance to select either Tavares or Hedman, acknowledged as the top two players available for the draft in Montreal in June, if the end of this season allows him to get the Senators moving forward again.
It would have been much worse, Murray said yesterday, if the team was allowed to continue to disintegrate.
"What I wanted to see from the beginning was what team we exactly had," he said.
"I believe we had a good team. I think we have a core of players here who have been analysed to death, but are, in fact, good players, and in this league will be good players. I think it's always nice to get a good draft pick, but I think we have to do as well as we can for the balance of the year.
"We certainly haven't given up on a playoff spot, but if it doesn't happen, I think we'll do a much fairer evaluation of where this team has to go to be improved for next year."
It was especially important that young players such as Nick Foligno, Brian Elliott, and Brian Lee don't grow up in an atmosphere of losing, Murray said.
He didn't want that label attached to his players.
"I just think the whole atmosphere was very, very important to improve," he said.
"You have a sense that that's starting to happen. Winning and losing is obviously the major thing that you do, but the feeling within the team is a big thing, too."
In the community, as well.
In the worst economic recession since the Great Depression, it's tough to sell season tickets if there's no hope for success. Nothing gets an owner's attention faster than that.
While the Senators still have a fair way to go to prove that they have truly rebounded, there is reason for optimism.
"I think the fans were certainly discouraged to a point, and disappointed to a point," Murray said.
"They've supported this team for a long time, and it had grown to a pretty good level. To see it disappear in a calendar year was obviously discouraging.
"Now to see it come back, I think that they understand.
"The people who have stuck with us, and really believe, are being rewarded for that, and the people who were kind of wondering what was going on here, I think they see that maybe this was just a bad period.
"I'm hoping that's the case.
"In every market you have to sell tickets, and to do that you have to be somewhat competitive."
The players, criticized from head to foot for much of this season, are also starting to feel better about themselves.
It wasn't a lot of fun, defenceman Chris Phillips said, when they were so far below expectations.
"We don't feel like we're playing above and beyond what we're capable of doing," he said.
"This is what we're capable of doing. This is what we expected from the beginning, and now we're doing it.
"All year long we were thinking we were on the cusp of turning it around and then it would drop off and be a bit of a rollercoaster. We have to realize that this is the expectation and we have to continue to play like that."
Clouston himself has been a quick study. He did a pretty good job of outcoaching Wild coach Jacques Lemaire on Saturday.
Clouston not only made adjustments to the way his team was forechecking between the first and the second periods, after his team had fallen behind 3-0. He also juggled his lines so that Lemaire couldn't get the matchups he wanted.
It worked, with a comeback that stunned the Wild.
Clouston, now 4-1-1 behind the bench, allowed that it is satisfying to have such success so quickly. But he's quick to hand the players credit.
"This is a lot more of an indication of what the team is like," he said.
"We're not going to win every game for the rest of the year, I don't imagine, but I think we have an opportunity every night.
"We have a lot of confidence that we can beat any opponent if we stick with our game plan and play with intensity and execute what we're trying to do.
"We believe in what we're doing, and we've shown a lot of character.
"The players get the credit and they deserve it. They're the ones who took a lot of the blame and had a lot of negative things said about them.
"They deserve some credit right now and should feel good about themselves."
Tonight's goalie is ...
Who will start in net for the Senators tonight against the Nashville Predators was still in question yesterday.
Alex Auld came on in relief of Brian Elliott and blanked the Wild on Saturday, so Auld would seem to deserve to start against the Predators.
Still, maybe it's wise to put Elliott right back in to erase the feeling of his bad first period against the Wild.
Clouston was to announce his decision this morning. He said yesterday the plan was always to use Auld in one of the last two games of the current road trip: tonight against Nashville or tomorrow against Colorado.
As for the rest of his lineup, Clouston said there was no pressing reason to get either Alexandre Picard or Christoph Schubert back into the lineup, so it looks as if they will be sitting out again.
Defenceman Filip Kuba missed practice yesterday because of bumps and bruises, but he'll play tonight.
It's been a strange season for Sens fans, and it might just get stranger still...what do YOU think?
Their first four win streak of the season has fans buzzing. Are the playoffs in sight? Will the hated rivals east and west of the Ottawa Valley be leapt over in a mighty bound? Are the Senators this year's 'Cinderella Team'? Will Bryan Murray go from being a 'seller' at the March trade deadline, to a 'buyer'?
But wait a minute...is there any realistic hope of making it...and would the team survive even the first round? And what about...the Sens' high draft pick?
All these questions and more, are heating up the blogs, call in shows and sports pages.
Here's Allen Panzeri's take:
http://www.faceoff.com/hockey/teams/ottawa-senators/story.html?id=1294179
Sens feeling like winners again
Strong run could cost team high draft position, but sits better with underfire GM, players
Allen Panzeri, The Citizen, Monday, February 16, 2009
Bryan Murray is in that awkward, uncomfortable middle ground that no National Hockey League general manager likes to find himself in.
His team is not going to make the Stanley Cup playoffs, but all of a sudden it is playing itself right out of the John Tavares-Victor Hedman draft sweepstakes.
There's no pot of gold at either end of the rainbow.
With Saturday's 5-3 victory against the Minnesota Wild, their fourth in a row, the Ottawa Senators leapfrogged the Tampa Bay Lightning into 12th place in the Eastern Conference.
However, they are still 14 points out of playoff position.
If they keep playing the way they have been under new coach Cory Clouston, they could create some excitement, as if they actually have a chance to challenge for a playoff spot.
However, the gap is almost assuredly insurmountable, leaving Murray with the consolation prize: a draft pick in the middle of the first round, used on a player who may not work out.
Murray knows this, of course, but he doesn't mind.
What's most important is that he's finding out his team isn't as bad as it appeared to be for the first 48 games of the season under former coach Craig Hartsburg.
There's a selfish interest in this for Murray, of course: He gets to keep his job. All season long, he has been telling owner Eugene Melnyk that this team is better than it is playing. Finally, he's right.
There's also this, though: Murray doesn't mind missing out on the chance to select either Tavares or Hedman, acknowledged as the top two players available for the draft in Montreal in June, if the end of this season allows him to get the Senators moving forward again.
It would have been much worse, Murray said yesterday, if the team was allowed to continue to disintegrate.
"What I wanted to see from the beginning was what team we exactly had," he said.
"I believe we had a good team. I think we have a core of players here who have been analysed to death, but are, in fact, good players, and in this league will be good players. I think it's always nice to get a good draft pick, but I think we have to do as well as we can for the balance of the year.
"We certainly haven't given up on a playoff spot, but if it doesn't happen, I think we'll do a much fairer evaluation of where this team has to go to be improved for next year."
It was especially important that young players such as Nick Foligno, Brian Elliott, and Brian Lee don't grow up in an atmosphere of losing, Murray said.
He didn't want that label attached to his players.
"I just think the whole atmosphere was very, very important to improve," he said.
"You have a sense that that's starting to happen. Winning and losing is obviously the major thing that you do, but the feeling within the team is a big thing, too."
In the community, as well.
In the worst economic recession since the Great Depression, it's tough to sell season tickets if there's no hope for success. Nothing gets an owner's attention faster than that.
While the Senators still have a fair way to go to prove that they have truly rebounded, there is reason for optimism.
"I think the fans were certainly discouraged to a point, and disappointed to a point," Murray said.
"They've supported this team for a long time, and it had grown to a pretty good level. To see it disappear in a calendar year was obviously discouraging.
"Now to see it come back, I think that they understand.
"The people who have stuck with us, and really believe, are being rewarded for that, and the people who were kind of wondering what was going on here, I think they see that maybe this was just a bad period.
"I'm hoping that's the case.
"In every market you have to sell tickets, and to do that you have to be somewhat competitive."
The players, criticized from head to foot for much of this season, are also starting to feel better about themselves.
It wasn't a lot of fun, defenceman Chris Phillips said, when they were so far below expectations.
"We don't feel like we're playing above and beyond what we're capable of doing," he said.
"This is what we're capable of doing. This is what we expected from the beginning, and now we're doing it.
"All year long we were thinking we were on the cusp of turning it around and then it would drop off and be a bit of a rollercoaster. We have to realize that this is the expectation and we have to continue to play like that."
Clouston himself has been a quick study. He did a pretty good job of outcoaching Wild coach Jacques Lemaire on Saturday.
Clouston not only made adjustments to the way his team was forechecking between the first and the second periods, after his team had fallen behind 3-0. He also juggled his lines so that Lemaire couldn't get the matchups he wanted.
It worked, with a comeback that stunned the Wild.
Clouston, now 4-1-1 behind the bench, allowed that it is satisfying to have such success so quickly. But he's quick to hand the players credit.
"This is a lot more of an indication of what the team is like," he said.
"We're not going to win every game for the rest of the year, I don't imagine, but I think we have an opportunity every night.
"We have a lot of confidence that we can beat any opponent if we stick with our game plan and play with intensity and execute what we're trying to do.
"We believe in what we're doing, and we've shown a lot of character.
"The players get the credit and they deserve it. They're the ones who took a lot of the blame and had a lot of negative things said about them.
"They deserve some credit right now and should feel good about themselves."
Tonight's goalie is ...
Who will start in net for the Senators tonight against the Nashville Predators was still in question yesterday.
Alex Auld came on in relief of Brian Elliott and blanked the Wild on Saturday, so Auld would seem to deserve to start against the Predators.
Still, maybe it's wise to put Elliott right back in to erase the feeling of his bad first period against the Wild.
Clouston was to announce his decision this morning. He said yesterday the plan was always to use Auld in one of the last two games of the current road trip: tonight against Nashville or tomorrow against Colorado.
As for the rest of his lineup, Clouston said there was no pressing reason to get either Alexandre Picard or Christoph Schubert back into the lineup, so it looks as if they will be sitting out again.
Defenceman Filip Kuba missed practice yesterday because of bumps and bruises, but he'll play tonight.
It's been a strange season for Sens fans, and it might just get stranger still...what do YOU think?
