FIVE QUICK THOUGHTS
-St. Louis is considered a Stanley Cup contender this season so a one goal lose is nothing to be too devastated about. I thought the Senators played quite well in the first 40 minutes of this game but seemed to fade a bit in the third period. The Blues and Head Coach Ken Hitchcock can lock a game down pretty well so I think that’s part of the reason the Sens looked so weak in the third. Down a goal in the third period you would hope the Senators could find a little more offensive “push”.
-Not sure where it comes from but there seems to be a good amount of hate between the Senators and Blues. They played twice last year and both games got a little chippy and it was more of the same yesterday afternoon. Will be interesting to see how much of that hate carries over to the rematch on Tuesday night.
-Interesting that with his team down a goal, MacLean went to a pairing of Erik Karlsson and Patrick Wiercioch a lot more in the third period. Generating offence is their speciality and while they didn’t do a whole lot of that, they did look relatively comfortable as a defensive pairing. Wiercioch is 7th right now on the Ottawa depth chart so he’s an unlikely partner for Karlsson but he looked pretty good up there when given the opportunity.
-Colin Greening and David Legwand have become targets of criticism in the Twitter world but I thought those two looked pretty good on a line with Bobby Ryan for most of the afternoon. I don’t especially like Ryan playing with those two but I thought he did a pretty good job creating offence off the cycle. Seems like a pretty easy switch to move Chiasson to the Legwand line and Ryan back up to the top line. Ryan is starting to heat up a little bit of late so the time might be right to reunite him with MacArthur and Turris.
-The Daniel Alfredsson retirement is going to be something to watch closely the next little while. Now that Alfie has decided not to play this year, he’s talking to the Senators about the right way to make that retirement announcement. We’ll certainly hear more about this with the Senators in Detroit tomorrow night but the actual retirement may take a little time. Certainly is exciting to know Ottawa wants to play an active role in the announcement.
