GAME DAY: Ottawa Senators @ Washington Capitals - 7:00pm ET - Thu. Jan. 7th, 2010

Phoenix30 wrote:oh god all I can say is there are too many bandwagon jumpers here. Leclaire will be alright. He needs to work through some issues but hey look how long he has been out for. Yes there are times he let something bad in but he has also kept this team in games even in a loosing cause.

He will be alright.

When does the bandwagon take off though? I mean...I keep waiting to see this heralded guy that everyone's always talked so highly of - and all I'm saying right now is that I haven't really seen that guy. At lease not for any length of time at all. When does he start being consistent so we can put 5 or 6 game winning streaks together and get really hot?

i for one, still believe in leclaire. sure there's been a few bad games and a few bad goals but seriously we've had some serious issues with our D-squad.

i've seen pascal make the kind of saves that i haven't seen since... it's that long i can't remember.
seriously, he's the kind of goaltender that needs to get on a role and frankly, he hasn't had the chance.

Be fair, please. We've been decimated by injuries.

Last year Kuba was our best overall defenseman. Let's put aside, for the moment, the fact that this, in itself, is rather sad. So our best defenseman got hurt in our first game (I think?). Yet, we did better to start than Montreal.

Then we lost our best defensive defenseman and shot blocking machine for an extended time, as well.

We lost the stick that stirred our fourth line. We lost Neil. We lost Foligno. We lost Shannon earlier. And now we are without our first line center and our Captain and best overall player. To say nothing of the fact that Michalek is trying to prove that -274 Celsius does exist, Kovalev has had 3 or 4 good games in the first half of the season, and Cheechoo is worse than advertised.

Oh, and let's not forget that we have a lifetime AHLer and a 19 year old, pint-sized rookie playing on D, and they are not the worst of the bunch.

How on Earth are we not battling Carolina and Edmonton for last?

I'm beginning to think the answer is Clouston and he should (he won't, but he should) be a serious candidate for the Jack Adams. If this team could get rid of whoever is running their powerplay, as well as their goalie coach, I think they'd be even better. And if Spezza comes back rested and we can get back into a playoff position (I don't think we are going to hang on to that for another 4-5 weeks, but I'd love to be proven wrong), we could make some serious hay as an underdog in the playoffs.

Flo The Action wrote:i for one, still believe in leclaire. sure there's been a few bad games and a few bad goals but seriously we've had some serious issues with our D-squad.

i've seen pascal make the kind of saves that i haven't seen since... it's that long i can't remember.
seriously, he's the kind of goaltender that needs to get on a role and frankly, he hasn't had the chance.

You can't deny that he's been terribly inconsistent, though. That first goal against the Flyers, wow, you can't blame that on poor defense. It's like his mind wandered and he just wasn't ready.

He's played over 20 games and there is only one I would count as him winning a game we had not right winning -- the Habs game. And even in that one he overcommitted badly on one of the goals.

I'm willing to let him a bit more slack, though.

OK people, we sit currently in 6th with arguably the worst defense in the conference, and somehow you guys find a way to blame the goaltending.
So if I'm right, people are actually expecting this team, if goaltending was meeting their expectations, to be somewhere near the top of the conference?
Yeah... there is probably 3 goaltenders in the league at the moment who would make this team better, and you're out to lunch if you think Leclaire/Elliott should be in that category.

marakh wrote:OK people, we sit currently in 6th with arguably the worst defense in the conference, and somehow you guys find a way to blame the goaltending.
So if I'm right, people are actually expecting this team, if goaltending was meeting their expectations, to be somewhere near the top of the conference?
Yeah... there is probably 3 goaltenders in the league at the moment who would make this team better, and you're out to lunch if you think Leclaire/Elliott should be in that category.

I guess we would be leading the division with a good goalie. Buffalo's doing it and they don't have the talent we have up front, so I don't see why we wouldn't be in 3rd. If no one wants to claim the NE, then we need to grab it, but it's not gonna happen with Leclaire and his worse save % amongst starters.

I hope and think he can be better, but so far he's been a fairly big disappointment.

wprager wrote:Be fair, please. We've been decimated by injuries.

Last year Kuba was our best overall defenseman. Let's put aside, for the moment, the fact that this, in itself, is rather sad. So our best defenseman got hurt in our first game (I think?). Yet, we did better to start than Montreal.

Then we lost our best defensive defenseman and shot blocking machine for an extended time, as well.

We lost the stick that stirred our fourth line. We lost Neil. We lost Foligno. We lost Shannon earlier. And now we are without our first line center and our Captain and best overall player. To say nothing of the fact that Michalek is trying to prove that -274 Celsius does exist, Kovalev has had 3 or 4 good games in the first half of the season, and Cheechoo is worse than advertised.

Oh, and let's not forget that we have a lifetime AHLer and a 19 year old, pint-sized rookie playing on D, and they are not the worst of the bunch.

How on Earth are we not battling Carolina and Edmonton for last?

I'm beginning to think the answer is Clouston and he should (he won't, but he should) be a serious candidate for the Jack Adams. If this team could get rid of whoever is running their powerplay, as well as their goalie coach, I think they'd be even better. And if Spezza comes back rested and we can get back into a playoff position (I don't think we are going to hang on to that for another 4-5 weeks, but I'd love to be proven wrong), we could make some serious hay as an underdog in the playoffs.

And then there's this, which is absolutely true. No one can figure it out - I guarantee it. We should be in 14th right now.

SpezDispenser wrote:

marakh wrote:OK people, we sit currently in 6th with arguably the worst defense in the conference, and somehow you guys find a way to blame the goaltending.
So if I'm right, people are actually expecting this team, if goaltending was meeting their expectations, to be somewhere near the top of the conference?
Yeah... there is probably 3 goaltenders in the league at the moment who would make this team better, and you're out to lunch if you think Leclaire/Elliott should be in that category.

I guess we would be leading the division with a good goalie. Buffalo's doing it and they don't have the talent we have up front, so I don't see why we wouldn't be in 3rd. If no one wants to claim the NE, then we need to grab it, but it's not gonna happen with Leclaire and his worse save % amongst starters.

I hope and think he can be better, but so far he's been a fairly big disappointment.

Buffalo doesn't have a "good" goalie, they have the best in the league.
I hope you don't expect that from Leclaire.

I am not disappointed in Leclaire at all, he has won us games, at least 5 of them, perhaps more, but I don't remember them all, they were before he was injured by a puck on his damn face.

Perhaps you guys should watch more games from other teams. Appart from the obviouses, there are not many that would stop more goals than what our goalies have, if your expectations were where they were supposed to be.

ANyways, I'm out of this conversation, I am more than sick about goaltending blaming for this team.

I was at the Philly game and Leclaire was pulled because he just did not seem to be in the game. Next game, Elliott let in 4 goals on 16 shots. Again, there was a good reason why he was pulled.

Now the interesting thing, in both cases the backup came in and played very well. In the Boston game, Leclaire stopped 19 of 19, and in the Philly game, the only one that got by Elliott was the 5-on-3 PPG.

What could the reason be? I see two distinct possibilities. One, the team gets a slap in the face on the bench from Clouston. Maybe he tells them it's partly their fault and they play better, defensivley after that. I don't really buy that, because, as I said above, both goalies deserved to be pulled (if only Clouston had been coaching the Gold Medal game!) The second possibility I see is that the startign goalie is not mentally prepared for some reason. Maybe the pressure of starting is getting on him? Maybe he's over-coached? Maybe it's time to part ways with Eli.

GAME DAY!!!

GO SENS GO!!!

SpezDispenser wrote:

wprager wrote:Leclaire missed almost a full year, then while he was getting adjusted to a new team, new (and not very good) defense and a new set of coaches (to say nothing of a reconstructed ankle) he had his jaw broken. Maybe he's still getting back to his form.

Kuba missed a ton of games at the start, maybe he's not quite up to speed yet. Let's give him a chance.

Michalek is missing his centerman, one of the best passers in the game.

Fisher got engaged. You know what Mick (from "Rocky") said -- "Women weaken legs!"

Through all this we're still in a playoff spot.

I just wrote a blog about this for Crash the Crease. It's amazing that we're still in a spot.

That has a lot to do with the fact that, with the exception of 3-4 teams, the east is currently a mess from top to bottom. If the Sens are in the West, they are outside the playoff picture.

I've never liked this whole "If the Sens were in the West..." crap. If we were in the West, we'd be a Western team, we'd have been built differently, we would not look like we do today, because we're an Eastern team. If you take our point total, sure, but that's not a very valid comparison IMO.

shabbs wrote:I've never liked this whole "If the Sens were in the West..." crap. If we were in the West, we'd be a Western team, we'd have been built differently, we would not look like we do today, because we're an Eastern team. If you take our point total, sure, but that's not a very valid comparison IMO.

OK then, phrase it this way:

Besides 3-4 teams, the East is full of Dung teams who really don't deserve to make the playoffs.

The point is the same. The Senators are not in a playoff spot because they're a remarkable team. They're in a playoff spot because there are so many unremarkable teams in the conference this year.

I can get behind that.



Yeah, the East seems to be filled with mediocrity this season, which would suggest the final standings probably won't be settled until the very last minute of the very last game, and there will likely be a lot of movement along the way.

shabbs wrote:I can get behind that.



Yeah, the East seems to be filled with mediocrity this season, which would suggest the final standings probably won't be settled until the very last minute of the very last game, and there will likely be a lot of movement along the way.

I think that this is the year that a team gets into the playoffs (in the East) with under 90 points.

Maybe... maybe...

Was there ever a time when the Southeast Division winner had less points than every other team in the remaining playoff spots? Back when the Southeast was a horrid division, this was always a looming threat...

shabbs wrote:Maybe... maybe...

Was there ever a time when the Southeast Division winner had less points than every other team in the remaining playoff spots? Back when the Southeast was a horrid division, this was always a looming threat...

There was one year there, sometime in the last 3 or 4 seasons, where the Southeast Division winner was decided on the last day or two of the season -- with the winner getting the third seed and the loser missing the playoffs in 9th.

I'm guessing that there will be 3 or 4 teams in the West who will have more points and will be more deserving of a playoff spot than that number of teams in the East. If playoff spots were determined according to league rather than conference / division -- i.e., if the top 16 teams secured the 16 playoff spots -- then the East would probably only secure about 6 of those 16 spots this year. The East has soooo many mediocre teams this year.

Well, as we say down home, if dogs had saws, there would be no telephone poles left.