Sens, Habs and Leafs Headed in Different Directions

 No matter how well your team is going, as an NHL general manager, worry and anxiety are common bedfellows. Teams can be one major injury or a couple of poor goaltending outings away from singing sayonara to the post-season. Here in Eastern Ontario – and readers of this space will

NHL’s Best Draft Happened 21 Years Ago

 It was a weekend to remember at the Gaylord Entertainment Center in Nashville in late June, so many years ago. It was an enormously successful event – that summer’s entry draft – and its impact is still, some how, being felt around the National Hockey League today. It not only

Florida Panthers – Inevitable or What?

 So unlikeable. So abrasive. So damn good. There’s absolutely nothing ‘so-so’ associated with this year’s Florida Panthers who stepped to within a pair of wins from a franchise-first Stanley Cup triumph after Monday night’s 4-1 win over a game Edmonton Oilers hockey team. Yup, the Oilers were very game in
Ottawa Senators GM Steve Staios

‘Summer of Steve’ well underway

 Like the result or not, Step 1 in the Ottawa Senator ‘rebuild’ was accomplished lickety-split. The hiring of Travis Green just last week, while certainly not universally lauded, quickly took care of some much-needed business during what promises to be a busy off-season. Quite simply, there’s lots-to-do in Ottawa as
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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

Blue is the colour of Toronto

 It’s here. The first installment of ‘real’ hockey; hockey that matters. It’s happening and gets started Tuesday night as Vegas hosts Seattle, where-and-when the Knights unveil their Stanley Cup banner, Pittsburgh entertains Chicago where Crosby and new-Crosby face each other, and Nashville is at Tampa in the first entry into

Subtraction not in Dorion’s vocabulary anymore

 “The final mystery is oneself.” — Oscar Wilde Brainy quotes aside, if this is in fact the start of the final frontier for Ottawa Senators’ General Manager Pierre Dorion, even his toughest critics would have to admit that this is a guy who knows himself. As a self-identifier, Dorion must

When late June becomes a hockey hornet nest

 No hockey on the ice. No problem. As TSN’s Gino Reda pointed out (roughly) Monday night: ‘Welcome to the busiest week of the hockey season.’ Trades, NHL entry draft, free agency, rumours, rumblings and another painfully awkward NHL awards show . . . it’s all here for the taking. Good

Helping others makes Ottawa’s Higgins a true hall-of-famer

 Here he is folks, Tim Higgins - Ottawa 67’s star, eventual first-round NHL draft pick (10th-overall, Chicago), roommate of Bob Probert’s (easily the most important detail), player of 706 regular-season games and another 65 playoff clashes, and yes, he is on his way to the Ottawa Sports Hall of Fame.

Time to make hay, Ottawa

 The year 2017 seems like, well, a very long time ago. And in hockey speak, it really was. Five ‘very long’ seasons. To not be even competing for a playoff spot post-Christmas for that amount of time, year after year, is inexcusable, right? But there you are Ottawa Fan. And

Keep your eyes on these guys.

 Being a ‘person of interest’ isn’t likely a good thing when relating it to the police. Being the same in this column could be good . . .  or it could be bad. Let’s put it this way, and either way, the 10 guys (close to home) listed and detailed