Happy Love Day, Sens friends!
Don’t just sit there drinking your Chef Lonelyheart’s Soup for One cold straight out of the can while wiping away tears away with old issues of Mademoiselle that you took out of your neighbor’s recycling bin! NO, JOIN US, on this game previewdventure! Okay, so Love Day finds our Senators in the Fort Lauderdale area (what am I made of looking at a map of Florida in another window to see if Fort Lauderdale and Tampa Bay are even remotely close to each other?) to take on the I’m just going to lay it on the table, incredibly disappointing Tampa Bay Lightning. What? They are. That is a good team on paper that stinks right there.

I personally think that the hockey world was little quick to hand genius medallions to Guy Boucher and IM GOING TO SAY IT Steve Yzerman. Sometimes I wonder, what did Yzerman do to win all that praise so fast besides be an incredible, incredible hockey player in his day? He put together a gold medal winning Olympic hockey team. Which definitely earns a “THX BRO!” but it does come with a “I played NHL 98 too and can put together a pretty good all star team myself” asterisk. GMing an NHL team with a cap looks way harder. What else? He resigned Steve Stamkos? What is this, the 36^th annual DOI OBVIOUSLY DO THAT AWARDS (AKA The DOIBVIES) Am I player hating too hard? I don’t know. Let’s move on to Guy Boucher. This guy who was in the Jack Adams discussion last year when he took the most boring thing about hockey, the trap system, to new and more boring heights. Congratulations about that. Oh…and he has had his system completely exposed since a trip to the conference finals. This exposé has already lead to a lot of discussion of Guy Boucher getting fired. That was fast. Mind you it would be awesome if he did get fired because then our divisional rivals in Montreal would be forced to hire him thanks to his name being Guy Boucher because media scrums and life is precious and God and The Bible. Oh brother.
Now, just because Im hatehatehating all up in this place, doesn’t mean the Sens are assured a win. No, no, no, like I said, this team is perplexing in its mediocrity. I’m not saying they are Vancouver Canucks deep but you cant keep a team with some of those names on it above 5 hundo? And its not like they are on some “they’re good but they don’t have any chemistry together” that’s typically reserved for the NY Rangers, this is a team that nearly went to the cup final last year. Seems like the more we know the less we know with this here caper. One thing I do know is that when you have Old Man Dwayne Rollerblades as your starter in net with Mathieu Garon, a goaltender who’s never been able to acquire a starting role backing up the 42 year old guy, nothing could possibly go wrong.

What does this all mean?

I like posting.

Oh, also, though I keep making mention that Tampa Bay has a better team than they show in the standings, they are by no means elite, but simply better than they appear. As I said there are some NAMES on this roster but if you look beyond your Stamkoseses,St.Louisi and LesCavaliers (I believe those are all proper pluralisations) their forwards’ output drops off to Kaspars Daugavins-like numbers. IfOttawacan shut down the top guys (easy right? Just you know, stop Stamkos from being able to score every single game and stop Martin St. Louis from being one of the fastest, most hardworking forwards in the league, you have to like their chances.

Speaking of big names scoring goals…

The last few games Ottawahas played you see goals coming from Alfredsson, Spezza, Phillips (!?), Karlsson, Michalek. Awesome, awesome work guys. Take a knee, play with your game gears for a bit while I talk to the others…Okay, so, the rest of you guys, if you could ALSO score a goal or three, the Senators would be winning a lot more games. Look at that Edmontongame, twasnt a blow out could have been different if the go-to guys weren’t leaned on so hard. Secondary scoring is likely what the Sens are going to have to depend on if they want to have a second half of the season even remotely close to as successful as the first. Tonight is no exception.

Greg Anderchuck starts in net for Ottawa while Mathieu (French for Matthew..the language of love, hon, hon, hon) Garon gets the nod for Tampa.

Enjoy the game!…because the next one aint on TV Considering today is Love Day (aka North American Dinner and a Movie night), you’d think they’d cut their losses and black this game out and broadcast the Florida one…oh well, I guess that’s why I get paid the BIGGEST bucks to write these posts.

Anyway, Love you.