FIVE QUICK THOUGHTS
-Decent effort. Kept the game close. Just didn’t get the result they were looking for. It is becoming a little bit of a broken record for the Ottawa Senators. Last year, this team found a way to win an absurd amount of one goal games. This season it feels like they’re never really in them. Despite having a lead at the half way- point, being tied for about six and a half minutes in the third period and being down just one late, at no point did it cross my mind that the Senators might win the game. Either I’m broken or they are. I suspect it’s a little bit of both.
-He’d probably want two of the three goals back but this was a decent effort from Mike Condon. “Decent effort” seems to be the nicest thing I can say about any part of the organization right now. He was shelled in the first period, stopping all 20 shots the Bruins launched on net. It was the type of first period that made you think Condon might be in for one of those 70 shot nights that Ron Tugnutt faced against these same Boston Bruins while in a Quebec Nordiques uniform. In what was a perfect microcosm of the Senators season, despite doing some things right, Condon let in awful goal in the third period with the game on the line.
-If anybody sees Erik Karlsson will you please let him know that we are looking for him, we’re worried about him and we miss him tremendously? To put it simply, watching Erik Karlsson is painful right now. It’s like that for the entire team obviously but it’s especially difficult when you’re watching a player that as recently as 7 months ago, was the best hockey player on the planet. Beyond just the obvious physical limitations he’s dealing with, it’s clear that his head just isn’t in it. At all. This isn’t about blaming Karlsson for what has gone wrong this year but he’s the only player capable of fixing it on his own. And he is nowhere close to that level these days. Karlsson has earned some slack considering that he has carried this team in the past and that he probably rushed himself back into the line up but he clearly just doesn’t have it right now.
-You might have missed it but yesterday was a huge day in the history of the Ottawa Senators. Even if it didn’t really feel that way. As expected, the NCC announced that they have reached an agreement with the RendezVous LeBreton group related to the development of LeBreton Flats and now it will be up to John Ruddy and his partners to secure the required financing. It’s a development that will change the face of the Nation’s Capital and finally move the Senators into a downtown rink, perhaps as early as 2022. Yet even as significant as today was, it still feels like the uncertainty on how this is all going to play out combined with the lingering cloud of shit stirred up by Eugene Melnyk during his Parliament Hill tantrum put a damper on what really was a watershed moment for the franchise. And this 50 second video produced by a Toronto PR firm probably isn’t going to fix that.
-Career-long Ottawa Senator tough guy Chris Neil was honoured during a stoppage in play in the first period in what felt like an insufficient tribute for a fan favourite. That they were even honouring Chris Neil last night wasn’t really promoted all that much until the day of and in general, it seemed like the whole idea may have been thrown together pretty quickly. It’s also worth noting that the organization already had a ceremony for Chris Neil for his 1000th game. The Ring of Honour at the top of the Canadian Tire Centre has just one member so far but maybe they’ll consider adding Chris Neil up there somewhere down the line. Or maybe just give him a spot on the fourth line for the rest of the year.
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