FIVE QUICK THOUGHTS
-We’ll always have opening night, right?! To those of you that decided 10:00 PM was a little late to stay up on a school, night…you made the right choice. This was a debacle from the moment the puck was dropped and certainly the ugliest of Ottawa’s five straight losses. Disjointed offence, chaotic defending, turnovers all over the ice and a truly unpleasant performance in goal. A smouldering pile of hot garbage of a hockey game. Great jerseys though. The Senators sit last in the North Division and last in the entire National Hockey League.
-In his post-game remarks, DJ Smith mentioned a couple of times that there are some players in the lineup that are currently taking their position in the NHL for granted. And followed that up with something along the lines of, they’ll have to give some other guys a chance to prove they want it more. There are any number of ways a statement like that can be taken but it will be interesting to see what kind of line up shuffling they do ahead of Wednesday’s game. Would imagine it’s limited to the players that are already on the road trip though. If someone like Colin White can’t get into a game after an effort like that, it’s just never going to happen for him. Save us, Colin White!
-Players as good as Thomas Chabot don’t struggle for long. But he would be the first one to tell you that the way he has started this season hasn’t been anywhere near his usual standard. It’s hard to tell exactly what is going on but it does seem like teams are targeting Chabot a little bit more than usual and at the same time, he’s trying to do a little too much. It’s pretty easy to forget that it was a good 300 days without competitive hockey of any kind. Chabot just seems like he just isn’t quite up to speed yet. The scary thing is Ottawa’s defence was already going to struggle even with Thomas Chabot at his usual standard. After that early first period gaffe, Chabot seemed to settle down a little bit.
-Great save. Great save. Yikes. That’s been the Matt Murray experience so far. Feels like he’s regularly making really solid saves and then letting in soft ones. That’s how he opened his last start against the Jets and it was the same story against the Canucks. It’s not that the goal itself was bad but the original point shot has to be stopped clean. Yea Derek Stepan might have been tripped and sure, Austin Watson bobbled what should have been an easy clear but still. The point shot should be stopped cleanly. Stopping pucks cleanly proved to be an issue all night. Certainly should have had the fourth one too. Five, six and seven were just salt in the wound. Plenty of time for Murray to figure it out. Four years actually.
-The Senators haven’t said much about Tim Stützle’s lingering minor injury but there was an interesting clip during the second period last night that caught my eye. After missing a couple shifts in the first period, TSN showed a clip of what looked like Stützle flexing his left knee. Could be nothing except you’ll recall that the Stützle himself mentioned that it was something that happened at the World Juniors. And while I couldn’t find the specific play, there are references on Twitter to Stützle favouring his knee after a collision in the tournament opening game against Finland. He also took a kneeing penalty in the second period of that game, with the same left knee. He seems to be skating just fine by the way but sort of wonder if that might be where the issue is. And yes, I did spend most of last night’s game re-watching Germany/Finland.
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