Another day of practice for the Ottawa Senators as they lick their wounds after an ugly home ice loss to the Philadelphia Flyers on Tuesday night.
The loss came on the heels of a stretch of five straight games with a point and three consecutive wins. The Senators weren’t exactly setting the world a fire during that stretch but they quickly hit rock bottom with that loss to the Flyers. The team was booed by the fans in attendance and if you listened closely, there was actually a sarcastic “Alfie” chant in the third period.
Certainly wasn’t a pretty one for the Senators.
It doesn’t really get any easier for the Sens either as they’ll close out their five game homestand with a game against the Boston Bruins on Friday night and another afternoon match up against the Columbus Blue Jackets on Sunday afternoon. The Bruins are home to the Jackets tonight so they’ll roll into Ottawa slightly fatigued. Ottawa has to find a way to take advantage of a tired opponent.
The Senators were on the ice for practice yesterday and apparently spent the entire 45 minute skate working on breakouts. Probably a good idea as the Sens have been far too sloppy coming out of their own end this season. No changes in the forward combinations but there was some juggling on the back end which saw Marc Methot rejoin Erik Karlsson on the team’s top pairing.
We’ll see what Paul MacLean and his staff have in store during this afternoon’s practice.
- -Interesting article in the Ottawa Sun last night that featured an interview with Cyril Leeder about all the empty seats at the Canadian Tire Centre this season. Good news is Leeder doesn’t too concerned about the empty seats and suggests that team revenues are actually up early in the season. As I mentioned on Twitter a couple times, the team has cut back on handouts this season and the result has been a ton of extra empty seats. As long as they can avoid performance like the one on Tuesday night, it sounds like the ticket situation isn’t really a big deal. By the way, the lower demand on tickets means some absurdly cheap prices available on Stub Hub. Worth checking out.
- -In case you missed yesterday’s Twitter excitement, there was a fascinating bit of back and forth between Senators goalie Robin Lehner and local singer (girlfriend of goalie Ray Emery) Keshia Chante. Chante was apparently furious over comments Lehner made the other night about Emery’s role in that fight with Holtby. What followed was a hilarious series of quickly deleted tweets from Chante. The good folks at The 6th Sens have a great recap of the evening’s event. Worth a read if you’re looking for a laugh.
The Daily Chirp- Today’s entry comes from a series of interesting tweets from @SteffeG on Twitter, highlighting an interview with Anders Forsberg about the 2009 Entry Draft. Apparently Forsberg was very high on Oliver Ekman-Larsson and tried to convince Bryan Murray to move up and grab the Swedish defenceman. TSN 1200’s Steve Lloyd dug up this article that seems to also hint at OEL. The Senators ended up grabbing Jared Cowen. Ekman-Larsson is currently one of the best defenceman in the game. Wasn’t clear what the asking price would have been but the Sens had two second round picks that year which they used to pick Jakob Silfverberg and Robin Lehner.
