Senators reach agreement to build new rink downtown

 It came down to the final hour, but the Ottawa Senators are on their way to seeing a new arena being built at LeBreton Flats in the downtown core. The new facility won’t see shovels hit the ground for quite a while as several hurdles need to be dealt with

Biggest Needs of the Senators in the Offseason

 The Ottawa Senators are approaching a critical offseason after failing to make the playoffs once again. With elevated expectations unmet during the 2023-24 season, significant changes are necessary for the team to become a legitimate contender. This article examines the biggest needs for the Senators in the upcoming offseason, considering

Rink deal in the offing, again

 Nothing like near record setting warm temperatures to inspire thoughts of hockey, but here we are. The long summer is making way for fall in stubborn “I’m not going anywhere yet” fashion as the gauge closes in on 30 C. At the same time, all 32 National Hockey League clubs

Young Blood Could Dictate Success in Ottawa, Montreal and Toronto

 If you’ve read this corner of the page with any regularity over the past year or two or six or eight, you’ll recognize my three favourite centres for topic and discussion – Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa. Reasoning here is pretty simple: Eastern Ontario is predisposed to root for one or

Questions and queries surround the NHL’s East

 From shakeups to shakedowns, it hasn’t exactly been a quiet summer in the National Hockey League’s Eastern Conference. Your Ottawa Senators added in the way of veteran help (as advertised), your Toronto Maple Leafs shook up that targeted, beleaguered blueline, and your Montreal Canadiens stuck to due diligence on the

Assessing the Ottawa Senators’ Offseason Moves

 Times are not good for hockey fans in Canada’s capital. This past season, the Ottawa Senators extended their playoff drought to seven years, finishing with a losing record for the sixth time in those seven years. However, general manager Steve Staios has been hard at work this summer trying to

NHL’s Best Draft Happened 21 Years Ago

 It was a weekend to remember at the Gaylord Entertainment Center in Nashville in late June, so many years ago. It was an enormously successful event – that summer’s entry draft – and its impact is still, some how, being felt around the National Hockey League today. It not only

NHL Free Agency conjures Questions in Need of Answers

 By mid-afternoon on an unusually bright and sunny Canada Day (doesn’t it always rain on July 1st?), the National Hockey League was zipping along quite nicely as the free agency period opened with a slew of deals and decisions. The price tag was enormous as teams spent more than $1

Ottawa Hits its (Ull)mark, Draft Day Approaches and the Cup Comes Through Big Time

 It’s June 25th – you know, the heart of summer – and hockey continues to roll. The winter-ish sport enjoyed one of its busiest days during the past 24 hours with ramifications locally and across the continent. Let’s have a look.   BEST FINAL IN YEARS ENDS IN HIGH DRAMA?
Matthew Tkachuk, Courtesy ESPN.com

Panthers’ identity has outcasts dying to grow and bare teeth

 “There is a creature alive today who has survived millions of years of evolution, without change, without logic, it lives to kill. A mindless eating machine, it will attack, it will devour. Anything. It is as if God created the Devil and gave him . . . jaws.”   This

Ottawa’s Off-Season Won’t be Dull

 “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.” • Moms around the globe   Well, if we followed up on the quote, there wouldn’t be a whole heck of a lot to this column then would there? Picking apart the Ottawa Senators’ season is akin to putting the

Panthers Boast What Senators Do Not

 Here are a few words and phrases I collected from print, online and broadcast late Tuesday night and early into Wednesday morning after the Ottawa Senators were shut out (again) by the Florida Panthers. ‘Blueprint for success.’ ‘Playoff-hardened.’ ‘Clutch.’ ‘Smothering.’ ‘Team identity.’ ‘Another level.’ ‘Pack mentality.’ . . . And

NHL’s Dance to the Playoffs isn’t Dull

 Never let a great story go untold, and there are two considerable ones ramping up in the National Hockey League. With exactly four weeks left in the regular season, the NHL has dandy cliffhangers being played out in both the Eastern and Western Conference. But while they’re both enticing, they’re

Tarasenko dealt to Florida

 Vladimir Tarasenko’s stay in Ottawa with the Senators was a short one. The Stanley Cup winning winger was dealt to the Florida Panthers on Wednesday morning for a conditional fourth-round draft pick in 2024 and a third-round pick in 2025. That 2024 pick will be upgraded to a third rounder

What’s the Real Story Senators? Maple Leafs?

 Another sampling of little ideas that just didn’t quite grow into big ones. Minor columns that just couldn’t sprout into big ones. Why not. Have at it and enjoy your week.   HALLOWEEN, OR NOT? The guys on Sportsnet brought this up this week – not that it’s anything new,

NHL trade deadline a pickle for Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto

 Complex and potentially puzzling are a couple of ways to project the upcoming National Hockey League trade deadline for the three Eastern-based Canadian operations. Take any one of the above descriptions and apply it to your favourite Canadian team around these parts if you want, but you can also and

Who’s Your Dance Partner, Edmonton, Vancouver or Winnipeg?

 No need to haul out your best Clarence Darrow suit-and-tie to walk away from the lectern as a winner in this debate: Which Canadian territory holds superiority over the other – the NHL’s West or the NHL’s East? It’s as obvious as an Alberta slaughterhouse. Carrying the league’s hottest team

Curing the Blue Monday Blues

 So get this – did you realize we just passed, what is considered, the most depressing day in the calendar year? The third Monday in January is labelled “Blue Monday,” and it has nothing to do with the song by New Order. Nope. The term comes from this ‘makes-sense’ algorithm

Tire Fire Reaches Halfway Point

 Fire the general manager, get stiffed on a first-round draft choice, see a top forward sent to NHL purgatory for half a season, put the torch to the inflammable head coach, reassign your flagging goalie coach, watch a promising and potentially break-out year go up in flames early and often.

Making the Wrong Call on Ottawa

 As most of the NHL’s member clubs approach the halfway point of the season (Ottawa, at 36 played, still has some catching up to do, despite the glut of games the past month), a number of items appear on this week’s agenda. Here’s what’s popping.   DID WE REALLY SAY

Hurry up and Wait, Ottawa

 Most of you are well into your cups as far as New Year’s resolutions. A full three(!) days(!) in(!) . . . which might suggest the gym is now slowly re-entering the rearview mirror, the Haagen-Dazs has been restocked in the freezer and you’ve barked at your kids or dog

Are they listening, Jacques?

 It wasn’t an oil painting. Hell, it wasn’t even a decent watercolour effort. Baby steps though, right? Ottawa’s won back-to-back games under ‘new’ head coach Jacques Martin, and for at least one night (for most of the night anyway) the team that couldn’t-wouldn’t play collective defence if its life depended

In a word – ‘Ugh’

 OK, I’ve got it. If the fabulous brain boxes at The Hockey News ask me to write the Ottawa Senators preview for the 2024-25 campaign, I have the perfect lede: “Cue the broken record. A dismal start doomed the Senators yet again last season, as the club missed the playoffs

Under .500 Again? It’s not all on the Coach

 It’s the justification I just don’t get. Ottawa management, yeah the new group, keeps bringing up the suggestion that sending Senators’ head coach D.J. Smith and his crew packing would just simply be . . . a bad idea. The reason? ‘The players have told us there’s already been far

Playoffs in Ottawa? Might be Asking too Much

 As of this morning, the Ottawa Senators sit seven whopping’ points out of a playoff spot with little real estate ahead of them available for coasting or letdowns or easing off of the pedal. No breaks, and no respites are available. Period. Here we are on December-freakin’-6th and the entire