Sens Game Report - 10/5/2006 - Toronto @ Ottawa

"The Balance in the Bank:

Final Score: Toronto’s revenge, 6-0
Ottawa Goals: ummm
Making Sens: McAmmond for PM
Lacking Sens: Alfie, Spezza, Heatley, Gerber, Schaefer, others
It was over when: Kilger’s second goal occurred when Gerber left the puck behind the net instead of wheeling it around to Meszaros in the corner and Steen threw it out to him for the tap in. That was the dagger in the heart.
It was definitely over when: Yikes, this one just got ugly as Tucker scores a second and the Sens don’t seem to care.
Message in a Molson bottle: Complacency loses hockey games – write that down. There is absolutely no excuse to lose a lesser talented team that outplays you, so I’m sure Coach Murray will turn the dressing room into a Jerry Springer set tonight. Interestingly enough, I’d imagine the players will avoid the flying chairs as much as they did the corners tonight. Just a flat out lazy effort from the goaltender on out. The highlight of the night happened during the second intermission when Ron MacLean accidentally called new Penguins owner Jim Balssilie "a hockey gay, oops, I meant hockey guy." Whoops.
Courtesy Boxscore: http://sports.espn.go.com/nhl/boxscore?gameId=261005014
Next Game: Saturday night hosting Buffalo

Grab a Timmy’s double double and listen to what really happened:

The Good
- Not much to be fond of tonight, but I’m still really happy with the play of Dean McAmmond. The problem is he isn’t getting nearly enough time on the third line, but isn’t quite good enough to crack the top two lines. His speed is unbelievable, and guess what – he backchecks like a champ. I like him a lot.

The Bad
- The play of Martin Gerber left a lot to be desired. I’m not playing the blame game here because nobody carried their weight, but where Gerber kept us in the game Wednesday night, he didn’t do anything to help our cause tonight.
- Spezza and Heatley were back to the floating and errant passes. Funny how when these guys are good, they’re really good, but when they’re bad, they’re absolutely awful.
- Alfredsson is starting to irk me a bit. We need to see something from our leader Saturday night because he must still have the baby blues right now. He’s usually the guy on our team that makes his linemates better, but I’ll go as far to say that he has held Fisher and Schaefer back a little bit in the first two games.
- Peter Schaefer negates two powerplays in the first period by twice taking a penalty of his own. Down 2-0 with enough time left in the first, we needed a powerplay goal, but Schaefer ensured that we didn’t have the man advantage for long enough to make this a game. Toronto didn’t seem to mind.

The Ugly
- Ugly? The whole game was ugly. As a team, this is one to forget. I’d hate to be at practice tomorrow, that’s for sure.
- The broadcasting of Bob Cole and Harry Neal is off to a God-awful start, much like they finished last season. It’s not so much their love for Toronto so much as their ignorance about everything else. They spent a good 40-50 seconds of play talking about how Michael Peca’s forechecking makes him a great defensive player. The poor coverage is magnified when you put the same teams up against TSN on back to back nights. The latter gives great analysis, the former gives a mindless and sometimes childish play by play.
- Darcy Tucker is the worst skater in the NHL.

Overtime
- The not-so-private love affair between Darcy Tucker and Mats Sundin has to be becoming a cause for concern for any Conservative Leafs fan. It is one thing to congratulate a teammate after a key powerplay goal, it is a whole different thing to neck each other in front of 19,000+ fans. Somewhere in the TSN studio, Belinda said to Tie, “how come you never hold me like that?” http://sports.yahoo.com/nhl/photo;_ylt=AlkNTZPNU.krtVeivE2gAaBivLYF?slug=f9f3bdbd266843aaad67cfc44125018b.nhl_maple_leafs_senators_hockey_thx103&prov=ap
- So Spezza goes 13-5 in the faceoff circle so clearly I don’t know what I’m talking about on that one. We get smoked in the faceoff circle last night and win, we hold our own tonight and get embarrassed.
- Redden and Meszaros cash out at a combined minus -5. And McCabe was a plus-2. Ouch.
- The McGrattan v Belak fight left a lot to be desired. Belak is no Domi.
- I’m not ready to have Eaves on the top PP unit instead of Alfredsson. I don’t feel like that unit is dangerous enough to score over 20% of the time. Sticking Eaves in front of the net is neat and all, but I still think putting Alfie up there gives us a far better chance at scoring with regularity and it leaves the blue collar goals to the second unit.
- I still miss Chara, as does Baton Rouge as they have apparently seen sales of BBQ ribs plummet. Sell your stocks immediately and put all your money into baked beans.