5 Key Questions - Part 1

So my first full season as a Sens fan in Canadaland is over, and frankly it sucked. I’ve already taken the lion’s share of the blame for this earlier in the season so I’m not about to do it again, suffice to say I’m still really, really sorry. Moving forward there are a number of things that the Senators have to do to re-establish themselves amongst the NHL elite and there are a number of questions that fans are probably asking themselves. I’ve got 5 main questions which I’ll blog about – if allowed. This is the first of them:

How do we replace Heatley?

First off, let’s pin my colours to the mast, I’m glad Heatley asked for a trade, moving forward, if handled correctly, this could be a great thing for the Senators organisation. Most Sens fans believe that one of the big four forward contracts had to be moved, Alfredsson should be truly untouchable and I don’t see anybody touching Fisher’s contract, I mean my man crush is still going strong but he IS overpaid – so that leaves Heatley and Spezza. I still think it’s easier to replace a scoring winger than a true number one centre and I also believe that we would get more back for 15 than 19.

Another thing the Heatley request means is that in a few years we won’t have to be having another Chara/Redden debate. I know we all SAY that we wanted Chara over Redden, but we also know that isn’t completely true.

Unless we manage to move into the top 3 of the draft (or maybe top 5) we aren’t going to find a player in the draft to immediately replace Heatley. That means we are going to have to replace him via a part of the trade or free agency. It’s possible that there is a mega trade out there for Heatley, a real blockbuster where we get an established top six player, a good prospect AND a draft pick, but it’s more likely we’ll have to readjust our sights and be a bit more realistic.

The two most attractive possible trade partners that have picks above us in the draft are Colorado and Los Angeles. Of course by this I mean attractive to me, who knows what Heatley and his agents are thinking, after all these are the guys who signed an exceptionally good contract less than two years ago before starting to sulk and asking for a trade AND having the cheek to say, yes we want out of this contract and we are prepared to waive the NMC that we asked you for, but only to teams that WE want to play with.

The more I think about what Heatley has done, the more I feel let down by the manner of the request but conversely the happier I am that he HAS done it. Heatley has played for two NHL teams and he has asked for a trade twice. At least he’s consistent I suppose. In fact he’s batting 1000. I know there were tragic circumstances surrounding his request to move from Atlanta, but what are his reasons here: I don’t like the fact the coach cut my ice time and I don’t like being on the second power play unit? Oh please. I think it’s more likely that he only wants the Heat On when the Heat is positive; if there is any concerted pressure from the press or the fans then he buckles like a chocolate fireguard.

Another possible reason he wants out is that Ottawa is not and never will be HIS town; Ottawa belongs to two, possibly three people. Daniel Alfredsson, Mike Fisher and Chris Phillips - these are the playing faces of this franchise, Heatley was never going to get there – maybe he wants to be somewhere where he IS the man, but with none of the pressure of BEING the man. As we say over the pond what a big girl's blouse or chemise d'une grande fille.

What would I like to see come back for him in a trade? Well Hossa, Zetterberg and Franzen would be a start, if that doesn’t work what about Crosby and Malkin for Heatley? Hell, I’d even be prepared to throw in Chris Kelly to get those deals done.

I would like to see a multiple pieces trade along the lines I mentioned earlier – player, prospect and pick please. Realistically though if Murray pulls that off he’s a genius, we might have to settle for less, but as Meat Loaf once warbled, “two out of three ain’t bad”. Ideally we could have Frolov, Teubert or Hickey and the number 5 pick from Los Angeles, but the LA assistant GM has hardly been positive when asked questions about the character of Dany Heatley. This would be the perfect trade scenario for us, a top 6 forward, a potential top 4 d-man and a high draft pick which would probably translate to Kane or MSP.

More and more though, I hope that Bryan Murray manages to get something done with Colorado that gets us pick number three. Number three gets us whichever one of Tavares, Hedman and Duchene are still available. With that we either get the only guy in the draft who can possibly step in and replace Heatley's goals immediately, a Swedish top defence pairing that could anchor our blueline for the next 6 or 7 years, or a legitimate 1 and 2 centre pairing that would compare with any in the league (except for those pesky penguins).

I’d even be happy for Bryan Murray to trade Heatley for just the number three pick. One of those players and the fact we immediately ease our cap issues would probably be worth it, but we if could possibly get the Avalanche to throw in somebody like Chris Stewart or Milan Hejduk – that would be nice.

A different option for the Heatley trade would be to trade him straight up for a top d-man that would be better for our cap situation even if all the 7.5 gets spent on the blueline but there aren’t many of those around, maybe Phaneuf would be worth it? It would be great if we could get Nashville to part with Shea Weber or Minnesota with Brent Burns but I don’t see Heatley agreeing to go to the Predators or the Wild. There’s that pesky, and apparently very flexible, NMC coming back to bite us again.

More and more I think Heatley’s replacement is coming from free agency and a lot of people seem focused on Mike Cammaleri but as long as we have a legitimate top 6 guy playing alongside Alfie and Spezza with maybe some additional cap space we should be satisfied, let’s face facts we aren’t getting a 50 goal scorer back, a trade such as Heatley for Rick Nash is highly unlikely. Another straight up (sort of) trade I’d like to see is Boyes and Backes from St Louis, but I’m not convinced that happens and of course there is yet again that frippin’ NMC to consider.

We are going to miss his goals, but we aren’t going to miss his work ethic and we aren’t going to miss his whining. Heatley asking for a trade finally gives us some cap flexibility that we would only have got from trading away Jason Spezza, and whilst I know a lot of people would have loved that, I wouldn’t.

So long Dany, thanks for the years you gave us, but you’ve really let yourself down with the classless way you and your agents have handled this situation and the way you deliberately handcuffed the Senators by going public with your pathetic whining. I’d like to think that you have irrevocably damaged your reputation, but unfortunately sports fans don’t honestly care about that sort of thing, your new team will love you and your goals and as long as you are getting exactly what you want, when you want it, I’m sure you’ll love them too.

Pip pip and cheerio

Summer Show Coming Tomorrow!!!

Hey everyone! Russell here! I just wanted to drop a quick line in here to let you all know that we will be recording our first summer show Tuesday night! We had lots of requests to do one so here we come, with guns a'blazin'! ( That and I just got tired of seeing Ivan White's face on my website everytime I opened it! )

We'll go over the play-offs talk about all the Newsy kinda stuff and, of course, we'll weigh in on all the Sens drama going on.  Will it never end?!?! It will be pretty much a free-for-all so God only knows where this show will go or what group of people will be sending Stooli hate mail this week. 

It's been way too long and we look forward to being with you all again.

I remain, Leafs suck.

Russell

Sens Win Stanley Cup

Just to get things off and running – and possibly get you shy bloggers to come out of the woodwork- I’m going give you four reasons why the Senators should have won the Stanley Cup this year.

Reason #4 - SC Finals hangover = over

This mythical excuse wheeled out yearly by hockey pundits. The team that plays further into the summer makes a boatload of money for the organization and little, outside of those idiotic playoff bonuses, for the players. What am I getting at? Well, maybe after a long hard playoffs and a short summer some players choose to give 80 to 90 percent. Oops, did I just call the players of our beloved game slackers? Yes I did.

So are the Sens the biggest tea-totaler’s in NHL? No. Apparently they were just waking up from the Ducks party when the Penguins held them down and dropped a dozen beer bongs down their throats. Its either that or...

Reason #3 - Coaching

We had an awesome coach! There can be no disputing that Craig Hartsburg was the man for the job. I’ve never seen the world juniors play like that in front of him so I can only extrapolate that the major reason behind this year’s strategy was management. I’ll venture to guess that he was told to “play safe” and keep the players subdued. What a crock. Give me injuries to half the roster and 10-4 games any day of the week. I would not have been as disappointed in this season if I would have seen more neutral zone regroups or even a defenseman standing up at somewhere near the blue line.

I want to see my Sens flying out there. It’s why I bought the crappy t-shirts and suffered through all the horrible marketing campaigns, because the Sens were playing the most spectacular hockey of any team in the NHL in the past few seasons. When you get guys like Heatley and Spezza on the Roster they are not there to play in their own end, let them play. When you hire coaches that have wide-open systems, let them use them.

Reason #2 - Fans

Don’t we deserve better? When a team, who we support, suddenly wants to air reruns of Passions through the locker-room I get sick to my stomach. I challenge you readers to pay a little more attention to one other team. Choose any team in the NHL and report back in the forums about all the locker room and off-ice antics you find.

How much more will the fans in Ottawa, or the fans OF Ottawa for that matter, take before they stop caring. I was pretty damn close this year. You can tell me how that sounds bandwagon until the cows come home, but I wasn’t planning on cheering for another team. Passions was cancelled people, goes to show you that only longstanding franchises can treat their fans like crap and get away with it (you know who you are).

Reason #1 – Alfie

What? You were expecting something else to be more important than the center of our universe. Not a chance. For everything that this man has done to renew my faith in the Senators team, nightly, he deserves better. As evidenced by his more apparent meltdowns late in this season, and the fact that he sat in the press box with an understudy during the Senators season finale, Alfie is not too long for the great big off-season in the sky.  Give Alfie his due and his potential ticket to the Hall, in a Cup ring. I don’t care if you have to buy every referee from here to the finals. Make the call to Brian Burke, get their numbers and do your damn job!

Give er!

S4 - Episode 23: Take it Behind the Barn and Shoot it.

It's........over. Done. Kaput. And so are we.

Like you'd do to an old dog that you love, we put this season out of it's misery this week with the season 4 finale. But we can feel good about it because we certainly can look forward to next season with more hope than we thought just a few short months ago. Yes, the play-offs have started without us but the Sens' play since Clouston took charge certainly gives us hope that we will be back in the hunt for the cup next year.

We recap the final two games of the season:

New Jersey 3 - Ottawa 2 SO
Ottawa 2 - Burke's Bozos 5

I know, it was a loss to the Leafs but seriously, who cares? The Sens didn't seem to, as this was as lame duck a game as you can imagine. A lot of you seemed very upset by this loss but don't read too much into it. Besides, this win was the worst thing that could happen to the Leafs. We explain why.

So, with the smoke clearing, we look back at the season, not too much though. We'd rather forget about it and look ahead to better times.  A part of those times will be Ryan Shannon, who signed a 1 year contract with the Sens. We're very happy about that but again, this raises questions about the future of Comrie, as did Murray's rather blunt assessment of his performance this year. It also raises questions about the line up of hotties attending games at SBP next season. Would we let Comrie go if it meant losing the Duffster? Apparently Campoli may be adding to the scenery next season as he's been rumoured to be involved with some rocket-hot honey. However, there are some other rumours about these two recent Isles that Stooli divulges this week that are a little disturbing. You'll find this interesting.

The final News segment, your year-ending e-mails and our look at the play-offs as we dance our way out of another season.

Of course, we can't sign off without saying thanks to you, our listeners, our friends. You guys make this show worth doing and this year we needed you more than ever to get through those bleak nights. You guys kept it fun for us and we can never thank you enough for spending some time with us each week. We'll be back in the summer, no doubt, to take a look at any moves Murray might make. Until then, enjoy the play-offs, have a safe and fun summer and shake that ass like there's no tomorrow!

Cheers!

S4 - Episode 23: Take it Behind the Barn and Shoot it.

New Site - Same Look...

As promised, the new site is finally here!

Looks pretty much like the other one doesn't it?  Well that's because I finished my part before StooLi finished his.  Look at this as Part 1 of the new website... Part 2 will include the new logo, colours and layout.

So everything looks pretty much the same except for the Forums.  It'll take some getting used to but it should serve us well for the summer.  The service we're using to provide forum discussions is being enhanced as we speak and we'll probably have it updated in time for Season 5 of the Underground.

Remember, all of the posts from the old site are gone... sorry, tried to find a way to port them over but it just wasn't possible.  Also, you'll need to re-create your accounts.  Once you're account is created and you're logged in, click on your name at the top right corner and edit your profile to change your display name.  If you don't, your full name will be displayed in your posts.

And finally, the RSS name and location for our blog, m4a and mp3 feeds have changed.  Your current subscriptions should automatically redirect to the new feed.  All feeds have now been combined into one and as mentioned in a previous blog post, the m4a (Enhanced Podcast) has been dropped.

Note: Your current subscriptions to the podcast will now show duplicate episodes for season 3.  Basically, all episodes in the new feed will appear as ready for download but the previous audio files from the old feed will still remain.  Sorry but that's a side effect from changing feeds entirely.

So create your accounts and let us know what you think... you can use the new Feedback page for that if you'd like?