Game Day, Pre-Season Edition Sept 16, 09 Florida @ Ottawa

cloverleaf wrote:N4l, that makes it easier because I couldn't find that comment anymore. But I did find in this thread that you are also the one that said there is NO WAY that ottawa would lose his game. They did. You predicted a win by 3 goals and then jokingly switched it to by 6. Once they lost, I see you said big deal its preseason. Take off those rosy glasses and taper your expectations little. Like I said 10 minutes ago, your D is bad and your goaltending is worse.

Perhaps there's an argument that our D on paper isn't that good right now but how can you be so certain that our goaltending sucks? At the very least they could easily be considered an upgrade to what we've had the last couple of years. Leclaire and Elliot could easily be argued to be a great tandem. You may be accusing some members of being too presumptious in their judgements but you're just as easily guilty of it too with this statement at this point in time. Why not watch them play for 10-20 regular season games before you jump to conclusions?

On a side note, is it to early in the season to play the, 'If the Season Ended Today' game and debate the playoff matchups? :^^^^:

cloverleaf wrote:Capnclutch. Sorry to come off as inflammatory. Not my intention. I will try to find the posts if I have some time today. I am sure the posters who made the predictions know who they are though and will be backtracking pretty quickly.

I was one of them and I even admitted being surprised at the result. I personally had no problem predicting a win by 4 or 5 goals and expecting that. Looking at the respective lineups it should have happened that way in my oppinion. Having Alfredsson, Kovalev, Spezza, Cheechoo, Kuba, Phillips and Volchie up against Florida's lesser knowns other than Leopold, McCabe and Vokoun makes you have that kind of expectation.

I'm also not ready to make the leap from that one pre-season game to extrapalate that the Sens will play that poorly the entire season and that they have no Defense and no real goalie just yet (Waiting on how Leclaire turns out and can he stay healthy).

I certainly wasn't someone predicting that Ottawa is now better than San Jose. I am still taking a wait and see attitude and will evaluate this teams chances once we hit late November early December. By then we'll see if Cheechoo and Kovalev were a failed experiment, will Clouston continue getting the best out of the players, will Foligno progress, was Shannon's production an illusion, do Phillips and Volchie regain their shutdown D form, is this defense really a lot more mobile than last year and so on and so on. Way too early to be definitive either way.

cloverleaf wrote:N4l, that makes it easier because I couldn't find that comment anymore. But I did find in this thread that you are also the one that said there is NO WAY that ottawa would lose his game. They did. You predicted a win by 3 goals and then jokingly switched it to by 6. Once they lost, I see you said big deal its preseason. Take off those rosy glasses and taper your expectations little. Like I said 10 minutes ago, your D is bad and your goaltending is worse.

Goaltending is worse? Really? Leclaire isn't Luongo, but he's a damn fine goalie.

Our D is average at best, I won't lie about that, but I'm really surprised you would say that.

Laker wrote:
I agree Alfi/Spezza/Kovalev all want the puck. I think Michalek may be the winger for the left side.

Fisher & Kovalev doesn't seem to work well ... at least not last night. I thought Foligno looked good last night but he played better with Z. Smith.

I actually thought that Fisher and Kovalev looked pretty good last night. Kovy sent him that one dirrty pass that Vokoun robbed him on. It's looking like our top three will set up like this:

Cheechoo-Spezz-Alf
Michalek-Fisher-Kovalev
Foligno-Kelly-Shannon

And then the fight begins for fourth line duties. Obviously Ruutu and Neil are givens- but what a logjam at C- Winchester? Bass? Regin? Donovan?

I'm thinking it's going to be Winchester. It's a shame that Dono has to take a side seat, because he really is a useful player and is a great guy in the locker room (from all accounts). It's also a bit of a shame that Foligno is once again stranded on the 3rd line, when I believe he should have every opportunity to fill a top six role.

Same with Bass- he really deserves a shot to be on that 4th line- and what a 4th line THAT would be!. Yikes.

Regardless - I don't think we've EVER been this deep up front with talented forwards. Even that 3rd line has the potential to be dangerous.

I like the top 4 (Spezz, Alfi, Michalek and Kovy) but I'm still not sure that Fisher is a 2nd line center.

TheAvatar wrote:I like the top 4 (Spezz, Alfi, Michalek and Kovy) but I'm still not sure that Fisher is a 2nd line center.

I'm sorry guys, but I agree with this. Damn...I've been trying.

Still early though! Still early!

SpezDispenser wrote:

TheAvatar wrote:I like the top 4 (Spezz, Alfi, Michalek and Kovy) but I'm still not sure that Fisher is a 2nd line center.

I'm sorry guys, but I agree with this. Damn...I've been trying.

Still early though! Still early!

The question then is:

Who is?

Jordo wrote:
The question then is:

Who is?

Peter Regin.

N4L wrote:

Cap'n Clutch wrote:I disagree. I think you want elite level talent playing with elite level talent. They will all have an amazing ability to read off of each other and make that dazzling play that blows people away. Sure you don't want all that flash come playoff time and it's all about getting the dirty goals but I think that line could be magical personally. I don't really care that much as long as we have 2 dangerous lines that can score at about the same rate then I'm a happy man. Put it together however you want Clouston as long as it works.

Ugly goals win games, who on that line is going to get in the goalie's face? Not Alfi, not Spezza, not Kovy. No where near enough jam on that line and no real trigger man.

But you suggested Cheechoo-Spezza-Alfredsson. Are you saying that Cheechoo will get those dirty goals? I thought Cheechoo was the triggerman?

Michalek is the big, power forward we've been missing. Put him on with Spezza and Alfredsson -- Alfie and Spezza both have great shots and will use them more. More versatility by necessity rather than design, but I'll take it.

Then you still have Fisher to do the dirty work on the 2nd line with Kovalev and Cheechoo. Kovalev can thread the needle on a pass as well as Spezza can.

SpezDispenser wrote:

TheAvatar wrote:I like the top 4 (Spezz, Alfi, Michalek and Kovy) but I'm still not sure that Fisher is a 2nd line center.

I'm sorry guys, but I agree with this. Damn...I've been trying.

Still early though! Still early!

First of all, you don't need to apologize for agreeing with me

Second, I disagree that it's "still early". Mike Fisher is pretty well a known variable in Ottawa. He's played his whole career here. Don't get me wrong, I admire Fish, I think he's an awesome player and I totally respect him. I like your evaluation of Regin but is he ready?

wprager wrote:

N4L wrote:

Cap'n Clutch wrote:I disagree. I think you want elite level talent playing with elite level talent. They will all have an amazing ability to read off of each other and make that dazzling play that blows people away. Sure you don't want all that flash come playoff time and it's all about getting the dirty goals but I think that line could be magical personally. I don't really care that much as long as we have 2 dangerous lines that can score at about the same rate then I'm a happy man. Put it together however you want Clouston as long as it works.

Ugly goals win games, who on that line is going to get in the goalie's face? Not Alfi, not Spezza, not Kovy. No where near enough jam on that line and no real trigger man.

But you suggested Cheechoo-Spezza-Alfredsson. Are you saying that Cheechoo will get those dirty goals? I thought Cheechoo was the triggerman?

Michalek is the big, power forward we've been missing. Put him on with Spezza and Alfredsson -- Alfie and Spezza both have great shots and will use them more. More versatility by necessity rather than design, but I'll take it.

Then you still have Fisher to do the dirty work on the 2nd line with Kovalev and Cheechoo. Kovalev can thread the needle on a pass as well as Spezza can.

Cheechoo is absolutly a trigger man, but he gets as many goals from 3 feet in as he does from the top of the circle.

Cheechoo is the perfect compliment to Spezza's game IMO. If Spezza is the play maker we all think he is then he can make Cheechoo a better player and vis versa.

Cheechoo absolutly will get those dirty goals though. Wont find those on the highlight reels.

SpezDispenser wrote:

Jordo wrote:
The question then is:

Who is?

Peter Regin.

Eventually, I think so too. We'll see how he plays on Friday night though.

cloverleaf wrote:N4l, that makes it easier because I couldn't find that comment anymore. But I did find in this thread that you are also the one that said there is NO WAY that ottawa would lose his game. They did. You predicted a win by 3 goals and then jokingly switched it to by 6. Once they lost, I see you said big deal its preseason. Take off those rosy glasses and taper your expectations little. Like I said 10 minutes ago, your D is bad and your goaltending is worse.

Sorry, our D is bad and our goaltending worse? You do realize that we lost 2-1, and one of the goals scored against was a PP marker, if I am not mistaken.

So please explain how our D is bad and our goaltending worse. We expected 5-6 goals and only got 1 (well, 2 if you want to be picky), which -- to me, at least -- is a finger pointing toward our forwards. And wihle we still have a good bunch, we were missing Michalek, and for most of the top-six they were playing in their first game with new linemates.

wprager wrote:

cloverleaf wrote:N4l, that makes it easier because I couldn't find that comment anymore. But I did find in this thread that you are also the one that said there is NO WAY that ottawa would lose his game. They did. You predicted a win by 3 goals and then jokingly switched it to by 6. Once they lost, I see you said big deal its preseason. Take off those rosy glasses and taper your expectations little. Like I said 10 minutes ago, your D is bad and your goaltending is worse.

Sorry, our D is bad and our goaltending worse? You do realize that we lost 2-1, and one of the goals scored against was a PP marker, if I am not mistaken.

So please explain how our D is bad and our goaltending worse. We expected 5-6 goals and only got 1 (well, 2 if you want to be picky), which -- to me, at least -- is a finger pointing toward our forwards. And wihle we still have a good bunch, we were missing Michalek, and for most of the top-six they were playing in their first game with new linemates.

Both goals were PP (Spezza in the box for both).

TheAvatar wrote:
First of all, you don't need to apologize for agreeing with me

Second, I disagree that it's "still early". Mike Fisher is pretty well a known variable in Ottawa. He's played his whole career here. Don't get me wrong, I admire Fish, I think he's an awesome player and I totally respect him. I like your evaluation of Regin but is he ready?

:^^^^: I was apologizing because there's been a longstanding debate/argument over it and I never wanted to add a log to the fire, but I see Fish as being the ULTIMATE 3rd line center, who can play in the top 6 if need be. I've always like Regin a lot because he wins faceoffs, can pass the puck and is actually quite a gritty little dude.

As Neely said, we'll wait until Friday and Sat. to see how he does, but he's an option. And it also sounds like Kelly's becoming the odd man out. Who else can Murray trade?

So, when are our forwards going to score?

asq2 wrote:

wprager wrote:

cloverleaf wrote:N4l, that makes it easier because I couldn't find that comment anymore. But I did find in this thread that you are also the one that said there is NO WAY that ottawa would lose his game. They did. You predicted a win by 3 goals and then jokingly switched it to by 6. Once they lost, I see you said big deal its preseason. Take off those rosy glasses and taper your expectations little. Like I said 10 minutes ago, your D is bad and your goaltending is worse.

Sorry, our D is bad and our goaltending worse? You do realize that we lost 2-1, and one of the goals scored against was a PP marker, if I am not mistaken.

So please explain how our D is bad and our goaltending worse. We expected 5-6 goals and only got 1 (well, 2 if you want to be picky), which -- to me, at least -- is a finger pointing toward our forwards. And wihle we still have a good bunch, we were missing Michalek, and for most of the top-six they were playing in their first game with new linemates.

Both goals were PP (Spezza in the box for both).

I harp on the guy, but that wasnt a penalty (the 1st one) it was a solid back check in a pre season game. That will pay off in the regular season and down the line. Glass 1/2 full there.

Just Dung luck being in the box for both.