A Special Honour for a Groundhog.

As the smoke clears, we drag our asses out of bed this morning, pour our javas and then it suddenly dawns on us..."Holy crap! We lost last night! It's all over! WWWHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!"

I was going to write my year end blog/whine/recap, but we received a great e-mail this morning from Puddleduck, loyal and faithful listener-er to the show and this being a show "by the fans, for the fans", I decided to post his e-mail here on the home page for you all to enjoy. I think it represents the same feelings a lot of Sens fans are feeling this morning. Puddleduck, take it away...

"Hey gents,

It’s Sunday morning, and I’m still pissed. Don’t know what to do with this right now, so … just gotta talk it out, I guess.

Didn’t really have high expectations heading into this match-up with Pittsburgh, had a feeling that we weren’t going to go very deep with the injuries we had right off the get-go and our struggle’s to stay consistent. But oh, if LeClaire had been in net for the whole series and we had a full healthy roster … aahh, forget it. I’m just teasing Shredder at this point …

Not easy to be a Sens fan, is it? All year every article you read gives the team no credit, no matter how hard they work, no matter what they do. According to most mainstream sports media, winning streaks are just flash in the pan deals, losing streaks are when the real team is showing its true colors – feels like you just can’t win some days. Leafers are leafers, so you can’t really go by their hateful comments and vitriol – but the fact is that it’s not just them, it’s everyone. Every article about the series was geared to an easy and early Penguins victory, favored to repeat for the Cup. Sens actually dare to win game one, and the panic sets in – the story isn’t how well the Sens played off the start, but what’s wrong in Pittsburgh, can they fix it, don’t they know it’s just the Sens, you can’t LOSE to these people. No credit at all to a heavily injured team that came to play hard. The spin then becomes the Sens are the evil team trying to take a second Cup away from Sidney Crosby and co., the anointed ones. No matter how dirty and cheap the Pens play, they aren’t called on it; no matter how gritty and resilient the Sens play, they are still the villain. The coverage was slanted from the start to the finish, with every second article giving tips and encouragement to Pittsburgh to pull out of their slump. Add to that the officiating doing everything it can to kill any momentum you build (those time-outs for goal review killed us, in my opinion). Feels like we lost before we even started ... but we gave em’ hell in the meantime. 

I’m proud of our Ottawa Senators team and what they did with what they had this year – everyone said that missing last year’s playoffs and losing Heatley was the death knell for our era and we couldn’t compete with the elite teams anymore. We proved them wrong and found other ways to win. I’m proud of each and every member of this team (well, Kovalev, eeerrr, ummm …) for what they brought to the table this year – this roster has potential galore and I look forward to seeing it healthy and ready to rock for next year …

I am still a proud fan of hockey and the Ottawa Senators – right now I am having trouble with being a National Hockey League fan. If this league does not review how the officiating is done and start making some changes, I may be done as a fan. I may have to save my emotional involvement for a sport with better officiating – fly-fishing for example. With a dozen different camera views and so much attention paid to every detail of the game, how can the number of bad and non calls keep piling up like this? True sport is about creating a level playing field, not what you can get away with. If the cheap shot artists and divers are the ones who are winning Cups and being touted as the heroes, what do you do with that? The refereeing system should be catching and punishing them at every opportunity, trying to bring some honor back to this sport – but it’s not. A day after my team is eliminated may be too soon to say, but I really don’t want to watch any more of the play-offs. I didn’t feel that way before the series started, but the bad taste in my mouth still lingers around this league’s officiating …

I still love the game. My son is starting to play now and that gives our family a good connection to it, but I’m starting to understand why some folks never came back after the lock-out …

Thanks to all three of you for the weekly podcast and the laughs … loved having the forums to vent and share the entire experience of this past year with the whole groundhog crew. Oh, and if I dropped a poem or two that really stank and/or offended someone … you’re welcome.

Next year, we’ll just have to be redder-er¹⁰ …

Cheers, Puddleduck"