Alfredsson: “I look at it as, it could be my last playoffs”
About Wayne Scanlan
It has been my pleasure to carry a flag for the Citizen sports department for 25 years, and a privilege to write a column since 1991. As the NHL Senators took over our town, I shifted in the mid-1990s from a general sports columnist to a mostly hockey guy. Representing this newspaper and its chain I have covered men's and women's hockey at several Olympic Games. London was my 10th Olympic assignment, as part of the Postmedia team at the 2012 Summer Olympic Games in England.
Along the ride I have been fortunate to cover the Tour de France, twice, and numerous Stanley Cup playoffs and Grey Cup championships. The Senators will dictate further travel plans.
He is the most highly paid athlete in Ottawa, at long last appreciated by hometown fans who needed years to warm to him. In his prime at 28, he is adopting a leadership role, likely the captain-apparent, enjoying perhaps his finest NHL season. He is a better-than-point-per-game player in an era dominated by swollen goalies. [...]
Got your playoff tix yet? With the regular season in the record books, the Ottawa Senators are on their way to the great NHL dance toward the Stanley Cup, and you know how they hate to dance alone. Please don’t say there’s nothing left in the household budget, you’ve had two years to save up [...]
Quick – who won the Stanley Cup last spring? Can’t remember? Then, you’re Chris Kelly’s kind of hockey fan. Kelly, a former Ottawa Senators centre, joined the Boston Bruins before the trade deadline last year, and played an important role (never mind how he downplays it) in helping the Bruins win their first Stanley Cup [...]
Those wild and crazy, playoff-bound Senators returned to Ottawa on Tuesday, unlikely regular season heroes. Captain Daniel Alfredsson was being cheered as soon as his face appeared on the scoreboard screen, pre-game. An “Alfie!” chant broke with 11 minutes to go in each period — get it, No. 11 — not a ripper chant, but [...]
“It’s close. It’s gonna be close right down to the end,” Spezza said. “That’s what they wanted when they came up with the three-point games.
From afar, it was bizarre to see Pierre Gauthier’s Montreal Canadiens spin out of control this season. As a hockey general manager, control was Gauthier’s modus operandi. He was controlling to the enth degree. Here in Ottawa, media members still talk about the time Gauthier put them on a one-cookie limit after arena meals (in [...]