Just how glad were Ottawa Senators players that the lockout ended?
Take the reaction of left winger Milan Michalek.
Stand on Little Lake, a slap shot away from Great Bear Lake, and you can’t help but think about infamous Arctic explorer Sir John Franklin. Or, more specifically, about what Franklin might have thought of a simple game evolving into such a complicated, nasty mess.
It ended Thursday morning the way it began last Saturday, in the airport of a snow-covered capital of a northern Canadian territory, the temperature outside hovering around the -20 C mark.
Apparently, the inner chicken in Chris Phillips was just waiting for an opening to get out.
No Corey Perry or Teemu Selanne. No Zdeno Chara or Milan Lucic. No Sidney Crosby or Milan Michalek. No Henrik or Daniel Sedin. No Eric Staal or Jordan Staal. And no Steve Stamkos or Martin St. Louis. That’s what the NHL’s decision to cancel the November schedule Friday amounts to for Ottawa Senators ticket holders. [...]
As Chris Kelly left the ice at the Bell Sensplex with his fellow locked out players late Tuesday morning, he couldn’t resist joking with the media on hand. “You guys want to bring your skates tomorrow?” said Kelly, the former Senators and current Boston Bruins centre. “We could use a few more bodies.” That won’t [...]
Milan Michalek is a man in the middle. On one hand, Michalek, the Ottawa Senators star left winger, is now skating regularly with his locked out teammates. Unlike the others, however, Michalek is welcome inside Scotiabank Place.