SENShobo
Sens’ Performance Prompts Hartsburg To Shuffle The Deck
by SENShobo on 10/20/08 at 03:06 PM ET
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From Allen Panzeri of the Ottawa Citizen,
Just five games into the season, Ottawa Senators coach Craig Hartsburg has dramatically restructured his lines and read the team the riot act. Hartsburg isn’t happy with the way the team has played since returning from Sweden and said if it doesn’t change its habits and start to work, it won’t have any success.
“I don’t like the way we’ve played the last three games, to tell you the truth, and even the Phoenix game was only a 20-minute game,” Hartsburg said Monday morning. “I don’t think our level of work and competing and desperation is high enough. I think we’ve got players who need to get out of the comfort zone and start to realize that they need to battle harder.”
In his new lines, Hartsburg had Jason Spezza between Nick Foligno and Jesse Winchester, Mike Fisher between Daniel Alfredsson and Dany Heatley, and Chris Kelly between Antoine Vermette and Jarkko Ruutu. Chris Neil, Dean McAmmond, Shean Donovan, and Christoph Schubert were grouped as the fourth line.
Interesting, and certainly not unwarranted to try something new. I wonder what this will bring…
Although Spezza’s new line is listed first, I don’t think anyone will disagree when I annoint the Heatley-Fisher-Alfie combo as our new first line. I’m tempted to call this our ‘Leader line’, as cheese-filled as that sounds. You’ve got our captain, our new alternate, and the man who many thought would be the new alternate, not that Fisher hasn’t been a quiet leader for as long as we can remember. Also, the line now boasts (based on last season’s forwards’ stats) the team’s forward leader(s) in goals, points per game, +/-, powerplay goals, shorthanded goals, gamewinning goals, overtime goals, shots, shooting percentage, average time on ice per game, average shifts per game, non-center faceoff percentage, hits, blocked shots, and takeaways. If Heatley can walk the talk he last walked (say that three times fast) so well in the Sens’ second game in Sweden, this might be every bit as terrifying a line as it was with Spezza.
Spezza’s line poses an interesting question: mix Spezza’s skill at dishing out the puck, Foligno’s energy and hard work with and without the puck, and Winchester’s dedication to simple and smart plays, and what do you get? Maybe the intertwining of all the aspects to a complete player. Hartsburg could do less than to hope Spezza’s skill sparks even more offence from the rookies, and we also get to see if Spezza’s transformation from the third banana on his line to the top dog can draw out more leadership and responsibility, on and off the ice. I liked Winchester during the rookie tournament in September, and I’m excited to see him back in a solid position from which to mount more attacks.
Chris Kelly with Antoine Vermette, who could have guessed that? But Jarkko Ruutu, you ask? Well for defensive responsibility, look no further than Kelly, Vermette, and Ruutu, the team’s 1st, 2nd, and 5th place forwards when it comes to shorthanded time on ice per game. Ruutu’s tenacity should slot nicely alongside Kelly and Vermette, and give the team another line that’s useful in many situations.
The final combination, consisting of three quarters Neil, McAmmond, Donovan, and Schubert, is not left without its own potential. Nobody would suggest they will be a scoring dynamo, but they have all found times to contribute important momentum-changing goals. Take Neil, Donovan, and Schubert, and for all the hard-checking forwards you’ve sprinkled so evenly amongst the first three lines, the fourth will still have a nice crunching sound to it. Replace Neil with McAmmond, and you can achieve a more defensive mindset. Further shuffling leads to further ability to fine-tune the nature of the 4th line, depending on what Hartsburg needs on the ice, and whose performance might merit time off it.
Wednesday against Florida would be a nice time to debut these lines, as you’re not expecting fully-loaded shotguns. But, after trading their captain for what they figured were two solid defenders in Ballard and Boynton, swapping Van Ryn to Toronto for what they hoped to be an upgrade in the form of McCabe, and the always impressive presence of Bouwmeester, only four teams in the East have allowed fewer goals than the Panthers thus far. Now, if only we could see, maybe only to the amusement of me, what happens if you split up Phillips and Volchenkov to match them up with Picard and Lee. Maybe that’s a little too much juggling.
Filed in: NHL Teams, Ottawa Senators | SENShobo | Permalink
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