Ottawa goes Green

 As Kermit the Frog sang – lyrics and melody by Joe Raposo – It’s Not Easy Bein’ Green. And you can sing that one to the Ottawa Senators newest head coach who’s getting nailed with the negative from a large majority of wordsmiths on the team’s main chat board. Like
The first round of the NHL playoffs

Bizarro’s rise during NHL’s first round

 Modest certainty never came to fruition on a Tuesday night when-and-where three of Canada’s entrants into the NHL’s playoff derby walked into the spotlight. With no Auston Matthews and his eight-gazillion goals, the Toronto Maple Leafs were done like a Tiger Williams dinner, correct? After the Honky-Tonk Highway Miracle, the

Oilers, Leafs, Jets and Canucks takin’ care of business

 The most fabulous time of the year hasn’t disappointed, and we are what, only three-days-and-change in? Fabulous. Lots to chew on from a Canadian team perspective as the NHL post-season rages onward. It is – after all - the most fabulous time of the year . . .   WHERE

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

Ottawa Senators: Rebuild Part II?

 “I think the Senators are going to be a really, really busy team in the off-season.” Hockey’s pre-eminent insider Elliotte Friedman (Sportsnet, HNIC) had those words earlier this week and they are all of being the following: Predictable, believable, somewhat alluring to Ottawa fans and somewhat frightening to Ottawa fans.

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

Rielly, Greig incident draws out the ‘Pin-Dicks’

 Middle ground and balanced opinion? Not that we were expecting anything different but there wasn’t much of that coming out of Saturday night’s coup d’etat of the Ontario hockey universe by frothing fans on both sides of the fracas involving Ottawa’s Riley Greig and Toronto’s Morgan Rielly. Make no mistake,

It’s cold-and-flu season, here’s how to deal with it (or not)

 It’s either the flu or it’s a heavy, heavy cold. Either way, I’ve got it and it’s going to be seven days tomorrow. (And before you roll out the old man-cold line, my friend Steph also has it. She’s bedridden and she’s also tough as beef jerky, so there.) It’s

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

Are we Already at Make-or-Break?

 I’m pretty sure you’re familiar with the projected math (and what it all can signify) approaching U.S. Thanksgiving: If you’re ‘in,’ come the final days of November, you’re likely ‘in.’ Subsequently, if you’re ‘out,’ you’re likely ‘out,’ come season’s end. In-and-out? The playoffs. Yeah, it happens this early. American Thanksgiving

Battle? What battle?

 What we have here is a national crisis. When one of our country’s most established, venerated, respected institutions tumbles into near obscurity, what else would you call it? Yep, crisis pretty well sums it up. The Battle of Ontario? Please. Nerf Ball war is more like it. Ottawa and Toronto

Dorion’s firing . . . and spinning the wheel on Senators, Habs and Leafs

 Collectively they should be recognized as the Holy Trinity of hockey around these parts. Three entities that swallow the large majority of fan support in the Eastern Ontario region. So in no particular order, here we have Montreal, Toronto and Ottawa, and if you’re a hockey follower in the region,

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

It’s Crack-of-Dawn Early but Ottawa’s Wide Awake

 One down, 27-ish to go. It’s just one full week into the NHL season and already proclamations are being made league-wide: “The Canucks are soft,” “The Oilers stink,” “Seattle stinks too,” “It’s either Vegas-Ottawa in the final or Colorado-Detroit in the final!” One full week in and we’re thrust into