Sens 09 Edition..

Posted 12:41 PM ET | Comments 1

Hello All,

I haven't written a new blog in god knows how long, I would bet it was sometime before the playoffs last year when I went into a deep depression over the Sens second half collapse and sweep at at the hands of the Pens, BUT as always I came out of it and am back to continue putting my thoughts about our Sens down on this blog and I feel especially now we should be putting our blogs in with our (hopefully) temporary lack of a regular blogger...

So down to business, with the first 3 games under the Sens belt, they have roared out the gate with a 1-1-1 start, not terrible, but not great, but most of all I would say fairly expected, I was anticipating this kind of start for the team as I am almost certain it's going to take 15-20 games before this team truly gels under new coach Craig Harstburgh and for the basically brand new defensive core to get a working system in place that was so badly lacking last season. The forwards I'm less concerned about, it's basically the same group with only a couple of new faces and really should work together just fine, I expect and hope to see more from Fisher and Vermette, these should both be 60 point players and I want to see that from them this year, especially as they both have new contracts. I’m hoping to also see a big year from Heatley, he seemed to have a fire lit under him after the world championships and now that he has the A I hope to see some more leadership and see him become more of a complete player. You have to be happy with the play of some of the young guys as well, Foligno looks like a whole different player and has been one of the Sens best players so far, love his power and how he never quite on the play, same with Winchester, this kid looks like he could be a great find!

Now to some of the new faces, as of right now I am super happy with the signings of Ruttu and Smith, Jason Smith is just awesome and gives this team exactly what they were missing, someone who doesn't take any crap and will hammer someone down in front of the net or go right after someone that is taking liberties with one of his teammates, and the best thing about him is he does it all with a smile on his face. Same goes for Ruttu, we always needed this kind of pest who has some reasonable skill and now we have him. It is also starting to look a lot like Tampa got jobbed on the meszaros trade, I like meszaros, but I like Kuba and Picard a lot more, from what I have seen so far, we definitely got the better end of that deal!!!

I'm not going to comment on the games that have already been played, other than I thought the team has been average and is still finding their way, other than game 1 I have been happy with the goaltending and I'm not even going to fan the goalie controversy flames, other than to say that I believe we stick it out with Gerber and treat him like a number 1 goalie, if you look around the league so far many of the top tier goalies have had off nights and allowed soft goals, it happens and we just need to move on and throw our support behind gerber, I think Auld is a fantastic backup, but he has shown in the past that he is not a true number 1.

Well that's it for now, I will be back with regular blogs after games or if something happens I feel like commenting on!!!

Enjoy and please feel free to leave comments!

Mike

Filed Under: Ottawa Senators