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Senators Aim To Down High-Scoring Flyers

by SENShobo on 11/06/08 at 08:52 AM ET
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Today’s Ottawa Senators stories,

• Senators host hot-shot Flyers tonight.
• Auld gives and receives with team’s defensive approach.
• Think bold, not boring, with Ottawa’s responsible play.
• Winchester quickly finds a place for himself on the team.
• Something not quite right with Ottawa’s ice.
• Gerber opens up the man behind Vader’s mask.

• Senators’ new approach to team defence faces toughest challenge against the League’s top-scoring Flyers (NHL.com).

If Senators fans thought containing Semin and Ovechkin would be tough, tonight the Sens host the League’s highest scoring team. To put it into perspective, Ottawa trundles along with 2.75 G/G, while Philly lights up opponents with 3.91, more than a full extra goal on the Sens. Granted, the Sens (2.58 GA/G) pull the reverse on Philly (3.64 GA/G) in their own end, but the Flyers still own a better margin between the two.

Briere, our old friend from Buffalo, won’t be in the lineup tonight due to injury, but that won’t hurt the Flyers’ offense. While the Sens top scorers have potted 8, 5, 3, and 3 goals, going through the big three and Donovan, the Flyers start with Jeff Carter at 9, then move on to Simon Gagne (limited to 35 games combined the past two seasons due to head injury) with 8, and head on down with the numbers 6, 5, 4, and 4 before reaching 3 goals from the now-absent Briere (in 6GP).

Ottawa’s going to feel outgunned tonight, and it will put the pressure on their defensive improvements to hold strong. You might think that gives us a defensive weakness to exploit, all those guns, but not one of those goalscorers whose totals I’ve mentioned that we face tonight is a minus player, whereas of our top four, only Donovan is a plus. And no, there will be no Steve Downie to worry about; he’s somehow managed to find his way to the AHL’s Phantoms, playing under John Paddock.

Their past 23 chances, the Flyers have scored 9 powerplay goals, roughly 40% conversion, compared to our season’s 22.8% rate, though we’ve only allowed opponents a powerplay goal on 13.5% of their chances, compared to Philly spotting the opposition a goal 19.7% of the time. Tonight will be a battle, as the Sens try to reestablish themselves in the League and the Flyers look to climb to the prominence they feel a playoff Conference finalist merits, and the battle will be fought in inches and little strides, teams taking every advantage they get.

The one advantage I’d like to see? Smith, defending against the team he captained last season, being able to shut down his old friends. Someone’s got to face their old team and match up to Ruutu’s level, where he gave his former captain, Crosby, just oh-so-much love.

• Auld earning the praise of teammates and fans, but not forgetting how easily the coin can flip (Ottawa Senators’ web, Ottawa Citizen).

“It’s never anything I’ve been able to describe when asked about it,” he said. “But I believe in just the basics and fundamentals and any time you waver from being at the top of your game, you just go back to basics and it can come back pretty quickly because you have some strong core values in the way you play.

“That way, you can get out of any slump pretty quickly if you just go back to one thing.”

Auld, along with every member of the Ottawa Senators, has been benefiting from the basics and fundamentals. Despite his numbers, Auld flies under most radars, and you’ll not see him putting on an acrobatic performance for every save in the mold of Hasek or ex-teammate Thomas. What Auld does best is get the job done, and to be predictable in a way that his teammates know what to expect when the play is brought to him, and when he works to swing the game the other way.

Neither Auld nor Gerber has held an ironclad grip as a team’s starter, although Auld had a good few seasons with Vancouver, before he was part of a package for Luongo.

“Gerber is such a great guy, and we’ve both been on both sides of this sort of thing a lot of times in our careers,” he said. “I look at it as whoever is playing that night, he’s the starter, and that’s it. I’ve had the fortune and opportunity to play in these games where we’ve really started to clamp down and eliminate second shots.”

Gerber said he’s looking forward to getting another start. Until then, all he can do is work hard in practice and wait for his chance.

“You definitely want to be part of the group, and do the job and get in games,” he said. “I just have to focus on my job and do everything I can to be ready when the time comes.”

The time will come for Gerber, likely in Carolina against his old team on Friday. Last season’s “win and you’re in” policy failed to give the Sens any success, and I would imagine that this season, both goalies will get a chance, and while winning won’t guarantee you every start you want, it will give you the more pressing assignments and busier schedules of the moment. Rewarding hard work, both of the goalie winning the games, and of the goalie working hard in practice and as a patient team player, that bodes much better for success in the crease, and having a solid, confident dressing room.

• What better to do with one of the most feared offensive trios in the League than to play them as a part of a full team defence? (Ottawa Citizen).

“It’s not about sitting back, it’s about being in the right position defensively, whether it’s on the forecheck or coming back hard to our end,” Hartsburg says. “When we have the puck, we don’t want to give it away.”
....
“When you play against top players, turnovers are a big part of the game,” Hartsburg says. “You turn pucks over when you’re playing Ovechkin and these guys, it’ll come back to haunt you real quick.

“Fish, Alfie and Winchester (Tuesday) night, I can’t recall a real bad turnover by them. And that’s a big part of being solid defensively. When you have the puck, keep it. When you have it, the less you have to defend.”

With the defensive troubles the Sens have had over the past couple seasons, defense-first attitudes can go a long way towards success. It would be easy to let the guns run wild, but that’s just the beauty of forcing turnovers, stealing pucks, and playing sound positional defense with the tenacity of Ottawa’s penalty kills: the chances will come.

When they come, we do have a team that knows how to take advantage of them, as everyone has shown they can get quality chances, even if they haven’t all broken through, though some, Foligno vs. Detroit comes to mind, have shown just how far effort can go in turning a bad situation into something good. It’ll be a much easier task for Hartsburg to continue making Heatley, Spezza, and any Senator thinking about goals responsible in front of Auld, than for other coaches to turn their defensive pillars into snipers.

Goals are good, but I actually don’t find them as exciting coming from offensive zone dominance, enjoying the snatch, grab, and bag it approach much more for my excitement value. There was another team in recent memory that had a high-scoring trio, but I don’t remember it working out so well for them when they let defense go by the wayside.

• Being a rookie doesn’t mean Winchester will take any extra time to find his fit (Ottawa Sun).

In the likelihood Ovechkin had never heard of the former Colgate Raiders playmaker before this week, he certainly knows who he is now.

“We just battled all night,” Winchester said yesterday. “I think our line’s job was to frustrate them. He took a few good shots at me and I just tried to let him know that I’d take it all night. Luckily we came out on top, and I was happy to get involved in that kind of thing. I just enjoyed it. He’s obviously one of the best players in the world, and to be able to rattle him, it was pretty cool.”

One second-period incident followed a skirmish that saw Winchester on the receiving end of shots from a couple of defenders. As the players skated to their benches, Ovechkin and Winchester exchanged words. When they parted ways, Ovechkin gave Winchester what appeared to be a playful cuff to the back of the head.

On their next shift, Ovechkin took an interference penalty when he nailed Winchester at centre ice. In the third, Ovechkin waved his stick under Winchester’s nose. Winchester, who had just 51 penalty minutes in 40 NCAA games last season, also invited Ovechkin to drop the gloves. Ovechkin just laughed and reminded Winchester of his first-year status.

Getting under opponent’s skin and finding your way into a good role is a great goal for rookie Winchester to strive for. Ruutu has his own well-known pest skills, but his defensive acumen, which often finds him on the penalty kill and in critical defensive assignments and situations; if Winchester can work up to that, with an added scoring touch, then it’s a home run.

So far, board work reminiscent of current Bruin and ex-Senator Peter Scaefer has been the easiest trait to spot and appreciate in Winchester’s game, but his simple and defensively and positionally sound game have helped to make him a dependable figure, no matter who else is on the ice. He could do much worse than to work with and learn from current linemates Fisher and Alfie.

• Apparently they don’t make this country as cold as they used to (Ottawa Sun).

“I’m amazed that here in Canada, the ice was as bad as it was,” Washington Capitals coach Bruce Boudreau beefed after his team’s loss to the Senators in overtime Tuesday. “It was the worst ice I’ve seen guys skate on in many, many moons. It was embarrassing.”
....
The ice at The Bank has been sub-par for some time.

“It was bad,” said Jason Spezza. “The weather change (Tuesday) probably didn’t help. But they’ve had a little bit of problem with the ice here. I don’t know what’s going on. Maybe the building is getting a little older. We used to have great ice here a couple of years ago, but something has changed.”

It’s no secret that bad ice makes for a less crisp, more surprise filled game. Several arenas have started adding expensive machinery to regulate their environments for the benefit of the ice, will Ottawa be next in line? It could just be a fluke, but a more active test of the ice, like the one it will receive in December when Ottawa hosts the World Juniors, will be the best way to see what’s up.

• Gerber kindly lets us pick his brain (Ottawa Senators’ web).

Q: If you weren’t a goaltender, what position would you like to play?
A: Centre. You get to be a playmaker and you can dictate stuff. That would be something that I’d really love to do.
....
Q: If you weren’t a hockey player, what would you be doing?
A: I’m pretty sure I’d be laying bricks or something like that.

Watch out Spezza, he might get a chance; it wasn’t so long ago that Fleury let Crosby borrow his pads so Sid the Kid could give goaltending a try at the end of one practice (imagine how different his career could have gone, he said goaltending was his original desire). A bricklayer wouldn’t be so bad right now, as surely plenty of fans are clamoring for Gerber to be more of a brick wall the next time he plays.

As high as they are right now riding on Auld’s success, it’s still amazing how quickly they forget about things like Gerber’s solid stretch at the end of his first season, or his amazing performance behind last season’s playoff imploding Senators. Both have the skills, and have proven that all it takes is a little rhythm to get going. Yes, great goaltending helps win Cups, but solid goaltending and a commitment to team defense can do the trick too, as Detroit proved last season. Ok, they have some skill too, that might also have helped.

Filed in: NHL Teams, Ottawa Senators | SENShobo | Permalink
 

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