Goaltender Ben Bishop must be formidable: He grew an inch in stature from the time I left my house until I arrived at the arena.
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.
As an Eastern Conference playoff species, it’s awfully hard to know what to wish for these days.
Ultimately Craig’s Kitchen Caper of 2012 will either go down go down as another in a long line of Senators goaltending tragedies, or be classified as “just a flesh wound,” to borrow from Monty Python.
Old-timer hockey players know this warmup routine. The long, languid strides, slowly weaving back and forth to loosen up ancient, creaking body parts. Skating at a fraction of one’s former speed. Cutting the warmup short to save a little something for the game. Sadly, this is not an old-timer on the ice at Scotiabank Place on game day morning, it is Alex Ovechkin of the Washington Capitals, a 26-year-old superstar who should be at the peak of his powers.
Murray: “We’d like to be in the playoffs, and we’d like to win in the playoffs.”
Alfredsson: “Sometimes I think we shoot too much, but if you ask the coaches, we don’t shoot enough.”
The Ottawa Senators have found their role models and they are … the 1967 Toronto Maple Leafs. That’s right, the Leafs. It’s no joke. For most of the 2011-12 season, the Senators have found themselves in a playoff position despite having allowed more goals than they have scored, which is usually a barrier to playoff [...]