Ottawa Senators: Low Hanging Fruit

The Ottawa Senators have not had the best possible offseason. They are a rebuilding team but signed a competent but unproven goalie (ask the Leafs how that works out for your draft pick), they hired another first-time NHL coach who will keep the seat warm for Bryan Murray for at least a few months, and they are still owned by Eugene Melnyk.

But could things get worse? Sure, look at the image above. They can always get worse.

In what other Canadian city would the local junior team pre-empt the NHL team’s game? Seriously, does anywhere know where that would happen because I can’t be bothered to look since I can’t imagine it happening. 

The game operations staff, the same people that brought us The Spartan, decided to have the fans participate in selecting a new goal song. Great idea right? Uhhh not quite. The idea was so bad that even Deadspin caught wind of it. Even Jets fans know better than to allow any association with Nickelback to stain their franchise. You can vote for Nickelback here. A special shoutout to Joann-Marie Pollard for being so committed to having Nickelback win.

Reebok jumped the gun and an alert fan at the team store at HSBC Arena leaked the Ottawa Senators’ heritage third to Icethetics. I understand that the original Ottawa professional hockey franchise that has no relation whatsoever to the current Senators wore this jersey and that the Maple Leafs love to glom onto available history as well (see: Marlies, Toronto). However, back then the O stood for the chance that their opponents had to win. This one stands for the hope that the Senators will have on most nights or the odds that Bryan Murray gets fired or the likelihood that Eugene Melnyk will say something not stupid. Basically, it’s a punchline. But then again, maybe that’s what they’re honouring for their 20th anniversary.

TSN’s Dave Hodge is a new addition to Twitter and he is either still unsure of how it works or is the savviest practioner of the Tweeting Arts in a while. The Ottawa Senators have few high quality NHLers at this point. The full list is as follows:

Spezza has the eighth most points in the NHL among centres over the past five seasons. If you go by points per game he’s seventh. If you add in all players he drops to a pathetic 16th overall. If he wants out, then the bright side would be that he could in theory bring in a number of assets that could prove valuable to their rebuild. After all, look at what Bryan Murray did the last time he had a disgruntled star that was demanding a trade. Oh.