Sens Show Their True Colours in Loss to Leafs... Red with Failure

While much has been made of how poorly the Toronto Maple Leafs’ will fare this season by yours truly following their pre-season-opening 5-0 defeat against the Ottawa Senators, little has been said of the Sens and their chances... which are really only slightly better.

"Roosters are red by definition! I never had a chance!"

The Battle of Ontario got evened up on Wednesday, with the Leafs gaining some measure of revenge with a 4-1 victory, just one day after dropping an egg worthy of only the most rank chicken you can think of, worse than even that Red Rooster gimmick from out of the WWF back in the 1980s... and that was pretty bad. Terry Taylor must have spit in Vince McMahon’s coffee once upon a time or something.

Still there’s little point breaking down a nothing game that clearly meant more to Toronto than Ottawa. Toronto had gotten embarrassed a night earlier and had a point to prove, whereas the Sens had already proven theirs... that, all things being equal, they are better than Toronto. Unfortunately for Ottawa, most other teams in the NHL are as well and the Sens can ill afford to become complacent after beating one of the league’s lower-tier teams.

Simply put, the Sens aren’t good enough to get by on talent alone. I may have just channelled Kurt Russell’s Herb Brooks, so my apologies. Still, how else do you explain Alex Kovalev? Everyone keeps on saying he is one of the most skilled guys on the entire planet, but all I see is a guy who went pointless over a stretch of 12 games following the Olympic break last year. He wasn’t snubbed by the Russian Olympic men’s hockey team. Russia just had a fortune teller in its back pocket, or, more likely: tapes of his entire overrated 16-season career.

The same goes for Jason Spezza, or “The Spez Dispenser” as I like to call him for his playmaking ability and his uncanny resemblance to Beeker from The Muppets. Spezza is one of the premier talents in the league and is most definitely more valuable than Kovalev for the simple reason that he brings it more often. But that’s like saying Fozzie is funnier than Sam the Eagle just because he tries to tell jokes every once in a while. Waka, waka, waka.

"Fan abuse is one thing... This is just mean!"

 

Spezza’s supposed summer trade request notwithstanding, he is the Sens’ key to success. If captain Daniel Alfredsson is the heart of the team (he is), Spezza is the aorta. If he’s able to do his job, the team will make the playoffs. If he isn’t, which is more likely, bad things will happen, starting with the team crashing violently like a late Ray Emery on his way to the airport. Say what you want about Emery, at least he lived up to his potential. Granted, it may have been as a trouble-making cancer in the dressing room, but the point stands.

Meanwhile, when defenseman Sergei Gonchar got signed, the move was applauded as it finally gave the Senators a superstar on the back-end. Obviously, fans’ memories are so short they can’t recall the likes of Wade Redden (before he took a bite out of Snow White’s Big poison Apple), Zdeno Chara (before assistant general manager Peter Chiarelli jumped ship en route to the Boston Bruins, using his 6’9” frame as a raft), Andrej Meszaros (before he got to thinking he was better than he was only to get traded to the talent wasteland that was the Tampa Bay Lightning), Anton Volchenkov, and Chris Phillips. With Volchenkov following the green all the way to New Jersey (“green” being money, not the stench) to play for the Devils this off-season, Phillips is all that remains of that superstar-laden corps of 2005-2006. 

Now all that the Sens have? Filip Kuba, who is injured, the up-and-coming Erik Karlsson, who may be due for a sophomore slump, Chris Campoli, who wasn’t defensively responsible enough to play for the defenseless New York Islanders, Matt Carkner, who is career minor-leaguer, and Brian “The Blond Bust” Lee. Oh, yeah, and Gonchar, who is 36 and counting and is as much a liability to the team as unpaid student loans are to a Harvard Medical School drop-out. Thi is the defense that is supposed to insulate Brian Elliot, who is still so unproven that during the playoffs he had to hand the goaltending reins over to Pascal “The Transparent One” Leclaire???

The main difference between the Sens and the Leafs is that Ottawa has big-name talent. Unfortunately, that big-name talent isn’t very effective, and until they buckle down and come together two things are abundantly clear: the Sens won’t make the playoffs, and future Battles of Ontario will play out much like these past two pre-season games.