Daniel Alfredsson Appreciation thread

wow...I guess we owe Jacques Martin as well

If you guys want anymore stories about Alfredsson dug up, just go ahead and ask.

Imagine if he had returned to Sweden instead of staying with the Sens when things were really, really, really bad here? Where would we be right now? Seriously?

PKC wrote:If you guys want anymore stories about Alfredsson dug up, just go ahead and ask.

By all means, hook it up!

SensGirl11 wrote:

PKC wrote:If you guys want anymore stories about Alfredsson dug up, just go ahead and ask.

By all means, hook it up!

Well there are over 5,000 stories indexed in the Citizen archives with the mention of Alfredsson in it. So, if you want a more specific search, just let me know. Would make it a hell of a lot easier for me to find stuff for you guys.

How lucky are we to have a captain like Alfredsson? These stories are really eye-opening to me. I know a lot about him, but to hear him talk as a rookie, just shows how special he is and how special he became to everyone here.

PKC wrote:

SensGirl11 wrote:

PKC wrote:If you guys want anymore stories about Alfredsson dug up, just go ahead and ask.

By all means, hook it up!

Well there are over 5,000 stories indexed in the Citizen archives with the mention of Alfredsson in it. So, if you want a more specific search, just let me know. Would make it a hell of a lot easier for me to find stuff for you guys.

Do you have a story about the first playoffs he played in? His first year as Captain? Anything like that?

Life After Yashin not so bad


The Ottawa Citizen

Fri Sep 10 1999

Page: B3

Section: Sports

Byline: Wayne Scanlan

Column: Wayne Scanlan

Source: The Ottawa Citizen

Ever grateful, Ottawa Senators players are finding
that
Alexei Yashin questions are thinning out like crowds on the golf
courses as the first week of NHL training camp winds down.
A lingering Yashin question is this: How strong a
team are the
Senators without their captain
and leading scorer, a 44-goal,
50-assist centreman last season who was in the hunt for NHL
goal-scoring honours and the Hart Trophy as the league's most
valuable player?
Here, there is more good news. With the regular
season still three
weeks away, the Senators don't have to seriously contemplate LAY
(Life After Yashin) for a long while yet.
``Most teams don't have their rosters together at
this point,''
said winger Daniel Alfredsson,
who has already earned a gold star in
camp by surviving the first four days without tearing up a knee on
an ice rut.
``It's just the way it's being going around the
league the last few
years. Two years ago, I missed the first two weeks of the season and
it was no problem coming back. But everyone is working hard in camp.
We all know the situation.''
The situation is that the Senators and Yashin are
an ocean apart --
and that's just in contract philosophy, never mind the geography
involved with a team based in Ottawa and its suspended captain
skating (and learning to yodel?) in Switzerland.
Still, at any moment Yashin is only a flight away
from rejoining
the Senators, should agent Mark Gandler bump his head and come to
his senses regarding the holdout of a player signed on to earn $3.6
million U.S. this season.
A fellow could stage a lot of National Arts Centre
events with that
kind of dough, if he were so inclined. And this contract, which
expires with Yashin poised for a monster year, is merely the
stepping stone to greater riches.
The other missing Senators forwards, Magnus
Arvedson, Radek Bonk
and Bruce Gardiner, aren't nearly so far from settling. Arvedson's
plight is particularly frustrating, with roughly $100,000 between
the club's offer and his asking price of just over $1 million. If
this drags on much longer, fans will be passing around a hat to make
up the difference.
While Arvedson's explosive two-way game will make a
welcome return,
it is the absence of Yashin and Bonk that underline the Senators'
most pressing need -- up the middle. With only Vaclav Prospal, Steve
Martins and Shaun Van Allen back from last year's group of centres,
the position has become the team's early sore point. Emphasis on the
word early.
``We need more depth down the middle, no
question,'' says
Alfredsson, one of two or
three dandy candidates to wear the ``C''
this season, if the Yashin impasse reaches that point. ``We have a
solid group here to build on, but we have to get better. We have to
replace our best player.''
Drift away from centre and the Senators are as
deep as they are
swift. Shawn McEachern, Marian Hossa, Andreas Dackell, Arvedson when
he's back, Kevin Dineen, Rob Zamuner and more provide as good a
fleet of wingers as a team could want. Sniper capacity and physical
toughness might be the only doubts.
On defence, hail, the gang's all here. And it is a
formidable gang.
Led by Wade Redden, the defence features Jason York (off his best
season), a healthy Janne Laukkanen, a fit and determined Chris
Phillips and two sophomores who surprised the entire NHL last season
with their rookie campaigns -- Slammin' Sami Salo and Patrick
Traverse. Then, in the role of resident fall guy, there's Igor
Kravchuk. Kravchuk is not as bad as some people think and would have
more of his sins forgiven were it not for his $2.5-million U.S.
contract.
Minus Lance Pitlick, York and Phillips will be
expected to deliver
the heavy hits, otherwise, if this group carted a tray of entrees,
it would be called meals on wheels. It can move.
``It's such a speed game now,'' says York, who
blossomed into a
35-point man last year. ``Transition is everything in hockey. Get
back quickly, get the puck up quickly -- and if you can pinch in and
get involved offensively, we try to do that, too.''
Goaltending will be a focal point and hopefully
not a needlepoint.
With Damian Rhodes gone, the Senators have a clear-cut No. 1 in Ron
Tugnutt for the first time since, well, since Rhodes himself arrived
here from Toronto during the 1995-96 season.
Patrick Lalime, Jani Hurme and Mike Fountain are
partaking in the
first in-camp competition for a goaltending job in a couple of
seasons.
Tugnutt will be asked to deliver something close
to the career-best
numbers he tossed up last season, only now without a 50-50 split of
the workload.
Yes, Life After Yashin might prove bearable in
Ottawa, though it is
too early to worry, yet, about either his absence or his potential
replacement.
``I know I'll sound like a coach when I say this,
but if Yash isn't
here, it's going to give opportunities to other players,'' York
says. ``This is how guys make names for themselves. Zamuner was
saying the other day, he can't believe the skill level at this camp,
compared to others he has been at.''
The mostly highly skilled not among them is a
25-year-old Russian
with no fixed Swiss address and a loose agenda.

Artist a keen observer of nature


The Ottawa Citizen

Fri Feb 26 2010

Page: E5

Section: Arts & Life

Byline: Steven Mazey

Source: Citizen Special

Her husband says it was typical of the spirit of
Merrickville
wildlife and landscape artist Brenda Carter that after surgery for a
brain tumour in 2007 left her partially paralysed on her right side,
she was determined to get back to her art.
After going through months of therapy, Carter
trained herself to
draw with her left hand, and went back to doing what she loved.
Up until about four months before her death in
hospital Feb. 18 at
age 67, she was still sketching and painting on Merrickville
backroads, taking pleasure in nature and capturing on canvas what
she saw through sharp and observant eyes.
"A year or so after her surgery she was doing some
very pleasing
watercolours and some amazing sketches," says Gerard Phillips, who
married Carter in 2005. They met three years earlier while she was
sketching at a bird migration station in New York State and
Phillips, a biologist and artist himself, complimented her on her
drawings of migrating raptors.
"She wanted to go on painting as long as she
could. It defined who
she was," Phillips says.
Over a career of more than 40 years, Carter made
regular trips to
the Canadian Arctic and to other remote areas, to set up camp and
spend hours observing the wildlife around her.
Her travels took her to Africa, the Antarctic,
Australia, Britain,
the Galapagos Islands and Central and South America.
Carter received commissions from the National
Geographic Society
and Canadian Geographic Society, and her paintings were part of
exhibitions at venues that included the Royal Ontario Museum and the
Canadian Museum of Nature.
In the 1980s and '90s, she operated her own
gallery in
Merrickville. Carter started the popular Merrickville Studio tour,
in which visitors tour artists' studios and talk to them about their
work. A 1988 Citizen article said her paintings at the time sold for
between $2,000 and $10,000, her prints for up to $250.
Though she won awards for her work from Wildlife
Habitat Canada and
Ducks Unlimited, Carter told the Citizen in 1988 "there is this kind
of gnawing thing about wildlife painters being the sort of black
sheep of the art world. We have a kind of curious status with the
public because we're not really counted as artists by curators and
galleries."
Chelsea-based photographer J. David Andrews says
Carter's work was
exceptional. Andrews asked Carter to provide wildlife illustrations
for his acclaimed 1994 photography book Gatineau Park: An Intimate
Portrait. Andrews says he still receives compliments about Carter's
drawings from readers. He has several of her watercolours of birds
on his walls.
"I have a painting by Brenda of a heron that
really reveals insight
into a heron's behaviour," he says.
"It's clearly not a drawing that's been done from a
photograph.
It's a drawing by somebody who understands the ecology of a heron
and how a heron behaves. That sense comes across in her work. A lot
of wildlife paintings that I see might be a beautiful rendering of
something, but they don't have that quality that I see in Brenda's
work. She was a keen observer. Her work was beautiful and it was
genuine."
Describing her working method to the Citizen in
1988, Carter said
"What I consider a success is following an animal, sketching him and
leaving without him being aware of my presence."
She also researched her subjects extensively
before she painted,
Phillips says.
"She would know all things about them and their
anatomy. She
wouldn't try to draw something if she felt she didn't know how it
worked underneath. She knew about musculature. She knew about the
bird skeleton. In the field, she would take some video and still
photos, but the most important thing was that she had seen and
watched and sketched. She didn't allow the photographic material to
be the main influence on the piece."
Born in Calgary in 1943, Carter grew up in the
Ottawa Valley and
moved to the U.S. as a teen when her father, who was in the air
force, was posted to Washington. She studied art in Florida, and her
work focused from the beginning on her love of animals and nature.
She returned to Canada in 1963 to work for the
Canadian Museum of
Nature, where she painted diorama displays.
She developed a love of the Canadian Arctic in the
late 1960s, when
she worked for the Canadian Wildlife Service, assisting in tagging
polar bears. She painted wildlife there, and returned every year for
more than two decades.
"I immediately felt at home in the North. It
affected me on a very
deep level," she told the Citizen.
Carter, who also taught illustration on visits
there, said the area
offered "a very real privilege of going back in time to a place
where people are very tied to their land."
Before she married Phillips in 2005, Carter had
been a longtime
partner of biologist Thomas Manning, who died in 1998. They
travelled together regularly on field trips.
In 1999, Carter made headlines and an appearance
on CBC Radio's As
it Happens after she successfully met a challenge she and fellow
birdwatcher Bruce Di Labio set for themselves, to find and sketch in
the field at least 500 bird species within a year.
Feather Quest '99 took the pair across North
America. They met
their target in November, after finding their 500th species in
Yosemite Park in California. Carter created a drawing of a varied
thrush there, at an altitude of about 9,500 feet.
"We finally got there. We're really pleased. It
was a pretty rare
bird," she told the Citizen.
The pair found 14 more species before the end of
the year.
Phillips says that when he met Carter, he was
impressed "by her
beautiful spirit and her love of life. We exchanged e-mails and she
suggested we go sketching birds together."
In addition to Phillips, Carter is survived by her
mother Doris,
sister Charlotte and brothers Rand and Richard.
Her family and friends are planning a private
celebration of her
life, as Carter had requested.
For those who want to remember Carter, Phillips
said she suggested
donations to Theatre Night in Merrickville, The Merrickville
Library, The Merrickville Historical Society or the Prince Edward
County Bird Observatory.

Wow...we needed more than some grit and a finisher, we needed an overhaul.

Fisher satisfied with NHL debut for Senators


The Ottawa Citizen

Mon Oct 4 1999

Page: C3

Section: Sports

Byline: Allen Panzeri

Column: The Senators This Week

Dateline: PHILADELPHIA

Source: The Ottawa Citizen

PHILADELPHIA -- Mike Fisher's NHL career didn't get off to a textbook start on Saturday night.
As the rookie centre lined up for his first faceoff, the linesman kicked him out of the circle for being overanxious.
However, Fisher became much more comfortable as the game progressed and turned into a comfortable 3-0 Ottawa Senators win against the Philadelphia Flyers.
Not only did Fisher play a regular shift on a line with Andreas Dackell and Rob Zamuner, he was also played on the Senators' power-play and penalty-killing units.
Under NHL rules for junior-age players, Fisher, 19, could play as many as 10 games with the Senators and still be returned to the Ontario Hockey League's Sudbury Wolves without losing a year's exemption from NHL waiver and expansion drafts.
Senators head coach Jacques Martin is clearly going to give Fisher every opportunity to succeed or fail at the NHL level.
``It's not easy to play against the Flyers, because they're such a big team, but he used his speed and he handled himself well,'' Martin said.
Fisher's speed very nearly got him his first NHL goal, too. Near the end of the game, Zamuner saw Fisher speeding through the neutral zone and put a perfect pass on his stick.
Fisher was about a step ahead of Philadelphia's John LeClair, but LeClair knocked Fisher off balance with a slash for which he got a penalty, and Fisher's weak shot rolled wide of the target.
``I thought I had (Flyers goalie John Vanbiesbrouck) beat, but I just couldn't get the shot off,'' Fisher said. ``The puck just rolled off my stick.''
Not a bad effort, though, for his first game, and his play underlined one of the more difficult tasks Martin will have this
season: deciding who plays and who sits.
Forwards Steve Martins and Bruce Gardiner and defenceman Patrick Traverse sat out the first game, and though Traverse may play in tomorrow's game in New York against the Rangers because Sami Salo is nursing a bruised chest, thanks to a hit from Philadelphia's Eric Lindros, Martins and Gardiner may sit again.
Martin's only quibble with the Senators' nearly flawless performance on Saturday was a spate of offensive-zone turnovers in the second period, so there's not much reason to change the lineup for tomorrow's game.
Fisher knew the regular season would be tougher than the NHL preseason, but the reality of it only really hit when he stepped on the ice.
``It definitely was a step up from an exhibition game,'' he said.
``It was a pretty fast pace and intense. I was a little nervous at the start, but I settled in after that first shift. I thought I fit in pretty well and I thought I played hard.''
Centre Radek Bonk was Ottawa's best player on Saturday.
He and wingers Magnus Arvedson and Marian Hossa were matched up against Lindros, LeClair and Sandy McCarthy almost all game, and they kept the Flyers No. 1 trio from doing any damage.
By Martin's estimation, the Flyers had only four or five scoring chances, making the game an exceptional defensive performance for the Senators.
Though LeClair and Lindros had two of those chances, Martin said
``That was probably our best performance ever against that line.
``Even in the game we won 5-0 here last year, that line had more chances than the team had (Saturday night).''
Martin has used Bonk is similar situations in the past, against Pittsburgh's Jaromir Jagr, for example, and Bonk has frequently met the challenge. The Senators coach hopes Bonk will carry that same concentration into every game.
Martin will announce his goalie for tomorrow's game today, but with injured No. 1 netminder Ron Tugnutt still not ready for prime time, Patrick Lalime will likely start again.
Lalime faced only 17 shots from the Flyers, and the Senators got some good bounces, but he still made a number of key saves.
After a leisurely start to the regular season, with two days off between their first and second games, the Ottawa Senators have a busy week of three games in five nights, all against teams from the Original Six. As they head into these two games, there are two question marks. Defenceman Sami Salo has a bruised chest, after getting slammed into the boards in the 3-0 win against the Flyers, and goalie Ron Tugnutt is still working his way into game shape. Still, the Senators played so well defensively against the Flyers, helping Patrick Lalime earn a shutout, that it seems it almost
doesn't matter who is the net.

Getting closer....!>.>>>!>>...

We're so lucky to have a captain like Daniel Alfredsson.

The Sens are SOL when he retires

You just don't replace players like that.

Here's hoping we can win the Cup before #11 skates off for the last time ....

SensGirl11 wrote:This is soooo cool. I haven't finished reading it yet, but it's from the archives from the Citizen. Talking about the Rookie Daniel Alfredsson.

Rookie Alfredsson a sweet surprise at Senators camp


The Ottawa Citizen

Sat Sep 16 1995

Page: G2

Section: Sports

Byline: Ken Warren

Dateline: CANTON, New York

Source: The Ottawa Citizen

CANTON, New York — In just three weeks, Daniel Alfredsson's stock has risen from genuine question mark to training camp sensation.

Alfredsson's performance here, following a standout display at a professional development camp in Arnprior, gave the Ottawa Senators reason to smile as they left for Kanata Friday afternoon.

Without having played in a single NHL game, Alfredsson has been pencilled in on one of the club's top two lines for the preseason.

That says plenty about his talent, but also shows how badly the Senators need the rookie right-winger to perform.

All management eyes will be trained on Alfredsson next week, when the Senators open their exhibition schedule. Ottawa plays host to the Toronto Maple Leafs on Monday at the Civic Centre.

`I really didn't know how tough it was going to be over here,'' says Alfredsson, a 23-year-old Swede. ``I was kind of nervous.''

Alfredsson spent the past two years on a team in the Swedish elite league and on the Swedish national team. He then decided the time was right to jump to the NHL.

`I've got a chance now, and I've got to take it. I would be happy to make this team. It's now or never.''

Alfredsson, a dead ringer for German tennis star Boris Becker, was not drafted by the NHL as a junior. If he cracks the Senators' lineup, it will make the club's sixth-round gamble (133rd overall) on him in the 1994 entry draft pay off.

He scored 14 goals and 18 assists in 35 games with Frolunda in Sweden last year, but was even more impressive with the national team. His tie-breaking goal eliminated Canada in the semifinals of the world championships.

`I've played with some pretty good players in Sweden. I played with (Peter) Forsberg and (Mikael) Renberg. When the NHL lockout was on, it was a very good team. I was very surprised when I made that team,'' he says.

Alfredsson, paired with Czech centre Martin Straka thoughout the early-week scrimmages with the Senators, was one of the best players on the ice.

But Senators coach Rick Bowness and general manager Randy Sexton temper their optimism.

`Some guys look great in scrimmages, but when the exhibition games start, you can't find them,'' says Bowness. ``But those two (Alfredsson and Straka) have seemed to have a natural chemistry from the start.''

Sexton is hopeful Alfredsson can raise the level of his play as the competition rises.

`That's the challenge for him,'' says Sexton. ``There are always increases in intensity. From training camp to pre-season, then from preseason to regular season. It's all about how you do against the (Doug) Gilmours, (Mats) Sundins and (Andrew) Cassels.''

Straka has no doubt Alfredsson has the necessary vision and anticipation to play in the NHL. ``Before we get the puck, both of us know what we're going to do with it,'' says Straka.

Alfredsson, 5-11 and 198 pounds, is still getting used to the smaller North American ice surface, but he isn't afraid to get his nose dirty. He has a nasty scar under his left eye as proof.

`I think I played pretty tough when I was back home. I like to hit and I can handle the play against the boards. I'm getting used to all the (stuff) you get in front of the net.''

Now how cool is that? Wow.

Awesome!

I wonder how this kid will pan out

Hoags wrote:We're so lucky to have a captain like Daniel Alfredsson.

The Sens are SOL when he retires

You just don't replace players like that.

Here's hoping we can win the Cup before #11 skates off for the last time ....

That moment when alfie skates off the ice for the last time will be as big as Gretzky skating off but for a sens fan. Going to suck when he leaves not just the points but alfie in general and everything he brings, any one have a clue who becomes the next captain of the sens.

It's all about how you do against the (Doug) Gilmours, (Mats) Sundins and (Andrew) Cassels.''

Thanks for the laugh,Randy.

I posted this one over in the GDT, but maybe it should be here instead. A nice contrast, of sorts, to the older articles.
http://www.thehockeynews.com/articles/32665-Daniel-Alfredsson-to-hit-1000game-mark-Tuesday-against-Panthers.html