These are exciting times for our Ottawa Senators: in a playoff spot despite spending less money on player salaries than my friends’ ball hockey team does on t-shirts. Jason Spezza and Erik Karlsson legitimate contenders for league MVP. A brash young net minder ready to win some games and run for mayor, though not necessarily in that order. What’s more, Ottawa has more prospects projected to be top six players than they’ve had, well, pretty much ever.

Here’s the thing: 1) a rebuild that delivers a solid window of contention requires more than one great draft, because most draft picks never work out, and 2) there are fates worse than being a truly terrible team. Just ask the Toronto Maple Leafs.

The danger with prospects is that before they ever make it to the NHL we have a tendency to look at them exclusively through the lens of their potential. What’s their upside? Their absolute ceiling? Somewhere in there the most likely scenario for their development is lost. In the rush of enthusiasm, players and, I think, management, would rather put all their chips on black and fantasize about the big win.

Mika Zibanejad projects as a really great top six player. By that I mean a 20 goal scorer with a solid two-way game and some edge. He has upside, sure, but he slots in best as a complimentary player. In other words, Jason Spezza he’s not.

Ditto for Stefan Noesen. Murray clearly saw something in this kid that others didn’t, as he used a mid-to-late round first on him when he was projected to go in the second round. And he’s having a really nice season with the Plymouth Whalers. But again, he’s a Mike Fisher type. We’ll love him, but he’s not single-handedly winning us any games.

Matt Puempel is a different type of player, a pure scorer, but he’s had terrible concussion problems while playing for the Pete’s. He’s either going to score a lot of goals in the NHL or never make it there.

Then there are your prospects who project as third liners, like Jakob Silfverberg and Andre Petersson. You need guys like this, but we’re talking Nick Foligno types who will spend their time in Ottawa on the edge of top six duty.

Finally, you have your one dimensional players. Mark Stone has proven he can dominate lesser leagues but I’m skeptical can transition a power forward game to the NHL while lacking skating and size. I think Nikita Filatov plays on the moon these days.

Don’t get me wrong: together, these are the types of players that make up the heart and soul of a team, and I’m thrilled to have them. They constitute the kind of depth Ottawa’s lacked forever. But they aren’t cornerstones to build a championship around. With Ottawa unable to attract top end free agent talent, or rightly disinterested in going after the Brad Richards style contracts, you’re left with something of a nightmare scenario: a team forever on the bubble, hoping to sneak into the playoffs and go on a run, and years from being able to launch another rebuild.

This becomes especially easy to imagine when you see Spezza and Michalek exiting their peak years, Alfredsson retired, Phillips in the third year of his puzzling contract, and so on.

A rebuild is something that comes along once in a decade or so, and you have to get it right if you want to win a cup. We’ve got a team worthy of our support as fans, who are fun to watch and completely likeable. But I fear that Ottawa didn’t move themselves any closer to the ultimate goal of winning a cup.

I’ll be as excited as the next guy when this team lines up for puck drop in game one of the playoffs this year. I listened to a Leafs podcast the other day and you should hear them talk about their team about to miss the seventh straight year of playoffs. At this point they’d probably give up five first round picks just to experience some playoff hockey, even if they get swept. It’s a good time to be a Sens fan. But I can’t help but think that last year’s sell-off didn’t go far enough, or didn’t extend to this year, and we cashed it all in for one Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid moment in the first round of the playoffs. (The Bolivian Army will be played by the Boston Bruins.)

It’s hard to think this way when the team is so much fun to watch. Let me put it another way: if in the depths of last year, when the team didn’t win a game in February, if I had asked you if you would prefer a prospect like Nail Yakupov or a free pass to the first round to roll the dice with this lineup against whoever you met, what would you say?

Just read an interesting article about Robin Lehner wherein questions about his attitude and maturity were raised, and couldn’t help but think that it said more about Ottawa and the types of players it prefers than anything about the 21 year old netminder.

James has raised an interesting point in the past: when you look at effective goaltenders, they do seem to be a little bit unconventional (to put it diplomatically) and certainly intensely competitive. Some of the best goaltenders in the league are plagued by off-ice issues from substance abuse to public spats with management and the fanbase to alienation of teammates. Patrick Roy, Ed Belfour, Dominik Hasek, Tim Thomas even Miikka Kiprusoff – some of the league’s best seem like some of the hardest to engage with in a civilized dialogue. Ilya Bryzgalov, Ken Dryden and Jonas Hiller seem at least quirky and unconventional. It’s as if goaltenders stand in direct contradiction to the bland cliches to which we’ve becomed accustomed in post-game interviews. And this bears out when you remember that Ottawa’s best goaltending came from Ray Emery.

The point being that maybe there’s a direct relationship between an unconventional personality and being very good at standing in front of 85mph slapshots. It’s not a constant; it’s just not always a bad thing. Maybe it’s why we see so many goaltenders simply isolated from media rather than banished to another league, and why we have different expectations of goaltenders than we do of forwards.

What I suspect is that Ottawa likes its players a bit vanilla. Even though it’s one of the biggest teams in the league, and features players like Chris Neil and Zenon Konoptka (who is tied for the league lead in fighting majors) I couldn’t imagine Ottawa taking on players like, say, Steve Ott or Brendan Morrow. Opinionated, cocky, confident: Dallas has an entirely different culture in their dressing room than Ottawa. And I wonder how much of that has to do with the media and the fans.

Which is why I’m wary of our boilerplate tendencies to insist that a goaltender’s weirdness is a kink in his game to be ironed out. When Robin Lehner publicly disagrees with being sent down to the AHL, when he says he’s going to “hunt” Craig Anderson, even when he Tweets “;)”, questions arise about a supposed sense of entitlement.

My question is: how on earth are these things considered detrimental to a goalie’s game? There is a universal rule in sports that so long as you keep winning you can basically be an awful person and everyone will look the other way. But beyond that: what’s wrong with having a cog in the team’s machine that is skewed a little sideways, especially at such a game-changing position? We have our soft-spoken nice guy representatives in Alfie, Spezza, Phillips, Gonchar, Kuba, and a handful of young guys who are enthusiastic but well-versed in the necessity to say absolutely nothing in interviews. Ottawa needs a little bit of color.

We all thought it was awesome when Emery was smiling like a madman during that Buffalo brawl (during which plenty of Sens players stood around a did nothing), and we exiled him for the same tendencies only months later. He seemed to tap into that same well of resolve when he went through an extremely arduous hip procedure and made an improbable return to the NHL. What keeps him from seeming like an easy guy is what keeps him in the game.

Let’s hope we continue to see Lehner’s intensity (Lehntensity?) as an advantage rather than something that needs to be wrung from his personality. The goalie graveyard is littered with nice guys. Ottawa isn’t taking anyone by surprise anymore; on the first day of the playoffs they’re going to meet an absolutely determined higher seed who has studied and practiced for the sole intention of destroying the Senators in as few games as possible. There are going to be games where we’ll need a cocky, entitled, player to put the team on his back and will them to victory.

Photo Courtesy of Hopes & Dreams

Pete Mused: 

Okay, so there is a ton of buzz right now about Karlsson’s worthiness or unworthiness for the Norris trophy. Basically there’s two sides of this debate, the ravenous, passionate fan-based perspective and the stern serious, established hockey journalist perspective. Seems like there’s no middle ground with this one. Not sure why it’s so devisive? I think it’s because he’s just so young and cute and God don’t you just want to cradle him sometimes? Wait are we still talking about Varada’s new kitten?

Here’s my take. Karlsson absolutely deserves this award and the only reason the media won’t give it to him is the complete absence of an objective stat that adquately convey’s his contribution. Seriously, people claim he’s only a power play specialist but Filip Kuba has more power play goals while Campbell and Suter are close in PP points. He’s a defensive liability yet he leads the league in takeaways. He isn’t responsible in his own end yet he leads a resurgent team in ice time. Don’t blame him if the talking heads don’t have an all encompassing stat to crystallize the concept of defensive hockey. It’s not his adorable little fault you big jerks!

Also Jason Spezza’s tires are getting pumped for a Hart nom, plausible?

James chanced to Imagineer:

I like my Erik Karlsson Norris discussion like I like my mainstream Ottawa Senators coverage. Largely dismissed and underdog as shit.
As a fan, I like all eyez on other teams. SO FAR SO GOOD BTW!

BREAKING: Brian Burke just realized he forgot to TiVO Pawn Stars last night. Updates to follow!

Anyway, as I was saying, it’s all good, keep the attention on our rivals diarrheaing all over themselves. Up until recently, a lot of the coverage outside of the Sensphere of Ottawa’s surprising season has been more about streaks, holes in the lineup, how they will cool down eventually, more than how they are just #winning (too soon?) but that’s fine. I am happy being a fan of a team that a lot of people gloss over that has snuck itself into 5^th in the East (with a lot of games in hand but still).
The same sentiment goes for all the fronting on Erik Karlsson’s season. Though I will admit I was very surprised to read in a recent Greg Wyshynski article that EK was actually the favorite to win the Norris in a USA Today hockey writers poll. That said, I’ve been reading  a number of pieces about why Our Special Little Guy should NOT be considered for the Norris trophy (including 90% of said Wyshynski article). The reasons people are giving are by no means crazy and to tell you the truth, I’m fine with all of it. It is very win-win, he loses the Sens save a little bit of money on his pending contract if he wins the Sens have a a 21 year old that just won the frigging Norris on their team! What did that rap man Noteworthy B.F.G. say in his song, “Big Monies, No Problems”? If you ask me my personal thoughts on whether he has earned his way into a nomination, I say without question he has. Here are my admittedly biased reasons why:

On pace for over a point per game
Playing 25+ mins per game (team leading)
With a +15 rating (2^nd highest on team)
Over 20 points ahead of next highest scoring defenseman.
In top ten in ALL NHL scoring (only D man in the top 73 btw)
21 years of age (biggest reason, for me)
Plays for Ottawa Senators. (second biggest reason)

Like YES I GET IT, ERIK KARLSSON IS NOT NIKLAS “ALL THINGS TO ALL MEN AND MAYBE TO ONE LUCKY GAL” LIDSTROM…but I tip the scale in EK’s favor a little bit because of his age, the team he plays for compared to the others in the discussion – I love me my Senators but EK does not have the Ovechkin, Semin and Backstrom guys to feed passes to like Green did, not to mention his ever growing plus rating, the massive point differential he holds and just his general all around improvement over last year’s -30 performance.
Will these points (no pun intended) win him the trophy? Mmmm probably not, I could see it going to Lidstrom, the Meryl Streep of Norris trophy winning and like Streep, deservedly so. But like the impressiveness of Lidstrom’s age, it’s Karlsson’s 21 years that really blows my mind. On pace for over 80 points in only his second FULL NHL season. Wow. Does he kill penalties as much as Shea Weber? No, but does Shea Weber have 51 assists? Different defensemen…different dietary needs! Anyway, it’s a special season he’s having. I’m too in awe of it and I watch almost every single game he plays (especially if that delightful Denis Potvin is involved!). I’m too close to him to make a proper call…so….?…Celebrate the moments of our lives?

As for Spezza for Hart talk…Jeez, this is a new one…I haven’t given much thought to this. From my perspective, the touchstone moment was during what shall be known as The Season Of Turds (2010-2011) when Spezza went down with an injury and missed the entire month of February. Ottawa won just one motherfucking game with Spezza out of the line up.  He returned a man possessed. He started tearing it UP and hasn’t really slowed down since. It’s become more clear this year that as Spezza goes, so the team goes. When he doesn’t put up points the team basically doesn’t win. Good thing he scores all the frigging time. Now, that’s a valuable player. It’s a question of how that value stacks up league wide.
Haters, who allegedly gon’ hate, said that Spezza would flounder without his former wingman Heatley but losing Dirtbag Dany could prove to be the best thing to happen to Spezza as a player. He has worked hard to round out his game and has become heir apparent to the Sens captaincy when Daniel Alfredsson retires in 2024.
Now, back to the whole, Spezza: good, Hart: ? thing. Well, if there was a Hart trophy for each teaaaam…yeah he’s a lock. There aint one of those, save for Your Draglam Salt: Ottawa’s Best And Saltiest Salt Hardest Working Sen Award, so when the discussion gets league wide it’s pretty tricky. With Gino Malkin’s Mario Lemieux-like rushes and leading the Pens in this non-Crosby paradigm, I think he is the current favorite. There is also a ton of hype around Claude Giroulx. Hype that extends down to the United States, which is both important when it comes to voting and something Spezza doesn’t get to enjoy. Finally, there is the question of whether the voters will be hypnotized by the gaudy number of goals Steven Stamkos of the Lightening, who stiiiiiink, is bound to put up (currently projected at over 60, YIKES!). Actually, now that I think on it, if he can continue his strong play into April Spezza’s for sure in the discussion. Can any of you beauty readers think of some other players who could be considered ahead of Spezza or should we just break into the hockey hall of fame now, steal the trophy, burn “WTYKY LUVZ U” into his lawn, leave the trophy on his front step, ring the doorbell and then hide in the bushes until the police arrive?

Brian Lee for Matt Gilroy. Clearly Ottawa is now a Cup contender. They were also considering a deal for a bale of hay, which would have been more mobile than Matt Carkner.

And so ended the definition of anticlimactic programming, as TSN’s entire synergistic strategy – to become about hockey at all times – exploded in their face. Using their “DAN-DAN-DAN / DAN-DAN-DAN!” sound effect every time there was a trade was adorable, especially when the trades were THIS BAD. I think Bob MacKenzie was playing Jet Pack Joyride on his Blackberry.

Most surprising of course were the teams that really, really should have done something, or at least more, and who sat pat. I’m not talking about the contenders, though I am surprised that Philadelphia didn’t do something else, if only because they feel a compulsion to constantly trade and sign players. I’m talking mostly about Edmonton, Minnesota, Montreal, Carolina. I can understand Columbus not trading Rick Nash, because they absolutely must get that trade right. But why on earth, say, Buffalo wouldn’t take whatever the hell they could for their army of pending UFAs is totally beyond me. Maybe after Nashville gave up a first for Paul freaking Gaustad they started asking for too much. That’s like Ottawa getting a first round pick for Chris Neil.

Anyway, I mostly like that Ottawa didn’t do much, though again, without those delicious second round picks – the perfect trade deadline resource – what were they going to do anyway? Turris is Ottawa’s big mid-season acquisition, and it’s mostly worked out. Ben Bishop is here now too, so Ottawa got taller I guess.