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

Bad habits just won’t go away – Senators

 Expectations can create resentments? Yep. Especially those darned unfulfilled ones. So when you’re the Ottawa Senators – the new golden child of the National Hockey League’s collective media as well as the club’s jacked and re-juiced fan base – and you watch what came about during the team’s last two

Fresh Fish in The NHL’s Atlantic

 Last season the gun was jumped by this corner in regard to the ever-evolving Atlantic Division. Sure, the thing was evolving but not evolving as rapidly as we’d thought and forecasted. The young ones on the block – the Ottawa’s, Buffalo’s, and Detroit’s were on the move, but only incrementally.

Hey Tampa, this wasn’t supposed to happen

 Cap-shmap. So here we are in the era of the great equalizer, aka the National Hockey League salary cap. In a very great way, the salary cap was intended more for restriction than anything else. To be more precise – restrictive to any kind of dynasty. In no way whatsoever

Will upsets continue in NHL’s ‘second’ round?

 On to Round 2. Or is it Round 1? Under the new-look National Hockey League, take your pick. This corner went a true-blue 5-3 in its qualifying round selections, and now we’re set to stumble around blindly in the dark with daring predictions for the next round. (Whatever you want