I had five months to come up with a title and that’s what I went with. Yeesh.
Ya know, the so-called experts have been pretty quick to project doom for our Ottawa Senators.
“This team has been terrible two years in a row”, they remind us. “The worst team in the league and they gave up their four best players”, they proclaim. “Has anyone actually seen Marian Gaborik lately?”, they wonder.
But what those arrogant know-it-alls clearly forgot about is these three games in early-September where our high-end and in some cases overage prospects hammer away on the hapless rookies from Winnipeg and Montreal.
Who’s the expert now?!
Unless you are one of the lucky few that has caught a glimpse of Radek Bonk ripping it up in a summer hockey league somewhere in the city, it’s been five long months since we saw anything even remotely resembling Sens hockey.
Until tonight.
The games mean nothing. The results mean less. The tournament format really doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, if we’re being honest.
But it’s Sens hockey damn it!
The Ottawa Senators kick off the 2019 Rookie Showcase tonight in beautiful Belleville, Ontario. The Winnipeg Jets are their victim.
Ottawa plays Montreal tomorrow night before a rematch with Winnipeg on Monday.
We talked about it earlier this week but these games are big for a handful of guys looking to push for a spot on the NHL roster when the Main Camp opens up later this month.
Logan Brown, Erik Brannstrom, Drake Batherson, Alex Formenton, Josh Norris, Jonathan Davidsson, Vitaly Abramov and Max Veronneau all come into this season thinking they have what it takes to make an NHL roster. Well, Ottawa’s NHL roster anyway.
A strong showing in these three games would be a huge step in the right direction.
Here’s a look at how the Sens will line up for this one.
Formenton-Brown-Batherson
Gruden-Norris-Davidsson
Abramov-Beaudin-Veronneau
Kelly-Kastelic-Sturtz
Brannstrom-Guenette
Bourque-McDonald
Aspirot-Welsh
Hanus
At least five of those defenceman are either completely made up or are contest winners so we’ll see how this goes.
Troy Mann says they also go with twelve forwards and seven defenceman. See- new year, new Sens!
Filly Franchise aka The G00se aka Filip GOATavsson aka Filip Gustavsson gets the start for Ottawa. Joey Daccord gets Saturday’s game while Kevin Mandolese and Mads Sogaard will each play half the game on Monday.
Puck drop tonight is scheduled for just after 7:00 PM.
For those hoping to catch a glimpse of the Sens rookies in action, good news- every game in the tournament will be available on on TSN.ca, the TSN App & TSN Direct.
